about half the wood was in the hands of the Allies, but it was an inconclusive and very expensive day. The battle of Villers-Bretonneux was a very important engagement, as it clearly defined the _ne plus ultra_ of the German advance in the Somme valley, and marked a stable equilibrium which was soon to turn into an eastward movement. It was in itself a most interesting fight, as the numbers were not very unequal. The Germans had five divisions engaged, the Fourth Guards, Two hundred and twenty-eighth, Two hundred and forty-third, Seventy-seventh Reserve, and Two hundred and eighth. The British had the Eighth, Fifty-eighth, Eighteenth, and Fifth Australian, all of them very worn, but the Germans may also have been below strength. The tanks were equally divided. The result was not a decided success for any one, since the line ended much as it had begun, but it showed the Germans that, putting out all their effort, they could get no {221} farther. How desperate was the fight may be judged by the losses which, apart from the Australians, amounted to more than 9000 men in the three British divisions, the Fifty-eighth and Eighth being the chief sufferers. As this was the first occasion upon which the Germans seem to have brought their tanks into the line of battle, some remarks as to the progress of this British innovation may not be out of place--the more so as it became more and more one of the deciding factors in the war. On this particular date the German tanks were found to be slow and cumbrous, but were heavily armed and seemed to possess novel features, as one of them advanced in the original attack upon April 24 squirting out jets of lachrymatory gas on each side. The result of the fighting next day was that two weak (female) British tanks were knocked out by the Germans while one German tank was destroyed and three scattered by a male British tank. The swift British whippet tanks were used for the first time upon April 24, and seem to have acted much like Boadicea's chariots, cutting a swathe in the enemy ranks and returning crimson with blood.