tired workers of the coal-mining districts. Then the war-blast at its
fiercest passed over it. To-day in its renewed solitude, its sacred
peace, it represents one of the master points of the war, bought and
held by a sacrifice of life and youth, the thought of which holds one's
heart in grip, as one stands there, trying to gather in the meaning of
the scene. Not one short year ago it was in the very centre of the
struggle. If Arras and Vimy had not held, things would have been grave
indeed. Had they been captured, says the official report of the Third
Army, "our main lateral communications--Amiens--Doullens--St. Pol--St.
Omer--would have been seriously threatened if not cut." The Germans
were determined to have them, and they fought for them with a
desperate courage. Three assault divisions were to have carried the
Vimy Ridge, while other divisions were to have captured Arras and the
line of the Scarpe. The attack was carried out with the greatest
fierceness, men marching shoulder to shoulder into the furnace of
battle. But this time there was no fog to shield them, or to blind the
British guns. The enemy losses were appalling, and after one day's
fighting, in spite of the more northerly attacks on our line still to
come, the German hopes of _victory_ were in the dust, and--as we now
know--for ever.

That is what Vimy means--what Arras means--in the fighting of last
year. We ponder it as we drive through the wrecked beauty of Arras and
out on to the Douai road on our way to Valenciennes. We passed slowly
along the road to the east of Arras, honeycombed still with dug-outs,
and gun emplacements, and past trenches and wire fields, till suddenly
a mere sign-board, nothing more--"Gavrelle!"--shows us that we are
approaching the famous Drocourt-Quéant switch of the Hindenburg line,
which the Canadians and the 17th British Corps, under Sir Henry Horne,
stormed and took in September of last year. Presently, on either side