Victorious French

Another fine achievement

Woevre Plain dominated

Dardanelles army ready

It is exasperating to find that while Sir John French declares ‘there is nothing new to report’, the French official communique contains references to an attack on the British front as recently as Wednesday night.

Possibly there was nothing new about that but the public may be forgiven for thinking that there has been something worth reporting all the same.

If it were not so the French military authorities would hardly have gone out of their way to share their report with the paragraph to which we are referring.

Interest, however, at the present moment is centred on what the French themselves are doing.

For some days now their operations in the Woevre have been eagerly followed and each communique has supplied fresh tidings.

It was mentioned that they had captured almost all of the positions on the plateau dominating Combres and the official report of the afternoon informed us that fresh ground had been gained.

On Thursday the French gained over 1,300 metres of trenches and yesterday morning only two isolated positions on the plateau were in German possession.

These were strongly held but yesterday the French derived their final assault, captured these two points and thus attained one of their chief objectives of operations of recent days.

The German report again takes the unattempted part of the French attack and ‘truthfully’ describes it as unaccomplished.

The German efforts to defend both sides of the St Mihiel wedge are of a most desperate character and their counter attacks have been and continue to be extremely violent in their intensity.

Indeed, if we could spare some admiration for the enemy, some of our praise might well be showed here.

They are setting the French a most difficult task and it is no discredit to them that on both sides the battering is making them yield ground almost continuously.

How long they will be able to maintain their present positions remains to be discovered but immediately the danger to their railway communications with Metz becomes too great to be averted they will once more act in accordance with a prearranged plan.

At the time of writing there is little fresh in the way of details as to the great conflict in the Carpathians.

It is, however, confirmed in an official Petrograd message that the Russians now hold the whole of the principal chain.

The tactical victory, as made reference to yesterday, may have further important results before too long but it is evident that the Russians believe now in clearing up as they go along.

In Austria admissions are beginning to be made as to the Russian successes and generally speaking the politics in the eastern theatre are, as a whole, in accordance with our highest hopes.