3 NOVEMBER 1917, Page 13

The French completed their great victory of last week on

the Aisne front by pushing the enemy across the Oise-Aisne Canal. They captured during the five days of their offensive no fewer than 11,157 prisoners and 180 guns. The French are now in the valley beyond the western half of the Chemin dos Dames ridge, and have begun to drive the enemy from the slopes of the eastern half, to which he still clings. The bitterly contested Froidmont Farm was taken on Saturday last, and the other poeitions, which can now be enfiladed from the west and attacked from the south, are doomed. Thus the southern arm of the great German salient in Franco has lost its strongest natural defences. The Hindenburg line is cracking north of Soissons as well as in Flanders.