The French on Oct. 23, 1917, delivered a smashing blow about seven miles northeast of Soissons on a six-mile front, and advanced to a depth of more than two miles at one point. More than 8,000 prisoners were taken in the fierce onslaught, besides 70 heavy guns, 80 machine guns, and 30 mine throwers. The attack began at 5:15 A. M. in rain and mist, and lasted less than six hours. A correspondent describes the advance as follows:

T

HE battle opened before dawn along a nine-kilometer front, from the northeast of Laffaux, about the neighborhood of Vauxaillon, to La Royère Farm. Amid inky darkness the French troops left their trenches, and, with a terrific barrage fire from the most powerful concentration of French guns ever gathered on such a short front preceding them, they made their way toward, into, and over the first German positions, sweeping all resistance aside.

Altogether, six German infantry divisions were aligned, facing the French attacking forces, but none of them was able to withstand the onslaught. advance continued like clockwork.

The

Several squadrons of tanks participated in the battle and aided the advancing infantry. It was by means of these most modern war implements that the Filain Farm was captured.

The battlefield bears no resemblance to battlefields anywhere else. The ground all around is broken with steep hills rising from deep valleys. The crest on which the fight occurred was vital for the Germans, and they held to it tenaciously.

Most of the prisoners taken were caught in quarries. One group, composed of 400 men, was led out to surrender by a German soldier, who spoke Franch, and assured his comrades that they need not fear bad treatment from

their captors, despite the assertions currently made to them by their officers that the French massacred prisoners. Another batch of prisoners fell into the hands of the French just as they alighted from motor trucks, in which they had been hurried to the battlefield as reinforcements.

The losses of the Germans were extremely heavy, as was testified to by the heaps of dead found beneath the ruins of quarries, which crumbled under the French bombardment.

Brilliant Work of Aviators

During the attack the aviation service rendered immense service for the French commander, working under the most unfavorable conditions for flying, namely, mists, heavy clouds, and strong winds. The airmen flew over the infantry when they were making the attack, and when they saw the German infantry assembling for a counterattack they advanced toward the enemy at an altitude of less than 100 yards, showered machine-gun bullets upon him, and brought about a dispersal of the assemblage.

Several French machines flew over the Laon railroad station and attacked arriving troop trains. Some of the machines accompanying the infantry columns kept so low that they were obliged to shorten the antennae of their wireless apparatus. All the airplanes participating in the battle were riddled with bullets. One of them fell blazing among the French troops. The pilot was uninjured and ran to the nearest battalion.

The attack took three main lines. Striking out from both sides of the mill of Laffaux toward Allemant village, the French had to deal with the Fourteenth Division-Westphalian troops-who suffered heavily in last year's fighting before Verdun. The largest proportion of prisoners was captured in this sector,

where the turning point of the Hindenburg defense system has been smashed.

The centre of the assault lay northward from the Mennejean Farm across the Laon highroad. This sector was defended by the Twenty-second Guard Division. The most important of all was the sector on the French right, extending from La Royère Farm at Malmaison Fort, the capture of which was the great event of a brilliant day. It was defended by the Fifth Guard Division, the fort itself being held by elements of the Grenadier Guards.

On the left flank of the attack the enemy had in line the Thirty-seventh Division, and on the right the Fortyseventh Reserve, so that this front of exceptional strength was defended by six divisions.

Positions of Vital Value

The position on this part of the Aisne heights had remained since the successful French offensive of April and May one of a dreadfully unstable equilibrium. The German command had lost much, but not everything, and for several months had used lavishly its human material in the hope of tightening its hold upon what remained to it of this important barrier-the southern corner of the Hindenburg line. Mennejean, La Royère, and Pantheon farms, among other points, became positions of vital significance.

The French held their own and the French command throughout the late Summer was steadily preparing one of those powerful and wonderfully organized efforts which give the cleanest success at the lowest cost. Passing up and down the Aisne this Autumn we have seen railways multiplied and new camps springing up in field and forests. All these preparations could not escape the eyes of the boche. The enemy knew the death challenge was being uttered once more, and had plenty of time to bring up reinforcements and otherwise to make ready.

Labyrinths of Malmaison

The old fort of Malmaison was declassed long before the war, but it has been of immense use to the enemy as an

observatory. Against such an attack as today's its glacis had been cleared, its shell reconstructed and furnished with machine-gun posts, and connected with a labyrinth of caves and tunnels running back to the northern edges of the plateau and so to the German rear.

This underground system of defenses illustrates a characteristic of the field, which distinguishes this from other offensives. The hills are honeycombed with limestone caves, grottoes, and tunnels. Nature began the work and engineers have extended it.

