* * * * * And now I must write again about the Canadians, whose attack towards Lens I watched the other day among our guns. That story is not yet finished, and has been going on ever since that morning when the Canadians took Hill 70 and the cités of St.-Emile and St.-Laurent, working forward towards the heart of Lens. It is clear that the enemy's command issued orders for Hill 70 and the other ground to be retaken at all costs. There have been no fewer than thirteen counter-attacks against the Canadian troops, and men of the 4th Guards Division, and later of the 220th Regiment, have come forward in wave after wave and hurled themselves with desperate courage against the Canadian defence. Time after time they have been seen assembling by our flying men and observers, and time after time their ranks have been shattered by our guns. To the north of Lens there is a chalk quarry, which was not gained by the Canadians in their first attack, so that they established their line on the west side of it, and it was against this line that repeated efforts were made. Each attempt was smashed up, and then the Canadians advanced into the quarry and captured ninety men of many units and twenty machine-guns. The prisoners complain that their officers had lost their heads, and had been utterly demoralized. After violent attacks on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the enemy made a great effort with every weapon of frightfulness on Friday evening, using poison-gas and flame-jets and a hurricane of high explosives in order to drive the Canadians off Hill 70. It failed with great losses to themselves when the German infantry attacked, and the attacks yesterday have had no greater success. The Canadians claim that the enemy's losses must be at least three times as great as their own. There were moments when the Canadians were hard pressed, and one of them was when a battalion commander was warned that the Germans were behind him. "I'm all right," he said cheerily, and then suddenly he said, "Good Lord, so they are." He was not heard from again for two hours and a half, and in that time he had organized his clerks and batmen and signallers and driven out a party of Germans who had worked out round No Man's Land and thrust a wedge behind him. The fighting has been savage and fierce, and the Canadians have used the bayonet at close quarters and fought hand to hand in the dark cellars of the mining cités. This phase of the war is as bloody as anything that has been done in the history of human strife. XI THE IRISH IN THE SWAMPS AUGUST 21