In following the course of the war in the eastern provinces up to this point we have seen first of all how the tide of it ebbed and flowed for five weeks along the line of the frontier, that is to say, the river Seille and the range of the Vosges. Broadly speaking, the net result of this five weeks of fighting was that on the left or northern section of the line, from a point a little east of Nomeny nearly as far as the Donon, the French had pushed the enemy back to the frontier; that in the centre from near the Donon to about Ste. Marie aux Mines, half way along the Vosges, the Germans still held a footing in France in the Department of the Vosges; but that on the right of the line the French were a little way across the frontier in Southern Alsace. We have seen, secondly, that behind this first line there was another, roughly parallel to it, running from Pont-à-Mousson past Dombasle and Gerbéviller and then on to St. Dié in the direction of the channels of the Moselle, the Meurthe, and the Mortagne, along which the Battle of the Grand Couronné was fought. Beyond this second line there was, and is, a third, which stretches from Verdun along the valley of the Meuse to Toul, from which it is continued to Epinal and Belfort—the line or barrier of the great frontier fortresses. The whole of the war so far on the part of the invaders has been a sustained and desperate attempt to get near enough to this wall—against which the French had their backs—to batter it down. On their left, on the Belfort-Epinal section, they had failed, in a military sense, to get anywhere near it. In the centre, from Epinal to Toul, they had equally failed, thanks to the resistance of Dubail and de Castelnau, to come within striking distance. On the right, from Toul to Verdun, they had for the third time failed, in so far that neither Toul, which was protected by the armies in front of Nancy, nor Verdun, which was defended twelve miles in advance by the Third Army under General Sarrail, had ever fired more than an occasional shot at the enemy even from any of their outlying forts.