NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THERE is not very much to record in the way of war news. During the past week in the Western theatre the appalling weather has rendered military movements almost impossible. When chalk downs get first thoroughly soaked with water and are then out up with heavy traffic the result is seas of mud or something a good deal worse. "The finished product" is really more like dirty plaster or low-grade cement than honest mud. In spite, however, of the necessity of floundering in a plaster tank, the irrepressible soldiers of France and Britain have managed to make a good deal of local progress and to suppress many hardly pushed counter-attacks. The French in particular at the southern end of the Somme fighting line have pressed on and taken some seven hundred prisoners and made good their hold on many important gains to the north-east of Chaulnes.
