On the night of August 29, when darkness fell the Australian engineers busied themselves throwing bridges across the Somme canal, south of Peronne, and some of these bridges, broken and battered, are to be seen there yet. Working hard in the gloom, despite the continuous rifle and machine gun fire of the enemy, the engineers completed their task, and in the morning of the 30th patrols essayed to cross the canal and advance through the marshes towards Peronne. No practicable path could be found across the swampy morass; the enemy kept up a stubborn resistance and the Diggers had to desist from attempting further headway at the moment. Meanwhile, fighting was proceeding elsewhere, and at every point the Australians were making gradual headway towards the ancient town. In the forenoon of August 30 the Omiecourt peninsula east of the village of Clery had been cleared and a bridge head held by the Germans was taken. This opening a route to the town, it was decided to advance in this direction and lay siege to Mont St. Quentin, attacking it from the north and west instead of the south. By three o'clock in the afternoon the Australians came into contact with the German advanced positions and fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place and continued far into the night. Every inch of the ground was disputed, every path, every gully and bank became the scene of desperate fighting. Brave men went forth to meet death calmly and proudly, doing their duty with the consciousness of Right to sustain them, enduring all the risks of the night with a grim fortitude and bearing all its discomforts as if they loved war solely for its own sake. But it is too much to say that the men love war. No man of normal pattern loves war as it is fought here, hip deep in slush all through the day and night in an atmosphere suffocating and gaseous. If a man loves war, he is no more to be complimented on fighting than a man who loves a good dish is to be complimented on eating. But one thing is true. The Australians, certain of the cause for which they are fighting, are keen on keeping at it until a successful finish is reached, knowing that the German method of warfare, waged with all its attendant despotism and tyranny, has for its aim, not alone the breaking of the Allies, but the shattering of the moral frontier of civilization. The Australians are out, not so much to make war for its own sake as to wage it for something that is straight and clean. And never was this purpose made more manifest than at the taking of Mont St. Quentin.