In June General Foch's Tenth Army launched its Artois attack against the great ridge of "Notre Dame de Lorette" which commands the Lens country from the South as the high ground of Loos does from the North. A hundred thousand Frenchmen perished for Notre Dame and it is henceforth a place of pilgrimage for France. The battle was the prelude to our battle of Loos and whilst the great new British army in reserve drilled and marched away to the North, it heard each night the drum-fire of the 75's rolling from the South. Later in the war when the British took over all the line 'twixt Lens and Arras the Canadians took Foch's victory a step further and captured Vimy Ridge. What Foch did in the summer of '15 was however to be eclipsed by what the combined armies should do in the autumn. Reliance was placed chiefly on the new man-power. The earlier battles of Neuve Chapelle and Festubert had been tests of the relationship of gun-power and man-power. Opinion inclined to support the theory that a superiority in numbers was the most telling factor in a battle. This seemingly was disproved, and the next theory was that in order to obtain victory there must be overwhelming superiority both in guns and in men. The Somme battle proved that even these were not enough. In the battle of Loos however all the interest was centred on men, men personally. The new base was St. Omer, the picturesque ecclesiastical town with its castellated church towers in relief against the sky--all so thronged with khaki--henceforth till the war ends to be a great war centre. France lies in a bower beyond, and there are squads of poplar trees on hills, and green and happy meadows never scarred by shells or wilted by gas. On the left on the road out to Wizernes is now a large cemetery, and here lie French dead with the tricolour upon them, British with an infinity of flowers and wreaths, Americans with grim and tall white crosses--American dead who will not be exhumed perhaps. Behind the American graves stand wedges of unpainted wood--a Chinese plot where lie what was mortal of many unknown coolies. On the right lie Germans, on the left _soldados_ of Portugal. This is called playfully the souvenir cemetery--there are so many of the dead they can be thus arranged, as children might arrange their toys. St. Omer was known as a great base hospital to which alas, so many were called to look their last upon their dying children, dying sons of England breathing out their last words before their bodies were laid away. There are those who are fond of saying that everything began at St. Omer. But for many also it was the place where it all--_ended_.