Later reports from the Aisne valley, up to October 17, when the big battle had been five weeks in progress, indicated little change in the general situation. Bombardments and artillery duels, varied by general attacks, occurred daily all along the line. The main positions of both armies were firmly held, though the French had gained some ground north of Rheims and continually threatened the German center. The left of the Allies' line had crept north to and beyond Arras, where there was severe fighting for several days; and at the end of the thirty-fifth day of this battle of the Rivers the lines of the opposing armies extended almost continuously from beyond Arras on the northwest, south in a great curve to the Aisne valley, thence east to Verdun, where the Crown Prince's army kept hammering away at that fortress without success, and thence southwest to Nancy and the Alsatian border.
By this time the armies of the center were in a species of deadlock. The strain on both sides had long promised to get beyond human endurance and the antagonists of the Aisne were likened by a French officer to two exhausted pugilists, who would soon be unable to inflict further punishment upon each other. But there was no sign of "throwing up the sponge" on either side, though beyond the actual sphere of conflict it was felt that "something must give way soon."
A BLAZING VALE OF DEATH
Writing on September 16, the fourth day of the battle, a special correspondent behind the British lines by Senlis and Chantilly, said:
"I have passed through a smiling land to a land wearing the mask of death; through harvest fields rich with great stacks snugly builded against the winter to the fields of a braver harvest; by jocund villages where there is no break in the ebb and flow of everyday life to villages and towns that despoiling hands have shattered in ruins.
"And I have passed up this Via Dolorosa toward the very harvesting itself—toward those great plains stretching away on the banks of the River Aisne, where the second act of this drama of battles is at this moment being played.
"Details of this fight, which, as I write, reaches its fourth day of duration, are very scanty, but partly from personal observation and partly from information which has reached me I know that the struggle so far has been a terrible one, equal to, if not greater than, the struggle on the banks of the Marne.
"The events of Monday (September 14) revealed a foe battling desperately for his life; and this defense of General von Kluck's army demanded of the Allies their utmost strength and determination.
"Picture this battlefield, which will assuredly take its place with that of the Marne as one of the greatest combats of the greatest war. Through the middle of it flows the great river, passing from the east to the west. The banks of the river here are very steep. Above the plain, which sweeps away from the northern bank, rises the "massif" of Laon. It is an ideal area for great movements and for artillery work directed upon the valley of the river. Passing eastward a little, there are the heights behind the city of Rheims and above the Vesle, a tributary of the Aisne. Here again nature has builded a stronghold easy to defend, difficult exceedingly to attack.
"I know of heroic work against these great lines, work that will live with the most momentous of this struggle. I know of smashing attacks the thought of which takes one's breath away. I have heard narratives of the trenches and of the bridges—these engineers, French and English, have indeed 'played the game'—which no man can hear unmoved; how the columns went down again and again to the blazing death of the valley, and how men worked, building and girding in a very inferno—worked with the furious speed of those whose time of work is short.