The Battle of Arras is the greatest victory we have yet gained in this war and a staggering blow to the enemy. He has lost already nearly 10,000 prisoners and more than half a hundred guns,[H] and in dead and wounded his losses are great. He is in retreat south of the Vimy Ridge to defensive lines further back, and as he goes our guns are smashing him along the roads. It is a black day for the German armies and for the German women who do not know yet what it means to them. During last night the Canadians gained the last point, called Hill 145, on the Vimy Ridge, where the Germans held out in a pocket with machine guns, and this morning the whole of that high ridge, which dominates the plains to Douai, is in our hands, so that there is removed from our path the great barrier for which the French and ourselves have fought through bloody years. Yesterday, before daylight and afterwards, I saw this ridge of Vimy all on fire with the light of great gunfire. The enemy was there in strength, and his guns were answering ours with a heavy barrage of high explosives. [H] Increased to 19,343 prisoners and 257 guns on 2nd May. This morning the scene was changed as by a miracle. Snow was falling, blown gustily across the battlefields and powdering the capes and helmets of our men as they rode or marched forward to the front. But presently sunlight broke through the storm-clouds and flooded all the countryside by Neuville-St. Vaast and Thélus and La Folie Farm up to the crest of the ridge where the Canadians had just fought their way with such high valour. Our batteries were firing from many hiding-places, revealed by the short, sharp flashes of light, but few answering shells came back, and the ridge itself, patched with snowdrifts, was as quiet as any hill of peace. It was astounding to think that not a single German stayed up there out of all the thousands who had held it yesterday, unless some poor wounded devils still cower in the great tunnels which pierce the hillside. It was almost unbelievable to me, who have known the evil of this high ridge month after month and year after year and the deadly menace which lurked about its lower slopes. Yet I saw proof below, where all the Germans who had been there at dawn yesterday, thousands of them, were down in our lines, drawn up in battalions, marshalling themselves, grinning at the fate which had come to them and spared their lives. [Illustration: THE GREAT EXPLOIT OF E. 11: TORPEDOING AN ENEMY VESSEL OFF CONSTANTINOPLE. _Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_] XI. WARFARE UNDER WATER.[I] BY RUDYARD KIPLING. They bear, in place of classic names, Letters and numbers on their skin. They play their grisly blindfold games In little boxes made of tin. Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin, Sometimes they learn where mines are laid Or where the Baltic ice is thin. That is the custom of “The Trade.”