And the New Armies?--"Kitchener's Men"? "Whatever we have imagined of our New Armies," says an eye-witness of the first day's battle, "they are better than we can have ever dared to hope. Nothing has in any case stopped them, except being killed." And a neutral who saw the attack on Mametz told the same eye-witness that he had seen most of the fighting in the world in recent years, and that he "did not believe a more gallant feat was ever performed in war." The story of the British advance was written "in the dead upon the ground, and in the positions as they stand." "Nothing which the Japanese did in the Russian War" was more entirely heroic. But let me carry on the story. On Tuesday, July 11th, Sir Douglas Haig reported: "After ten days and nights of continuous fighting our troops have completed the methodical capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of 14,000 yards. "This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of foretrenches, support trenches and reserve trenches, extending to various depths of from 2,000 to 4,000 yards, and included five strongly fortified villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a large number of immensely strong redoubts." The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and Contalmaison--the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly fierce fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the German defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and hollow, have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the character of the ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing "that could protect him against such a day as this." Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British advance goes forward--toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press brilliantly on toward Peronne--both movements aimed at the vital German communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered with the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and gaunt trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and below the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have not only sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the machine-guns, which often when our men have passed over, emerge and take them in the rear. The German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are skilfully concealed, and worked with the utmost ability and courage.