This battle of ours has started with such preparations as to ensure all but that last certainty of success which belongs to the incalculable fortune of war. It is not an exaggeration to say that they began a year ago, when miners began to tunnel under the slopes of Wytschaete and Messines, and laid enormous charges of ammonal, which at a touch on this day should blow up the hill-sides and alter the very geography of France. For a year Sir Herbert Plumer and his staff prepared their plans for this attack, gathered their material, and studied every detail of this business of great destruction. While other armies were fighting in the Somme, and all the world watched their conflict, the Second Army held the salient quietly, always on the defensive, not asking for more trouble than they had. They waited for their own offensive, and trained their own troops for it. A week ago they were ready, with railways, guns, Tanks, every kind of explosive, every kind of weapon which modern science has devised for the killing of men in great masses. A week ago all the guns that had been massing let loose their fire. Night and day for seven days it has continued with growing violence, working up to the supreme heights of fury as dawn broke to-day. For five days at least many Germans were pinned to their tunnels as prisoners of fire. No food reached them; there was no way out through these zones of death. A new regiment which tried to come up last night was broken and shattered. A prisoner says that out of his own company he lost fifty to sixty men before reaching the line. For a long way behind the line our heavy guns laid down belts of shell-fire, and many of the enemy's batteries kept silent. Our gunners smothered his batteries whenever he revealed them to the airmen. Those flying men have been wonderful. A kind of exaltation of spirits took possession of them, and they dared great risks and searched out the enemy's squadrons far over his lines. In five days from June 1 forty-four separate machines were sent crashing down, and this morning, very early, flocks of aeroplanes went out to blind the enemy's eyes and report the progress of battle. In the darkness queer monsters moved up close to our lines, many of them crawling singly over the battlefields under cover of woods and ruins. They were the Tanks, ready to go into action on a great day of war, when their pilots and crews have helped by high courage to victory.