14 APRIL 1917, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

EASTER, 1917, will be remembered as long as the English- speaking race lasts, for a signal victory, and one in which the forces of the Empire played a great and historic part. We have described in our leading columns the taking of the Vimy Ridge, and noted other events connected with the battle of Arras, but in truth not one issue of a newspaper but a volume is wanted to do justice to the vastness and the splendour of Easter Monday's encounter, or rather hundreds of encounters. Think of what advancing on a twelve-mile front means when that front is the front of a fortress framed to meet the exigencies of war as almost no fortress had ever been framed before. In old days when an assault was intended on a city the attack was concentrated upon a couple of hundred yards of glacier The breach to be carried was often not as broad as Picca- dilly. Now the breach, which very often is in reality no breach, is twelve miles broad, and the men and officers on one flank not only have no idea of what the other flank is doing, but do not know what is being done in the centre.