The Fourth Canadian battalion at one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment--not more--it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward (for, indeed they loved him), as if to avenge his death. The astonishing attack which followed--pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live forever in the memories of soldiers--was carried to the front line of the German trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was bayoneted, and the trench was won. [Illustration: © _Underwood and Underwood._ A FIGHT IN A CLOUD OF GAS The Germans had sent over gas and in this spot it lingered. Then the infantry advanced and here, amid the British wire entanglements, the foes meet. Both sides in gas masks, they struggle amid the poisonous vapor, and when the bayonet fails they fight, like the pair in the foreground, to bring death by tearing away their opponent’s mask.] The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach which the enemy had made in the original line of the Allies, and that it was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men who looked death indifferently in the face (for no man who took part in it could think that he was likely to live) saved, and that was much, the Canadian left. But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants conquered, or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not only taken, it was held thereafter against all comers, and in the teeth of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th, when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalion was relieved by fresh troops. CHAPTER III MURDERS AND MARTYRS Many examples might be cited to show that the Central empires were dead to the humanities. There were apparently no limits to the brutality of the German war-makers. Among the outstanding deeds of the Teutons that sickened the world was the killing of Miss Edith Cavell, an English nurse working in Belgian hospitals. A shudder of horror circled the world when announcement was formally made that this splendid woman was sentenced to death and murdered by a German firing squad at two o’clock on the morning of October 12, 1915. The killing of this gentle-natured, brave woman typified to the world Germany’s essentially brutal militarism. It placed the German military command in a niche of dishonor unique in all history.