During this period, the Germans, making desperate efforts extending over weeks of time, did their utmost to break through the French line at Verdun and exhaust the French reserves. To offset these objects, a fourth British army was assembled, which took over still more of the French line, while a series of British attacks, intended to pin down the German reserves all along the line, was inaugurated. One of these developed into a fight for the craters--a terrible struggle at St. Eloi, where, blasted from their muddy ditches, with rifles and machine guns choked with mud and water; with communications lost and lack of artillery support, the men of the Second Canadian Division fought gamely from April 6th to April 20th, but were forced to yield the craters and part of their front-line system to the enemy. Notwithstanding this the men of the Second Canadian Division at St. Eloi fought quite as nobly as had their brothers of the First Division just a year before, at the glorious battle of Ypres, a few miles farther north. But it was a bitter experience. The lesson of failure is as necessary in the education of a nation as that of success. On June 2d and 3d, the Third Canadian Division, which then occupied part of the line in the Ypres salient, including Hooge and Sanctuary Wood, was smothered by an artillery bombardment unprecedented in length and intensity. Trenches melted into irregular heaps of splintered wood, broken sand bags and mangled bodies. Fighting gallantly the men of this division fell in large numbers, where they stood. The best infantry in the world is powerless against avalanches of shells projected from greatly superior numbers of guns. The Canadian trenches were obliterated, not captured. By this time Britain had thoroughly learned her lesson, and now countless shells and guns were pouring into France from Great Britain where thousands of factories, new and old, toiled night and day, under the inspiring energy of Mr. Lloyd George. On June 13th, in a terrific counter-attack, the Canadians in turn blasted the Huns from the trenches taken from them a few days before. The First Canadian Division recaptured and consolidated all the ground and trench systems that had been lost. Thus ended the second year of Canadian military operations in the Ypres salient. Each of the three Canadian divisions had been tried by fire in that terrible region, from which, it was said, no man ever returned the same as he entered it. Beneath its torn and rifted surface, thousands of Canadians lie, mute testimony to the fact that love of liberty is still one of the most powerful, yet most intangible, things that man is swayed by.