"The enemy's attack was repulsed."
Has nothing been gained?
Yes! The French trenches are still French. From this much of French soil the foreigner's foot is banished. Aggression, greed, and hate have made another violent effort to win a strip of territory for their befouling and blackening touch, have tried—and the motionless figures on No Man's Land are France's answer.
Yesterday's clouds have fled and the golden sunshine floods the ravaged fields; it pours into the windows of field hospitals on the French and German sides alike, it blesses with the hope of the future the soldier who will recover and eases the pain of him who looks upon his last sun; it shows the African sharpening his steel for the next charge, and the general planning the next assault; it shines into distant countries whence men are coming to take the places of those that have gone before.
Heroes all!
Yet the communiqué says only:
"The enemy made a violent assault and was repulsed."