As they came marching up the roads to the front they were like a streaming river of blue--blue helmets and coats and blue carts and blue lorries, all blending into one tone through these April mists as they went winding over the countryside and through French market towns, where their own people waved to them, and then through the villages on the edge of the Flanders battlefields, where they waited to go into action under shell-broken walls or under hedges above which British shellfire traveled, or in fields where they made their bivouacs, and fragrant steams arose to one's nostrils as cuistots lifted the lids of stewpans and hungry men gathered around after a long march. The attack this morning from Robecq, below St. Venant, down to Givenchy, is a serious effort to gain La Bassée Canal and form a strong defensive flank for the enemy while he proceeds with his battles further north and also to get more elbow room from the salient in which he is narrowly wedged below Merville. For this purpose he brought up several more divisions, including the 239th, which was in the Somme fighting of March, but not heavily engaged. This one attacked the British at Robecq and was repulsed with heavy losses. It was at a place called La Bacquerolles Farm, near Robecq, where after heavy shelling last night the enemy rushed one of the outposts at 10 o'clock. In order to facilitate the attack this morning of German divisions north and south at 4 o'clock the German guns began a heavy bombardment of the British lines as far down as Givenchy and maintained it for five hours, using large numbers of gas shells, on account of the east wind, which was in their favor. His guns shelled the bridges across the canal in the hope of preventing the British supports going up. Then his troops came forward in waves on a wide front. They were in immense numbers as usual, with many mixed battalions. One of the British units today took prisoners from ten different regiments. There were some ten German divisions facing four British ones north of Béthune, and all along the line the troops were much outnumbered; nevertheless, the enemy was repulsed at all but a few points of attack and beaten back bloodily. THE GHASTLY LOSSES In this battle one regiment of the 42d German Division has lost over 50 per cent. of its strength, and other losses are on a similar scale. These ghastly casualties have been piling up along this line between Merville and Béthune since the 13th of this month, when the Germans made a series of small attacks as a prelude to today's battle, owing, it seems, to battalion officers taking the initiative without orders from the High Command, in order to push forward and break the British lines if they could find weakness there.