“Death, which stalks across Belgium, France, Alsace, has its special quarters, its craters which are always boiling over, to burst out every now and then and vomit blood and fire. The Yser canal, Souchez and Vimy, Berry-au-Bac, Tahure, the hills of Champagne, the Argonne, the heights of Vauquois, which have swallowed up thousands and thousands of men, Bois le Prêtre and Hartmannsweilerkopf—all these places and others still are the craters which boil without ceasing. All of a sudden the air shrieks and shells arrive in swarms. Like heavy hammers in a smithy for hours at a time they hammer violently on the trenches and reduce everything to fire and blood. [Illustration: FRENCH ATTACK FROM CEMETERY OF REHAINVILLER NEAR LUNÉVILLE. _From “En Plein Feu.” By kind permission of M. Vermot, Rue Duguay-Trouin, Paris._ ] “An attack. The trench is turned inside out and left defenceless. The enemy comes. The air shrieks again as our shells soar off towards the enemy, leaving behind them a curtain of smoke, gases, and scraps of iron which cover the lost trench. No one can cross that zone. “It is impossible for the enemy to bring up reinforcements. A counter-attack. The reserves advance, the enemy falls exhausted, and the trench is ours again. It is always the same thing, always as savage and always as heroic. France is besieged, and she keeps trying and trying to burst the girdle that surrounds her. The insignificant breach that her shells have made is closed again at once. It was like this in the month of May and in June on the heights of Lorette. This is just what happened, too, in September near Loos and Vimy and in Champagne. The French launched asphyxiating gases and bombs and millions and millions of shells against the ramparts of their besiegers, but it was in vain. Her regiments, though they were heroic and daring, broke themselves up without gaining any success. Our rampart resisted. Joffre and French, who had tried everything, recognized the impossibility of destroying this rampart, and retired despairing and worn out from the theatre of the war. Will Castelnau be able to discover the secret which Joffre and French have not been able to discover?... “Telephones, automobiles, railways, long-range guns, and incalculable supplies of munitions have completely changed the methods of attack and defence. This war is less a war of men against men and courage against courage than a war between two industries. It is iron-mines, coal, chemical factories, huge furnaces, that conduct the war, and also the brains of inventors and manufacturers. The soldier of to-day is a courageous and intelligent machine who, with the life that he risks, works for this giant industry of the nations. Newer and more ingenious methods would be needed to destroy these dreadful engines. The enemy have not discovered them so far....