There was a broad belt of death across that mile deep of woods and ridges and barren fields, but here and there, as I have already told, men stayed alive in the concrete houses and fought with their machine-guns to the last, and even kept sniping from shell-holes in which they had escaped, up to the time our troops reached them. They were brave men, most of them, for it needs great courage to show any fighting spirit after such a fury of gun-fire, and 50 per cent. of our prisoners are wounded, as I have seen myself, and the others are haggard and spent after their frightful adventure. An hour or two ago I met a column of them on the road, marching down slowly through a ruined village, and staring hollow-eyed at all the movement of our troops, at all the transport behind our lines, at all our whistling, busy Tommies, who glance back at them without any malice now that the battle is over. In a dressing-station a young wounded German sprang to his feet as I came in, and said, "Good day, sir," very politely, but the pallor of his face was that of a dead man. The German officers who are prisoners show the same kind of eagerness to salute, which is a rare thing for them, and I hear that they do not disguise that yesterday was a day of great defeat for themselves, and of great victory for us. The completeness and quickness of it staggered them, and they speak of our barrage-fire as an awful phenomenon that has undone all their plans and destroyed the new method of defence which they believed could save them to the end. As wounded men or prisoners they see things darkly, and we should be deep in folly if we believed that all the enemy's strength of resistance is destroyed. But at least this is clear after yesterday, that the new German method of holding his lines lightly by small garrisons in blockhouses, with reserves behind for counter-attacks, has broken down, and by reverting to the old system of strong front lines he would suffer again as he suffered in the Somme under the ferocity of our artillery.