In the southern section the slope is easier on the French side and more abrupt on the east, and besides the Col de Schlucht the chief pass is the Col de Bussang. The summit and eastern slopes of the range command, of course, an uninterrupted view across the plain to the Rhine, about fifteen miles from the foothills. Strassburg is a little lower down the Rhine than the level of the Donon. Colmar lies about the centre of the plain, midway between the level of the Col du Bonhomme and the Col de Schlucht, and nearly all the towns which have so far played a part in the war are in or on a level with the third section—Munster, Guebweiler, Soulty, St. Amarin, and Thann in the Vosges valleys between the Schlucht and the Ballon d’Alsace, and the rest—Cernay, Dannemarie, Altkirch, Mulhouse, and Pfetterhausen—south of the Ballon in the plain opposite to the Trouée of Belfort, which is called the Sundgau. It was intended that the French offensive should be carried out along the whole of this frontier line south of Metz, but especially in the plains north and east of the Vosges. The Belfort army was to advance into Alsace, occupy Mulhouse, cut the bridges of the Rhine below Basle (at Huningue, Neuenburg, and Vieux Brisach) and flank the main advance of the first and second armies in Lorraine. In spite of their various acts of trespass on French territory before the declaration of war, the Germans at first showed little activity. Beyond the abortive attempt to recapture Montreux-Vieux, in the Belfort district, practically all they did was to shell and occupy Blamont, Cirey, Badonviller, and Baccarat, four small towns close to the frontier and almost midway between the Donon and Lunéville, on August 5th, 6th, and 8th, and to bombard Pont-à-Mousson, an unfortunate town on the Moselle fifteen miles below Nancy and the same distance above Metz, which since then has been shelled more than two hundred times, but, except for one short period, has always remained in the hands of the French. Our Allies were much more energetic, and the advance in Lorraine, the Vosges, and Alsace was begun with wonderfully little delay. Of these three theatres of war in the east the third, the country between Strassburg and the Swiss frontier, cut off from the rest of Germany by the Rhine and the Black Forest, is strategically of great importance. Its western boundary, the chain of the Vosges, is the pivot of the long line of the French defence stretching from Dunkerque to Belfort, and on its stability depends the security of the whole of the rest of the front. In order to make that stability absolutely sure the French had to hold, besides the chain itself, at least a part of the plain of Alsace, including especially its natural bastion, the Sundgau. [Illustration: ALSACE AND THE VOSGES. (By kind permission of _The Times_.) ]