The fight was bound to be, therefore, to an abnormal degree, an artillery battle. To attempt to rush an intricate fortress like the Malmaison plateau before at least such works as had been detected by air scouts had been destroyed would have been to doom many gallant men to death. The spur of the plateau west of that on which the farm stands was known to be traversed by a tunnel called after the neighboring farm Mont Parnasse. The tunnel was large enough to shelter a whole brigade. On our side there were also tunnels and caves in which reserves awaited the moment of action.

Our victory definitely ruins the Gerfan hope of holding on to the Chemin des Dames. The positions which stopped our pursuit after the Marne in September, 1914, and limited our progress in April-these are now in our possession. It is impossible to overestimate the value of this local success in awaiting the hour of decisive victory.

Chemin des Dames Abandoned

In consequence of the thrust of Oct. 23, which was followed immediately by further desperate advances, the German hold on the Chemin des Dames became untenable, and this whole sector was evacuated by the enemy on Nov. 1. The retirement was along a fifteen-mile front to the Ailette River, and involved the surrender of forty square miles of territory. The Germans here lost 12,000 prisoners, including 1,000 from the Prussian Guard, with 200 cannon, 700 Maxims, and 200 trench mortars.

The Chemin des Dames is or rather

was a road over the ridge that dominates the valley of the Aisne and the Ailette Valley, and its importance was taken advantage of by Napoleon in 1814 in operations that led to the battle of Craonne. The Germans had been in control of the Chemin des Dames since September, 1914, when, after the failure of the thrust toward Paris, the Teuton armies were turned back by Joffre in the battle of the Marne. They clung to this position desperately, and the French never lost sight of the value of the recapture of the intrenched line along this road.

The Battlefield Described

G. H. Perris, the war correspondent, wrote on Nov. 4 regarding the scene of this French victory:

It is one of the bloodiest battlefields of the war, comparable to the hills before Verdun and the Flanders ridges. Its conquest is an unsurpassed story of heroic persistence, commenced in the middle of April under the commandership in chief of General Nivelle. This was completed after more than six months of ceaseless fighting under General Pétain.

The first offensive carried the French well on to the summit of the Aisne Hills. Then a deadly duel began. The enemy, whether by choice or necessity, never attempted a general offensive, but during the next three months delivered nearly forty local attacks with large bodies of shock troops and great concentration of artillery.

At the end of July I gave reasons for believing that he had then lost at least 100,000 men in these savage but fruitless assaults. They did not cease, but died down somewhat until last month, when there was a recrudescence of the conflict.

Meanwhile Pétain had been preparing one of his characteristic blows, the main features of which are a limited front strategically chosen, and an overwhelming artillery power and organization of attack so minute as almost to preclude failure in any part. We now see the results. Less than half of the front of the Aisne Hills was attacked, but the success in this field is so complete that the enemy has had to abandon the whole of it.

Result of the Battle

This battle, in the judgment of THE NEW YORK TIMES military critic at Washington, was one of the most decisive of the war. The sector penetrated was part of the so-called Siegfried line. He wrote on Nov. 4 as follows:

The French on Nov. 5 were four miles nearer Laon. The distances from the new French positions in the Chemin des Dames region to Laon are: From Corbeny, 11 miles; from Craonne, 11 miles; from Ailles, 81⁄2 miles; from Cerny, 8 miles; from Courtecon, 71⁄2 miles, and from the fort at Malmaison, 8 miles. These points swing around, in the order named, from Corbeny on the east to Malmaison on the west of the Cemin des Dames, and the air line distance along the Chemin des Dames ridge from Corbeny to Malmaison is 131⁄2 miles. This is the front from which the artillery of the new French positions on the Chemin des Dames ridge will converge their fire on the eminences of the Fort Montberault ridge.

All operations in the Aisne sector are considered of the greatest importance by the French, not only because of the effort they have been making for months to penetrate the Siegfried line, but because it was along the line of Laon-Soissons that the Germans hoped to be able to reach Paris. The battle front during the last Summer, in the region of Anizy-le-Château, 8.69 miles southwest of Laon, was the nearest to the German line on the western point to Paris. There has been a great bend of the line toward Paris, in the region between St. Quentin and Rheims, and Laon was the pivot of the circle and the base from which the Germans supplied every man and gun in their line around the masif of St. Gobain and the Chemin des Dames.

