ARRAS SAVED BY LONDON TROOPS

From Philip Gibbs. War Correspondents’ Headquarters. France, Monday.

The battle of which I have been trying to give a daily narrative has been on so vast a scale, filled with so many episodes of terrific adventure, and with, so many hundreds of thousands of men moving along its lines of fire, that I find it impossible to give the picture and emotion and spirit of it. We out here who knew that this thing was coming upon us, creeping nearer every day with its monstrous menace, held our breath and waited. When at last the thing broke it was more frightful in its loosing of overwhelming powers than even we had guessed. Since then all our armies have lived with intense understanding of the greatness of these days, of the meaning to the destiny of the world, and every private soldier or transport driver or linesman or labourer has been exalted by an emotion stronger than the effects of drugs. They do not say much, these men of ours, but there is a queer light in their eyes shining out of faces greyed by sleeplessness or streaked with blood. They laugh in the same old way at any joke on the road, and sometimes when shells are bursting, close, as I heard. They matching up to the battle line with unfaltering feet, and it is like a pageant as they pass, these long columns of men in steel hats, shouldering heavy packs, with their rifles slung, and these miles long of transport and these endless teams of mule-drivers and wagondrivers and streams of mounted men. As an onlooker I have been caught up in these tides for hundreds of kilometres from south to north, and the spirit of these armies on the move seems almost visible and as though all emotions in these men’s hearts were vibrant about one. Men who have just moved up to hold the lines are hoping for an attack so that they can smash more enemy divisions. Anger moves in them because the enemy threw us back in places by overwhelming odds. Now, they swear, he will be stopped and broken. They wipe out of their minds for the time the horrors and tragedy they have seen. Fierce exaltation at the destruction of the enemy, grim pride in repulsing his bloodiest attacks, resolution to pay back and take back, have changed the gentlest fellow into a man who handles his rifle or machine gun with a secret promise to himself, ready to stop with his own body another German advance. Passion has taken possession of our men because they know that if the enemy broke through them all they have fought for would be jeopardised and this four years of war would have been in vain for us.