The Germans contested every inch of the ground, and all along the great battle line, stretching out for almost four hundred miles, the fighting had been terrific.  Day after day, week after week, month after month the terrible struggle had raged incessantly.  The losses of all four armies, German, British, French and Belgian, had been enormous, although, up to date, it was admitted that the Germans had suffered the worst.

The conflict raged with advantage first to one side and then to the other.  Assaults and counter-assaults were the order of the day.  From Ostend, on the North Sea, now in the hands of the Germans, to the southern extremity of Alsace-Lorraine, the mighty hosts were locked in a death grapple; but, in spite of the fearful execution of the weapons of modern warfare, there had been no really decisive engagement.  Neither side had suffered a severe blow.

In the North the Allies were being given powerful aid by a strong British fleet, which hurled its shells upon the Germans infesting that region, thus checking at the same time the threatened advance of the Kaiser’s legions upon Nieuport and Dunkirk, which the Germans planned to use as naval bases for air raids on England.

The mighty siege and field guns of the Germans—­which had been used with such telling effect upon Liege, Brussels, Antwerp and Ostend, battering the fortifications there to bits in practically no time at all—­while immense in their power of destruction, were still not a match for the longer range guns mounted by the British battleships.  Consequently, long-range artillery duels in the north had been all in favor of British arms.

Terrific charges of the British troops, of whom there were now less than half a million—­Scotch, Irish, Canadians and Indians included—­on the continent, had driven the Germans from Dixmude, Ypres and Armentieres, captured earlier in the war.  Ostend had been shelled by the British fleet, and a show of force had been made in that vicinity, causing the Germans to believe that the Allies would attempt to reoccupy this important seaport.

Farther south the French also had met with some success.  From within striking distance of Paris the invaders had been driven back to the Marne, and from the Marne to the northern and eastern shores of the Aisne.

But here the German line held.

The fighting along the Aisne, continuing without cessation, already had been the bloodiest in the history of wars; and here, the French on one side of the river, and the Germans on the other, the two great armies had proceeded to intrench, making themselves as comfortable as possible, and constructing huts and other substantial shelters against the icy hand of King Winter, who had come to rule over the battlefield.

The French cabinet, which had fled from Paris to Bordeaux when the German army drew close to Paris, had returned to the former capital, and affairs of state were being conducted as before.  With several millions of fighting men at the front, France still had an additional two million to hurl into the thick of the fray at the psychological moment.