The Crown Prince of Germany has clung stubbornly to his very elaborate and complicated sets of trenches and gun positions in this region. So long as he held both St. Gobain and the Chemin des Dames, Laon and the valleys lying beyond to the northeastward were safe. Once the French are in possession of these two masifs of hills, and of Laon, whose evacuation would then be forced, it would be necessary for the German forces to relinquish the St. Gobain masif and give up the valley to the north, northeast, and east of Laon.

UNITED STATES

Sunday, Oct. 28, was observed as a day of prayer for the triumph of American arms, in compliance with President Wilson's proclamation.

Plans were made for seizing approximately $1,000,000,000, worth of German-owned money and other property subject to confiscation by the Government under the Trading with the Enemy act.

The Second Liberty Loan campaign closed Oct. 27. Subscriptions amounted to $4,617,532,300.

The Emergency Fleet Corporation of the United States Shipping Board was reorganized in order to speed up the work of construction, and Charles A. Piez was placed in supreme charge.

An American Congressional delegation visited unofficially the western allied countries and the battle fronts.

New selective draft regulations were issued, canceling all exemptions and discharges, and repealing all preceding regulations. Announcement was made on Nov. 7 that

Colonel Edward M. House had arrived in England at the head of an American commission to take part in a series of war conferences. He received a message from President Wilson stating that the Government of the United States considered unity of plan and control between all the Allies and the United States essential to success, and asking him to attend the first meeting of the Supreme War Council, with General Tasker H. Bliss as military adviser. Official announcement was made on Oct. 27 that American troops were in the first-line trenches on the French front. On Nov. 3 three Americans were killed, eleven wounded, and eleven reported missing after a German raid on a salient on the Marne-Rhine Canal. Further casualties occurred on Nov. 15 and Nov. 16 in the shelling of American trenches and in firing on patrols.

SUBMARINE BLOCKADE

The American army transport Antilles was sunk Oct. 17, while homeward bound, and sixty-seven men, including sixteen soldiers, were lost. The transport Finland was attacked on Oct. 28 while homeward bound. Nine men were killed, but the ship was able to return to a European port. Twenty-one men were killed when the patrol boat Alcedor was sunk on Nov. 6. The steamer J. L. Luckenbach, after a four-hours' battle with a submarine, was saved by the arrival of a destroyer.

Two naval gunners and several members of the crew were wounded. The D. N. Luckenbach was sunk off the coast of France on Oct. 27, and five members of the crew were lost. A steamer carrying four American Congressmen to Europe was attacked off the coast of Wales on Oct. 27, but was saved by the work of the naval gunners. Seventeen men were lost when the steamship Rochester was sunk on Nov. 2.

England's losses for the week ended Oct. 20 included seventeen ships of over 1,600 tons, for the week ended Oct. 27 fourteen, for the week ended Nov. 3 eight, and for the week ended Nov. 10 one. The British cruiser Orama was sunk Oct. 19. French and Italian shipping losses averaged

about two ships of over 1,600 tons weekly. Danish losses in 1916 included forty-six

steamers and twenty-eight sailing vessels. Norway lost nineteen ships in October, in

cluding the Leander. Forty-eight Norwegian seamen were killed.

On Oct. 25 President Braz of Brazil sent a message to Congress announcing that the steamship Macau had been torpedoed in the Bay of Biscay, and declaring that it was impossible to avoid noting the state of war that Germany had imposed on Brazil. On Oct. 26 Congress voted the declaration of war. The Germans set on fire and sank the German gunboat Eber in the harbor of Bahia after the Brazilian Government had ordered its seizure. German uprisings occurred in Southern Brazil, and on Nov. 3 President Braz sent to Congress recommendations for reprisals against German aggressions. The Chamber of Deputies voted these measures and also voted a state of siege.

CAMPAIGN IN EASTERN EUROPE Oct. 19-Germans land troops on Dagö Island; Russians begin to evacuate Reval. Oct. 22-Germans land troops on the Werder Peninsula, driving back the defending troops and occupying part of the peninsula.

Oct. 23-Russians repulse second attempt of the Germans to land on the Esthonian coast; Germans withdraw toward the Skuli-Lemberg line.

Oct. 24-Germans shorten their line between the Gulf of Riga and the Dvina River, giving up advanced posts.

Oct. 25-Germans retreat fifteen miles on the Riga front, near the Pskoff highroad and in the sector of the Little Jaegel River; civilians begin to evacuate Kronstadt;

German forces fail in attempt to land on the Werder Peninsula. Oct. 26-Germans withdraw as far as the Riga-Orel railway; Russians repulse attacks on the Werder coast of Esthonia. Oct. 27-Withdrawal of German troops on the Riga front continues; Russians follow them as far as the Annehof sector without getting in touch with them.

