It may be said that the scheme of gas attacks has failed, like that other scheme of attacks in great savage onrushes. The result was not what the Gorgon's head had expected, and yet with what accurate calculation the time for these attacks has been selected, always at the most favourable moment. It is well knows that the Germans, past masters of the art of spying, and always informed of everything, never hesitate to choose for their attacks of whatever kind, days of relief, hours when newcomers in the trenches opposite to them are still in the disorder of their arrival. So on the evening on which the last crime was committed six hundred of our men had just taken up their advanced position after a long and tiring march. Suddenly in the midst of a volley of shells which surprised them in their first sleep, they could distinguish, here and there, little cautious sibilant sounds, as if made stealthily by sirens. This was the death-bearing gas which was diffusing itself around them, spreading out its thick, gloomy, grey clouds. At the same time their signal lights suddenly ceased to throw out through that mist more than a little dim illumination. Then distracted, already suffocating, they remembered too late those masks which had been given them, and in which in any case they had no faith. They were awkward in putting them on; some of them, feeling the scorching of their bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse of self-preservation, even yielded to a desire to run, and it was these who were most terribly affected, for, breathing deeply in the effort of running, they inhaled vast quantities of chlorine gas. But another time they will not let themselves be caught in this way, neither these nor any others of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermetically closed, they will station themselves immovably around piles of wood, prepared beforehand, whence sudden flames will arise, neutralising the poisons in the air, and the upshot of it all will be hardly more than an uncomfortable hour, unpleasant while it lasts, but almost always without fatal result. It is true that in those accursed dens which are their laboratories, Germany's learned men, convinced now that the neutral nations will acquiesce in anything, are making every effort to discover worse poisons still for us, but until they have found them, as on so many other occasions, the Gorgon gaze will have missed its mark. So much is certain. We, alas! have as yet found no means of returning them a sufficiently cruel equivalent; we have no defence other than the protective mask, which, however, is being perfected day by day. And, after all, in the eyes of neutral nations, if they still have eyes to see, it is perhaps more dignified to make use of nothing else. At the same time, how very different our position would be if we succeeded in asphyxiating them too, these plunderers, assassins, aggressors, who broke into our country like burglars, and who, despairing of ever