I saw the whole picture of this fighting to-day, and all the spirit and drama of it. It was a wonderful scene, not without terror, and our men passed through it alert and watchful to the menace about them. Going out beyond Arras through suburbs which were in German hands until Monday last--they had scribbled their names and regiments on broken walls of strafed houses, and men of English battalions who captured them had scrawled their own names above these other signatures--I came to the German barbed wire which had protected the enemy's lines, and then into three systems of trenches which had been the objectives of our men on the morning when the battle of Arras began. Here was Hangest Trench, in which the enemy had made his chief resistance, and Holt Redoubt and Horn Redoubt, where his machine-guns had checked us, and a high point on the road to Tilloy, to which a Tank had crawled after a lone journey out of Arras to sweep this place with machine-gun fire, so that our men could get on to the village. It is no wonder that the Germans lost this ground, and that those who remained alive in their dug-outs surrendered quickly, as soon as our men were about them. The effect of our bombardment was ghastly. It had ploughed all this country with great shell-craters, torn fields of barbed wire to a few tattered strands, and smashed in all the trenches to shapeless ditches. Tilloy still had parts of houses standing, bits of white wall having no relation to the wild rubbish-heaps around. The Germans had torn up the rails to make barricades, and had used farm carts, ploughs, and brick-heaps as cover. But they could have given no protection when the sky rained fire and thunderbolts. Dead bodies lay about in every shape and shapelessness of death. I passed into Devil's Wood--well named, because here there had been hellish torture of men--and so on to Observatory Ridge and ground from which, not far away, I looked into Monchy and across the battlefields where our men were fighting then. The enemy was firing heavy shells. They fell thick about Monchy village and on the other side of the Cambrai road, roaring horribly as they came and flinging up volumes of black earth and mud. The enemy's gunners were scattering other shells about, but in an aimless way, so that they found no real target, though they were frightening, especially when some of these crumps spattered one with mud. Flights of British aeroplanes were on the wing, and German aeroplanes tried to fight their way over our lines. I saw several with the swish of machine-gun bullets and the high whining shells of British "Archies" about them. I have never before seen so great a conflict in the skies. It was a battle up there, and as far as I could see we gained a mastery over the enemy's machines, though some of them were very bold.