Oct. 29-Germans withdraw from the Werder Peninsula.

Nov. 3-4-Russians fraternize with Germans in the Dvinsk region.

Nov. 10-Report that Germans have entered Helsingfors.

CAMPAIGN IN WESTERN EUROPE Oct. 19-Germans direct heavy artillery fire against Zonnebeke and British positions near the Manin Road.

Oct. 21-French repulse German attacks west of Mont Carnillet, on both banks of the Meuse, and in the La Chapelette sector. Oct. 22-British capture valuable positions southeast of Poelcappelle.

Oct. 23-French smash through German lines on the Aisne, about seven miles northeast of Soissons, on a six-mile front, piercing them to a depth of more than two miles and capturing Malmaison Fort and four villages; Germans force British from a farm in Houthulst Forest. Oct. 25-French continue their advance on the Aisne, capturing Pinon and Pargny Filain; British repulse German attacks south of Houthulst Forest.

Oct. 26-British take positions west of Passchendaele, including Bellevue Spur; French capture Draeibank, Papagoed Wood, and several fortified farms south of Houthulst Forest, and advance on the Aisne, taking Filain.

Oct. 27-Announcement made that American troops are in the trenches.

Oct. 28-Allies in Flanders capture the entire Mercken Peninsula.

Oct. 29-Germans repulsed by the French near Chaume and Courrières Wood. Oct. 30-British capture Passchendaele Village, but are driven out.

Nov. 2-Germans retreat from the hilly portion of the Chemin des Dames. Nov. 3-French advance to take ground evac

uated by Germans on the Chemin des Dames and take entire district between the Oise Canal and Corbeny as far as the south bank of the Ailette River; three Americans killed, eleven wounded, and eleven missing in raid on salient on the Marne-Rhine Canal.

Nov. 4-French advance along the Ailette River; Laon reported evacuated by civilians.

Nov. 6-Canadians take Passchendaele and push on 800 yards beyond the town. Nov. 8-French resume activity in Upper Alsace, in the Sundgau district. Nov. 9-Germans attack Verdun positions, but are repulsed by the French at Chaume

Wood; French in Alsace carry out successful raid near Seppois.

Nov. 10-British complete conquest of Passchendaele Ridge.

Nov. 14-Americans ambush a large German patrol in No Man's Land, killing or wounding a number of the enemy; Germans repulsed at Passchendaele. Nov. 15-More American casualties reported as result of shelling of American trenches; Belgians repulse raid north of Bixschoote; British check German patrols in Menin Road.

Nov. 16-Germans repulse French forces which worked their way across the Ailette River into the German advanced line; more casualties among American troops. Nov. 17-British carry out a successful operation northwest of Passchendaele, on the Goeberg spur and force Germans to give up Vocation Farm.

ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

Oct. 23-Italians repulse strong attacks in the Cadore region at Monte Plana.

Oct.

24-Austro-German offensive begun; Italian positions near Flitsch and Tolmino and in the northern part of the Bainsizza Plateau captured.

Oct. 25-Teutons extend their gains on the Isonzo in the region of the Santa Maria and Santa Lucia bridgeheads.

Oct.

Oct. 26-Teutons advance beyond Karfreit and Ronzina on the Isonzo River; Italians begin to evacuate the Bainsizza Plateau. 27-Austro-German forces press on through the spurs of the Julian Alps, taking the heights of Stol and Mount Matajur; second Italian army defeated. Oct. 28-Teutons take Gorizia and Cividale and press forward from the Julian Alps to the sea; Monte Santo captured.

Oct. 29-Italian Isonzo front collapses; Third Army fails to check Teutons' advance between the Wippach River and the Adriatic Sea and retreats toward the sea; Teutons take Cormons; Second Italian Army retreats toward the Tagliamento River. Oct. 30-Teutons occupy Udine and press on toward the Tagliamento River; Italians cut bridges to delay advance; Italians yield on Carnia front near Ploecken. Oct. 31-New Austrian army under General von Krobatin moves southwestward from the Carnic Alps and attacks Gemona; Germans push on southeastward from Udine. 1-Austro-German forces penetrate Italian rearguard positions to the east of the lower Tagliamento, capturing bridgehead positions at Dignano, Codroipo, and Latisana: Anglo-French reinforcements reach the Italian eastern front. Nov. 2-Italians abandon the eastern bank of the Tagliamento River from the Fella Valley to the Adriatic Sea; fighting takes place on the middle and lower sectors of the river.

Nov.

Nov. 4-Italians repulse heavy Teuton attacks