After the first great attack which gave us the Vimy Ridge
and brought our line close to Lens in the north, and to the
neighbourhood of Bullecourt in the south, the 23rd of April saw the
second British advance, which gave us Gravrelle and Guemappe, and made
further breaches in the Hindenburg line. On April 16th the French made
their magnificent attack in Champagne, with 10,000 prisoners on the
first day (increased to 31,000 by May 24th)--followed by the capture of
the immensely important positions of Moronvillers and Craonne.
Altogether the Allies in little more than a month took 50,000 prisoners,
and large numbers of guns. General Allenby, for instance, captured 150
guns, General Home 64, while General Byng formed three "Pan-Germanic
groups" out of his. We recovered many square miles of the robbed
territory of France--40 villages one day, 100 villages another; while
the condition in which the Germans had left both the recovered territory
and its inhabitants has steeled once more the determination of the
nations at war with Germany to put an end to "this particular form of
ill-doing on the part of an uncivilised race.
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