A French official statement issued from the Grand Headquarters five days later contained this passage:

One hundred and twelve divisions (1,344,000 troops at 12,000 men to a division) occupy the German front line facing the French, British, American, and Belgian troops, while their immediate reserves total sixty-three divisions, (756,000 men, or 2,100,000 in all.) *** At any rate, it is agreed by the authorities here that the greatest possible number the Germans could add to their forces on the western front does not exceed twenty divisions, which would bring the total to 195 divisions, (2,340,000 men.)

UNENDING TRENCH RAIDS

Most of the movements on the western front during the last thirty days come within the category known as reconnoissance-even those on the American sector and in the air over the German depots in the neighborhood of the Rhine. Exceptions to the general character of the actions have been heavy German bombardments followed by raids, which were for a short time successful on the French positions east of Nieuport, and turned to nought in Champagne and at Verdun, and the taking over by the British of the French sector enveloping the southwestern suburbs of St. Quentin, on Jan. 26. Yet, day after day the French have reported with frequency, suggestive, when paralleled with the vivid accounts from the fronts of Crown Prince Rupprecht, the Imperial Crown Prince, and the Grand Duke Albrecht: "A notre aile gauche, rien de nouveau." Yet all the time the unending struggle has gone on, positions being taken, lost, and retaken, while the eyes of the air have sought to penetrate the secrets of the earth.

On Jan. 17, what promised to be an important series of German raids west of the Oise were repulsed by the French. A week later the Germans, preceded by bombardment, made a spirited attack on the sector of Hill 344, and the front of Chaume Wood, (Verdun front,) only to meet with the same result. On the 25th it was the British who received the attention of the enemy by cannon and infantry attack between the Lys and Poelcappelle, near the coal pits of Lens, and on both sides of the Scarpe. On the 27th

the British repulsed an incipient assault on their line south of Lens. And so the first month of the year ended.

RAIDING PARTIES REPULSED On Feb. 3 a French detachment captured a German post of thirty men on the Aisne front, while the British east of Polygon Wood, on the Ypres sector, drove back a hostile raiding party. From the 5th to the 6th the Germans, taking advantage of the fine weather, carried on a brisk bombardment from Passchendaele, on the Ypres sector, south into the Cambrai area. Simultaneously they were active east of the Meuse, in the region of Fosses Wood.

For the last fortnight the French and British seem to have had the upper hand as raiders. On the 9th the former in a raid on a post near Dioncourt bagged another garrison of thirty. On the 12th 250 fell into their hands west of Remenauville in the Woevre, and the next day they captured 100 southwest of Butte Mesnil in Champagne. On the 11th the British captured 28 southeast of Messines.

Altogether between Feb. 2 and the 9th the Imperial Crown Prince suffered seven defeats with relative heavy losses on the Verdun sector-still his cherished abattoir. Large bodies of troops were employed in every instance, yet not a single permanent advantage was gained.

The costliness of these combats of attrition cannot be judged by the bulletins announcing them, for in the week ended Jan. 21 the British casualties amounted to 17,043; Jan. 28, 8,588; Feb. 4, 6,354; Feb. 11, 7,077. In the last there were 1,433 deaths; the rest were either wounded or taken prisoners.

THE AMERICAN SECTOR

Early in October the American troops, who had been gradually concentrating in camps south of Toul and Nancy since July, began to supplement the French 47th Division on a sector lying across the Marne-Rhine Canal. This was the "quiet sector on the French front," where it was officially announced by Washington on Oct. 27 that our troops had begun the trench stage of their intensive training, and here, according to a Berlin dispatch less than a week later,

some "North American troops "9 were captured in a raid. Although raids and counter-raids, and artillery duels succeeded across No Man's Land on this sector, with casualties on both sides, it does not appear that the front was ever taken over in force by our troops, but was rather employed as a school under French tuition.

Early in January, however, it was learned that American regiments with artillery were actually taking the place of French troops on the southern slopes of the plain of the Woevre. This fact was simultaneously confirmed from Washington and Berlin on Jan. 31, when accounts were given out describing a German raid against the first-line trenches here on the preceding day, in which the Americans had suffered seven casualties-two killed, four wounded, and one missing-and the Germans had covered theirs by taking them away.

The bulletins of the French War Office gave the limits of this positionthe French were holding Fliry and Remenauville on the east and Apremont on the west, and between were the Americans, who, according to deductions made from the localities where subsequent fighting has taken place, cover an eightmile front.

This eight-mile sector occupies the middle of the line St. Mihiel-Pont-àMousson, which is the southern leg of the St. Mihiel salient established by the army from Metz in the last fortnight of September, 1914, when it attempted to pierce the French line of barrier forts, Verdun-Toul, and cross the Meuse. The angle of the salient incloses that part of the Meuse-Moselle watershed called, as has been said, the plain of the Woevre, flanked on the west by the forts of Verdun and on the east by those of Metz, lying in the bowl of the Moselle, within cannon shot of the French positions on the heights just below Pont-à-Mousson.

HISTORY OF THE SALIENT

The history of this salient is interesting. Away back in the Summer of 1912 a German company obtained a concession to establish a manufacturing plant on a piece of property near St. Mihiel. Unusually deep cellars were dug and con

creted, but the buildings erected over them were of the flimsiest sort. The plant was soon abandoned and all entrances boarded up. Thus when the Army of Metz reached this site on Sept. 23 they found concrete emplacements already prepared for their seventeen-inch howitzers, and by them the Germans were enabled to reduce the French fort at the Roman Camp, as well as other redoubts within a seven-mile range, and to establish a bridgehead across the Meuse, which they have maintained ever since.

To strengthen this position they built a railway in March, 1915, from Thiaucourt down to St. Mihiel. In the following April the French attempted to get possession of this railway, but in vain. Little change took place on the sector facing the railway until Jan. 9 of the present year, when the French troops, soon to be replaced by American, as a parting gift to the Germans made a drive north of Seicheprey, destroying some enemy defenses recently erected and capturing prisoners. Under cover of this assault, it may be presumed, the Americans moved up to the front.

A description of the American front and what occurred there up to Feb. 18 is given on Page 423 of this issue. The nature of the terrain is graphically indicated in the full-page map herewith presented.

ON THE ITALIAN FRONT When the snows came, in the last fortnight of December, blocking the Teuton lines of communication extending along the upper Piave-together with the railway leading down the same course from Belluno to their newly established depot at Feltre and thence to where their line crossed the river, north of Pederobbaand seriously interfering with their transportation by the two highways and one railway which lead from Trent, via the Val Sugana, down the Brenta, two gates still threatened the Plains of Veneto. In the west, there was that formed by the angle of the Brenta and the Frenzela Torrent, just above Valstagna on the road to Bassano; in the east, there was the Monte Tomba salient, extending to the enemy bridgehead on the Piave.

One was the complement of the other.