Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, at left, blindfolded, starting the great national lottery on July 20 to decide the order in which men registered under the Conscription law should be called up for examina

tion. He is drawing the first number from the bowl

Men of the first contingents of the United States Army to serve in Europe just landed from a transport at an unnamed

seaport in France

(Photo Underwood & Underwood)

that from whatever terrain the enemy may withdraw he leaves behind him a desert waste, whether the material destroyed be of military or industrial or of mere civic or sentimental value. These considerations, therefore, have been found to qualify, if not actually to limit, the recent military operations of Generals Haig and Pétain.

Hence, it may be convenient to separate the military from the non-military phases. of the engagements, for the contrast may be summed up in the statement that the military advantage would have to be greater than there seems the remotest hope of gaining to offset the wanton destruction of a town like Lille, which would be likely to attend deliberate German evacuation quite as much as occupation by assault. And Lille is to the northern part of the line in France what Laon, with its blast furnaces and mediaeval buildings, is to the southern part. And both Lille and Laon, as well as the new factories established by the Germans at St. Quentin, are supplied with fuel from the great coalfields of Lens, which before the war produced 15,000,000 tons a year and employed 25,000 hands. Thus we have an explanation of the fact that for the last month the attacks of the Allies have concentrated at Lens rather than at St. Quentin, although the possession of the latter would be of more military value on account of its control of the German line to the southeast, in the Champagne.

The Battle of Flanders

The British salient at Ypres is no more. It had been a military accident which resulted from the great defensive manoeuvres of November, 1914, when Sir John French was almost flanked ere he could form a junction with the Belgians, and the French reinforcements arrived which were to save Dunkirk. It has since been maintained at great tactical expense and merely for political reasons. German guns from the east commanded every direct approach and the town itself was soon a mass of ruins. For the Allies it was the weakest sector on the whole front. For three years the alternative had been the constant preoccupation of the British and French General Staffs:

to efface it by either abandonment or expansion. Twice had an attempt to achieve the latter failed.

These attacks failed because they were directed against its centre, and its centre was covered by the German guns on Messines Ridge, lying to the south. With the greatest mine and bombardment preparation in the history of the war the British, on June 7, captured this ridge. This capture made what has been called the Third Battle of Ypres, or the Battle of Flanders, possible. So far it consists of two phases-the first of a single day, July 31, the second begun on Aug. 16. In both attacks French troops co-operated in the northern part of the offensive. In the first an advance was made over a front of fifteen miles-from the River Lys to the Yser, the enemy's positions were penetrated to a depth of two miles in the centre and to one mile on the right centre, the powerfully defended Sanctuary Wood and neighboring farms captured, and the villages of La Basséville, Hollebeke, Bixschoote, Verlorenhoek, Frezenberg, St. Julien, Pilkem, Hooge and Westhoek occupied. Nearly 5,000 prisoners were taken by the attack and in the ineffectual counterattacks of the succeeding days. The first two days of the second assault saw an advance along a nine-mile front to the northeast, with the capture of Langemarck and nearly 2,000 prisoners.

The capture of Pilkem is said to have been a particularly fine performance on the part of the guards, as they reached their last goal without the assistance of a barrage by creeping forward and stalking machine gun posts. In this way they got to Steenbeck River, and threw bridges across without serious opposition. The easiest advance was on the northern side of the salient, where there was an expanse of open ground, although more or less waterlogged, like the rest of the Plain of Flanders. Directly east of the town of Ypres the advance was greatly retarded owing to the unusual character of the obstacles met-patches of wood interlaced with shallow streams and pools of water.

The first phase of the Battle of Flanders demonstrated several things and startled the Germans with at least one

SCALE OF MILES

surprise. It established the mastery of the British artillery over the German, both in bombardment and barrage fire, particularly with mid-calibre guns; it hammered into pieces some thirteen divisions of the enemy; and it confirmed, by many noteworthy experiences, the value of "tanks" on rolling or flat surfaces, and the use of the bombad-plane in protecting shell-craters from being occupied by the enemy.

