Brilliant British recovery

Wait a few days

Optimistic French prediction

How many are there who realise the nature of the fighting that has been going on to either the north of the east of France?

We get official communiques but there are few who possess the imagination or concentration to endow these skeletons with the flesh.

And yet what a pregnant passage that was in the Paris report, which said in the region of St Mihel we seized the first houses in the village of Chauvoncourt.

Imagine a progress that is counted by houses and imagine the ferocity of the fighting that these conditions suggest.

There is something grim and grisly in the reticence which leaves us without information as to the fate of the French troops who, one would imagine, were occupying the western part of Chauvoncourt which had been mined.

The press of both England and France has protested again and again at the lack of news and the way in which the information we do get is doled out.

The patience of the public will not last for ever.

At the same time we know enough of the situation generally to dispel the misgivings which at one time were entertained.

The Germans are beaten in the west and every day that passes now which does not secure an advantage for them is a way to the bad.

Mr Edgar Wallace, one of the best informed of the military correspondents, declared that the deciding factor is going to be Kitchener’s army.

Recruits will be the decider

Every man who enlists now is going to knock five minutes off the duration of the war.

If we do not get the men we want we cannot carry out the operations which are necessary to shorten the war.

It is only by every able-bodied young man making a sacrifice now that we can secure for the unborn generations the years of peace that so far our gallant men have died to secure.

Yesterday’s news was on the whole good and a press bureau message told us once again that the British are very capable.

According to custom, the violent cannonade to which the allies’ lines were subjected was duly followed by a heavy attack, the brunt of which was borne by the British.

Two battalions of the third division were shelled out of their trenches but they reconvened their position after a brilliant counter attack, the effect of which was to drive the Germans back 300 yards.

An attack on the brigade of the second division was repulsed with a heavy loss to the enemy.

Meanwhile the cannonade proceeded ceaselessly along the northern front.

It is claimed that the Germans will now be driven entirely out of France and Christmas will be celebrated with joy by the allies and especially by Russia.