unceasingly hammered Crown Prince Rupprecht's armies, striking suddenly at different points, and always advancing in spite of the most determined opposition. The Third and Fourth British Armies under Generals Byng and Rawlinson made important gains on August 22-23, 1918. It was a day of disaster for the Germans, whose desperate attempts to check the British advance resulted only in frightful losses of men and accomplished nothing. Prince Rupprecht sacrificed his troops recklessly in an effort to stave off the inevitable. The British guns swept the Germans from the field, or crushed them as they tried to force their way forward. One entire German battalion was annihilated during the fighting. General Byng made an advance of two miles to the neighborhood of Grandcourt, east of the Ancre. Gomiecourt and four other villages were carried by storm. To the north the British captured Achiet-le-Grand, which is on the Arras-Albert railroad, and for the possession of which Germans and British had been fighting for some days past.

Field Marshal Haig's armies continued to deal the German forces staggering blows as they drove forward. Bray, on the northern bank of the Somme, was captured on August 23, 1918. Thiepval, a strong position on high ground and which dominated miles of territory, was occupied by British forces after a hard struggle and against the concentrated fire of countless machine guns. Miraumont, in the center of the battle front and to which the Germans clung with desperate energy, was now surrounded on all sides and its fall was only a question of a few hours. The British were now driving ahead in the direction of Bapaume, and on the 23d occupied a small town on the outskirts. Croisilles, north of Mory, some miles east of the Arras-Bapaume road, was also won, marking the extreme point of the British advance for the day in the northern battle zone.

North of the river Scarpe the fighting was intense. The British, despite stiff opposition, penetrated the old German line and made important gains when they attacked Givenchy. The Germans fought bravely, contesting every yard of ground, but it was a losing battle, and the field was littered thickly with their dead. They had brought up new divisions that were thrown into the fight, but the reenforcements were unable to check, except temporarily, the Allies' continuous push forward.

On the French front General Mangin's troops had crossed the Oise and reached the outskirts of the village of Morlincourt, a mile and a quarter from the railway station of Noyon. The fall of that place within a short time was inevitable.

The French advance on the Soissons end of the battle front proceeded more slowly, but the forward movement was not arrested. Their operations in this region threatened the turning of both the Chemin-des-Dames and the German positions on the Vesle. On August 23, 1918, General Mangin's troops had won the greater part of the Juvigny Plateau, which brought them to the edge of the battle field of 1917. To the north lay the Ailette Valley. Eight miles eastward was Laffaux Mill and the beginning of the Chemin-des-Dames, familiar landmarks and the scene of intense fighting in the previous year.

On the battle front north of the Somme the British armies continued to advance in the face of heavy resistance from the Germans, who had been strongly reenforced in the course of the past twenty-four hours (August 24-25, 1918). Haig's troops had captured a dozen villages and carried their new front within a thousand yards of the old Hindenburg Line. From Albert to Bapaume, the whole length of the highroad was now in British hands. East of Bray Australian troops carried important heights in possession of the enemy. North of Bapaume the villages of Sapignies and Behagnies, which formed part of the defenses of the town, were taken by British troops. The Germans, as they retired, left great quantities of stores, equipment and military supplies on the field. They destroyed what they could, but a vast amount fell to the victors.

Since August 21, 1918, the British had captured over 17,000 prisoners and a great number of cannon and machine guns.

The British advance owed much of its success to the wonderful service performed by the motor cars, which did scout work far in advance of the infantry. They continued throughout the fighting to harass the enemy and strike confusion in his ranks, falling upon transport columns and inflicting terrible damage. They attacked retreating bodies of Germans and mowed them down with machine guns, and were everywhere active factors in the demoralization of the enemy. The tanks cooperating with the armored cars were no less effective. Breaking the way for the advancing troops they rolled into the towns and cleaned out the strong points under floods of fire. The Germans never lost their fear of the tanks and it was not unusual during the British advance for large bodies to surrender as soon as one of the grim-looking monsters lumbered into view.

An interesting incident in connection with the capture of Thiepval Ridge is related, when a British detachment was saved by an aeroplane. This detachment, pressing forward too fast, found itself out of touch with the main body and was suddenly surrounded by Germans. An observer in the air noted their predicament and dropped a message "Stick it out." He then notified the British command and troops were rushed to the rescue, and the Germans were driven off.

German prisoners captured when Miraumont fell said that they had been three days without food. All seemed happy that they were out of the war, especially the Alsatians who had been placed in German regiments.

"If any of us are caught deserting," said an Alsatian prisoner, "his family is punished, and even his female relatives are sent to dig in the front-line and other trenches."

In the course of this British drive forty-two German divisions had suffered heavy losses; 40,000 soldiers and several hundred officers in prisoners alone.

On August 25, 1918, the troops of the Third French Army, fighting in water up to their waists in the marshes along the Avre, captured two of the strongest defenses of Roye. The first attack was made on the village of Fresnoy, two and a half miles to the north of Roye, where the Germans had restored their old fortifications of 1914-17, and had filled the neighborhood with machine-gun nests. After a brief artillery preparation the French stormed the concrete blockhouses and killed the gunners serving their pieces. Fresnoy was a notable stronghold and one of the centers of German resistance around Roye from which they had launched their counterattacks in attempts to check the advance. The Germans had orders to hold the place at any cost, but the French attacking from the north and south simultaneously bore down all resistance. Four hundred prisoners, including sixteen officers, were captured in the town. Another strong outpost of Roye, the village of St. Mard in the marshes of the Avre, was won by General Debeney's men in the afternoon after a violent struggle. The Germans had surrounded their concrete blockhouses with water let in from the Avre and through the floods in the face of intense machine-gun fire the French had to force their way to capture the position.

Roye was now invested from the north, west and south, and the German hold on the place was slowly weakened. North of Soissons, on the far right of the French line, the Germans renewed their efforts against the line from Pont-St. Mard to Juvigny. They were thrown back everywhere, the French making new gains and occupying Domaine Wood.

On the same day, while the French were making progress against heavy odds, British troops were in battle on a thirty-mile front, from the river Scarpe at a point east of Arras to Lihons south of the Somme, crossing the