or to be trampled under foot, like mechanical tools that have become
useless. The German officers and non-commissioned officers are utterly
regardless of life. The German flanks are protected by quantities of
machine guns placed so close together that their gunners jostle one
another. This strange engine of modern warfare creeps on like a monster
of the apocalypse, carrying all before it. Aeroplanes hovering over the
fronts of the columns direct movements by signalling. The dense, serried
mass of infantry offers a splendid target. The losses must have been
frightful--exceeding anything recorded in modern war. The German
infantry are poor marksmen. They don't know how to shoot. Scarcely any
of our men were wounded by bullets. Nearly all the wounds were inflicted
by shells."

The Marquis de Valtierra has been appointed Spanish Ambassador to the
French Republic, in place of the Marquis de Villa Urrutia, who has
resigned. The new Ambassador, who has presented his credentials to
President Poincare at Bordeaux, and who is expected to arrive in Paris
to-morrow, has not followed a diplomatic career. He is a captain-general
--a title corresponding with that of an army corps commander in
France--and until a few days ago was in command of the military region
of Burgos.

News that the representatives of France, Great Britain, and Russia have
signed an agreement in London not to make peace without previous
understanding with the others, meets with popular approval here, and is
taken as further evidence that the allies are determined to fight the
war to a finish.