FRANCE’S DAY ON THE BRITISH FRONT.

From PHILIP GIBBS. WAR CORRESPONDENTS’ HEADQUARTERS, FRANCE (Sunday).

Up in Flanders yesterday there was some heavy shelling by the enemy directed upon roads and tracks and defensive works in the Hazebrouck area, round about the forest of La Motte, and north of that between the village or Locre and the old Scherpenberg Hill. North of the Somme by Bouzincourt German gunners devoted seven hours, from five in the afternoon until midnight, to intense bombardment of our ground. No infantry attack has followed this morning after that storm of hate. Rain is falling steadily on this 14th of July, but the colours of the French flag are bright above many cottages in the war zone and on the public buildings of small towns where British troops are billeted. There is, as far as I know, no public ceremonial in our lines to celebrate the fête day of France, but in the hearts of all of us out here there is a salute to the French armies and people, who have suffered the tragedy of these four years of war with enduring heroism and fortitude of soul. That is more than a phrase to our officers and men. Each one of them has remembrances of French men and women who in hours of most dreadful menace were unshaken and uncomplaining and defiant of the danger about them with gallant courage. Our men see these people now living in villages close to the lines, within range of German gunfire and damaged by many air raids. They see them working in their fields and preparing the harvest of France on the edge of war, old women and young girls, who rise from their toil a moment among the hayricks to wave friendly hands to our troops who go marching down the roads where, sometimes not far away, even sometimes into the ripening crops, the enemy’s shells dig deep craters. In the battles of this year, when at the end of March the Germans came like a river in spate, a living tide, against our defensive works, overwhelming the first lines by sheer weight of men, thousands of French civilians had to take flight from their homes, suddenly menaced by this advancing terror, and it was the courage of young girls, of old people, of little children even, which revealed to our men the spirit of this French race, so contemptuous of war’s worst evils and so patient with any misery so long as France herself may be saved.