This last is of particular importance. At a certain point the barrage fire which has protected the advance of infantry changes its shells from shrapnel to high explosive, so that when the infantry reach the designated point they find a line of entrenchments formed by shell-craters waiting for their occupancy. It had been the custom of the Germans to anticipate this by occupying the craters themselves and facing the advancing infantry with machine guns. In the Battle of Flanders the curtain dropped by the bombadplanes prevented this.

Although the first and second phases of the Battle of Flanders may be considered in natural sequence of the bat

tles on the Somme and the Ancre, at Vimy Ridge, and at Messines, it would be idle to speculate in advance how the sequel will develop. On no other front, unless it be amid the Alps of the Trentino, do weather conditions play such a dominating rôle in shaping military actions. All the elaborate resources with which modern armies wage war have not abolished their dependence on the weather, whose arbitrary interventions are only the more to be feared now that the complexities of an attack make it impracticable to vary the date for it.

As to the objective of the Battle of Flanders: In an effusive message to Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria the German Kaiser suggested that the Anglo-French attack of July 31 was "intended to conquer the coast of Flanders." This coast, with its submarine bases at Zeebrugge, Ostend, and elsewhere on the shore, and its aerodromes hidden on the downs, certainly forms an inviting objective. On this terrain, too, military strategy and valor have more chance for endeavor than they do amid the concrete-reinforced walled towns and villages further south.

Closing In on Lens

Lens was the elusive objective sought in the Battle of Loos in September and October, 1915, when Sir John French's plan went wrong on account of lack of co-ordination between artillery and infantry. A salient, second in weakness only to that of Ypres, was then left exposed. This Loos salient was commanded from the south by the Germans on the Vimy Ridge, which bore the same relation to it that the Messines Ridge did to the Ypres salient. But Vimy Ridge also had another function, it commanded the great Arras salient to the south and, what is more important, the Arras-Cambrai highway. If eliminated, the southern approaches to Lens would be thrown open as well as the Arras-Cambrai highway.

It was eliminated-April 9-and immediately a British advance was made astride the highway-the first leg of the Hindenburg line—and preparations were made to encircle Lens and its 200 square miles of coal area.

Gradually the encircling took the form of a pair of pincers. On July 20 the Canadian troops reached a post in the mine region to the north hardly 1,500 yards from the heart of Lens. Several days earlier it had been revealed from observations made on Vimy Ridge that most of the buildings in the town had been reinforced with concrete, just as St. Quentin is known to have been, and all indications showed that the Germans were intending to hold the centre of the city until their losses became unendurable.

Hill 65 to the west of the city was taken in the middle of June, but Hill 70, to the north, was not to succumb until Aug. 15. Gradually at first and then more rapidly have the jaws of the pincers closed upon the Prussians from the Rhinelands, men of the Fifty-sixth Division, who hold this mining city. They have put up one of the gamest fights of the

war-counterattacking sometimes very fiercely, as at La Coulotte, just south of Lens and west of Avion, where the Canadian infantry pushed closer and threatened their main defenses.

On the same day that Hill 70 fell, whose formidable defenses had resisted

made frantic efforts to capture the lost positions, and ten times the Prussians charged, each time driven back with frightful slaughter and a heavy loss in prisoners. The Seventh Division is said to have been completely wiped out in a sortie, while the Fourth Guard Division fared little better. It was a day of machine gun and volley fire.

Although the capture of Lens would open the way to Douai and flank, from the north, the Siegfried line constructed to protect that depot and Cambrai, yet its importance to the Germans, aside from the strategic obstruction it has presented to the Allies, is chiefly industrial, as has already been indicated. And this importance is commensurate with the defense it has made.

Laon Threatened with Investment Laon, a beautiful city whose cathedraltopped hill can be seen for miles around,