ATTACKS ON VERDUN CONTINUE.

German attacks on the French lines at Verdun continued with the utmost vigor up to June 10.  From time to time they resulted in small successes, gained at immense cost in human life.  From May 27 to May 30 the battle raged with especial severity, this period marking the greatest effort made by the Germans during the whole of the prolonged operations at Verdun.  The French stood firm under an avalanche of shot and shell, and drove back wave after wave of a tremendous flood of Teutonic infantry.  The infantry fighting in this struggle was described as the fiercest of the war.

The total German casualties up to June 1 were estimated at nearly 3,000,000; the French at 2,500,000, and the British at 600,000, over 25,000 of the latter being commissioned officers.

General Joseph S. Gallieni, former minister of war of France, died at Versailles on May 27, universally mourned by the French, who regarded him as the saviour of Paris in the critical days of August-September, 1914, when he was military governor of Paris and commander of the intrenched camp.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WORLD’S GREATEST SEA FIGHT.

British and German High-Sea Fleets Finally Clash in the North Sea—­Huge Losses in Tonnage and Men on Both Sides—­British Navy Remains in Control of the Sea._

After many months of unceasing sea patrol on the part of the British, and of diligent preparation in port on the German side, it came at last—­the long-expected clash of mighty rival fleets in the North Sea.

It was on the misty afternoon of Wednesday, May 31, that Admiral David Beatty, in command of Britain’s battle-cruiser squadron, sighted the vanguard of the German high-seas fleet steaming “on an enterprise to the north” from its long-accustomed anchorages in the placid waters of the Kiel Canal and under the guns of Helgoland.

The British battleship fleet was far away to the northwest, but the wireless promptly flashed the signal, “Enemy in sight,” and as the battle-cruisers raced to close quarters with the tardy foe, and sacrificed themselves in the effort to hold him in the open sea, down from the north rushed the leviathans of the Mistress of the Seas, that were counted on to crush the enemy when the opportunity came.

But the early stages of the fight found the British battling against odds.  Germany’s mightiest warcraft were in the shadows of the mist, behind the cruiser scouts; destroyers swarmed around them, submarines appeared from the depths, and Zeppelins hovered overhead.