saying that the enemy are threatening a counter-attack at a certain
point, and three minutes later there is a redoubled whistling of shells.
At first one cannot see the result of this fire--the guns are searching
the low ground where the enemy's reserves are preparing for the
movement, but a little later the ground in front of the threatened
trench becomes alive with shell bursts, for the searching has given
place to the building up of a wall of fire through which it is
impossible for the foe to pass without enormous loss.

The attached map may enable us to look more closely at what has been
achieved. The lowest dotted line, numbered 15, is the line of the French
trenches on Feb. 15. They were then close up to the front of the German
line with its network of barbed wire, its machine-gun emplacements,
often of concrete, and its underground chambers for sheltering men from
the shells. Each successive dotted line shows the line held by the
French on the evening of the date written in the dotted line. Thus the
total gain of ground, that between the most southerly and the most
northerly dotted lines, varies between 200 yards, where the lines are
close together northeast of Perthes, and 1,400 yards, half way between
Le Mesnil and Beauséjour Farm. But the whole of this space has been a
series of trenches and fortified woods, each of which has had to be
attacked separately.

[Illustration: Map of the French Operations in the Champagne

Some of the severest fighting on the western battle front took place in
this little section of about four miles of trenches, lying between
Rheimes and Verdun. For a whole month from Feb. 15, the attacks were
kept up by the French forces almost continuously, and the sketch gives
the graphic result of changes for three weeks of that time. Ostensibly