The Grassier was an important buffer between the Canadians and the defenses of the city proper, and the Germans reached it through tunnels connected with the network of passages and dugouts beneath Lens. Part of the ground about the Grassier was inundated, due to the waterway near by having broken its banks, and this, in conjunction with the great number of machine-gun emplacements on the elevation, made it a particularly difficult position for attack. An advance upon two German colliery positions adjoining the Grassier to the northwest, earlier in the night, also involved stiff hand-to-hand fighting. About the Grassier were numerous shell-shattered buildings, many of which had been strongly fortified by the Germans. The Canadians bombed their way systematically through these defenses, silencing the machine guns and clearing out the defenders. The fighting on August 23 was on the edge of the city proper, rather than in the suburbs. Notwithstanding the tremendous strain upon the Canadians during the previous week, there was no diminution in the strength of their attacks. They worked steadily and methodically, gradually weaving a net about the Germans, who were living miserably in their underground positions within the great coal center. MANY GERMANS CAPTURED In the three days' fighting on the western front from August 21 to 23, the Entente Allies captured 25,000 German prisoners and by September 1 the total for August had reached more than 40,000, according to Major-General Frederick B. Maurice, chief director of the British war intelligence office. This topped the figure of prisoners which the Germans claimed to have taken in a single month on the Russian front, although their total undoubtedly was composed by at least half of mere stragglers from the mutinous and disorganized Russian units. On September 1, 1917, the positions recaptured by the French around Verdun were safely consolidated in their possession, every German effort being thrown back in disorder. The fighting had developed into a big-gun duel, in which the French continued to maintain undoubted mastery, and they were firmly established once more on the left bank of the Meuse, which the Germans had intended to hold at all costs. Thus ended the last hope of the Crown Prince of Germany, who apparently was obsessed with the desire to conquer Verdun, in the neighborhood of which thousands of the flower of the German army found only a burial place, without any laurels of victory. ALLIED GAINS IN THE WEST