The news from Verdun is also superficially disappointing, yet fundamentally
good. Last Sunday began a new battle, or rather a new chapter in the three months' struggle which promises to be the most desperate and most bloody of them all. The Verdun battle is of course as a rule an artillery battle, one of big guns against big guns, but this ding-dong of huge shells is occasionally varied by infantry eruptions. The latest news shows that in the last day or two one of the greatest of these infantry eruptions on the part of the Germans has taken place. On both banks of the Meuse bom- bardments of unusual violence have been followed by infantry attacks in which huge swarms of German foot soldiers have rushed to the attack, indifferent, or apparently indifferent, to the storms of shrapnel, of high explosives, and of machine-gun fire to which they have exposed themselves. They have been mown down in heaps. But in spite of that they have gained ground. No doubt the fury of the French counter-attacks has in most cases prevailed to hurl them back, but both in the region of Mort Homme and Douaumont the balance of gain has been in favour of the Germans throughout the sixteen miles of front which constitute tho theatre of battle.
