To the south of Lens there is a slag-heap overgrown with weeds called the Green Crassier. It is clearly visible across the Souchez river beyond a broken bridge, and I have often seen it from the lower slopes of Vimy. It was the scene of fierce fighting yesterday, for in the morning the Canadians, who are showing an indomitable spirit after ten days of most furious attacks and counter-attacks, launched an assault upon it and seized the position. Later in the day the enemy came back in strength and, after violent efforts, succeeded in thrusting the Canadians off the crest of this old mound of cinders, though they still cling to the western side. It is another incident in the long series of fierce and bloody encounters which since the battle of Vimy, on April 9, have surrounded the city of Lens and given to its streets and suburbs a sinister but historic fame. The Canadians have fought here with astounding resolution. They have hurled themselves against fortress positions, and by sheer courage have smashed their way through streets entangled with quick-set hedges of steel, through houses alive with machine-gun fire, through trenches dug between concrete forts, through tunnels under red-brick ruins, sometimes too strong to be touched by shell-fire, and through walls loopholed for rifle-fire and hiding machine-gun emplacements designed to enfilade the Canadian line of advance. Through the cités of St.-Laurent, St.-Théodore, and St.-Emilie, to the north and west of Lens, they have fought past high slag-heaps and pit-heads, along railway embankments, and down sunken roads, until they have broken a route through frightful defences to the western streets of the inner city. Every day, and sometimes many times a day, they have been counter-attacked by swarms of Germans coming up out of their tunnels, and between these attacks they have been under terrific gun-fire from a wide semicircle of heavy batteries. In the early days of the war the French fought like this through the streets of Vermelles, smashing their way from one wall to another, from one house to another, and over trenches dug across the streets. That fighting in Vermelles stands as one of the most frightful episodes of the war, and when I first went there I stood aghast at the relics of this bloody struggle. But Vermelles is hardly more than a village, and the mining district of Lens, with all its suburbs, covers several square miles of ground, so that the Canadians have had a longer and a harder task. Six German divisions have attacked them in turn, and have been shattered against them. These are the 7th and 8th, the 4th Guards Division, the 11th Reserve, the 220th, and the 1st Guards Reserve Division. In addition to these six divisions, some portions, at any rate, of the 185th Division and of the 36th Reserve Division have been engaged. The total German strength used at Lens must well exceed fifty battalions, and the German losses may perhaps be estimated at between 12,000 to 15,000 men.