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Show RAINS AND FOGS : STOP FIGHTING 01 WEST FRONT Artillery Duels Continue All Along Line, but There Are No Sustained Infantry In-fantry Attacks. SLIGHT GAINS BY FRENCH REPORTED Russians Making1 Stand Wherever Possible, but Austro-Germans Continue Con-tinue to Advance. LONDON, Au. 9. Continuous rains and fogs have made the past week one of little activity on the western front, said Major General Frederick B. Maurice, Mau-rice, chief director of military operations at the war office, in his weekly talk to the Assoc ki ted Press today. "The German communiques -in their usual fashion," continued the general, 'reported numerous riruh attaens repulsed re-pulsed with heavy loss. That shows the Germans are jumpy and nervous. As a matter of fact, there has been only one British attack, that on St. julien, which was an entire success. The German communique com-munique made a deal of an alleged British Brit-ish attack from Nieuport, which was in fact only a minor raid." Summing- up the situation on the Russian" Rus-sian" 1 rout. General Maurice said; "The Russian retirement has been conspicuously con-spicuously less in the last week. Premier Pre-mier Kerensky and General Korniloff, the Kussian commander in chief, are making strenuous efforts, with considerable success, suc-cess, to re-establish discipline, but it 1 would be premature to say that the Kus- j sian leaders have yet succeeded in setting set-ting a limit to the German advance. It would be premature even to regard the situation as mora satisfactory." Air Fighting. General Maurice gave an interesting-resume interesting-resume of the detailed reports which he had received on tne air fighting in the Flanders battle of July 31. "On the uay of the attack," says General Gen-eral Maurice, "the weather conditions were as nearly Impossible as could bs imagined low clouds of great density, haze and mist. The observation was almost al-most nil, and, as a result, the artillery j was under a severe handicap, having to ! - work without adequate airplane observation. observa-tion. "But the airplanes were enormously busy in other departments. More than 100 engagements were fought by airplanes air-planes with the forces of the enemy on terra firma, our planes in these cases descending often to within less than fifty feet of the ground and sweeping the napless enemy with their mac-nine guns or bombing them. The enemy airplanes were well nigh helpless to interfere. British Swoop Down. "Less than twenty fights In the air occurred because the enemy did not come up, and in the.se fights we downed six enemy machines, while we lost only three. There were eleven cases of machine gun attacks on German airdromes by British machines. "Our airmen swooped down -to an altitude alti-tude lower than the tree tops and fired string after string into the German hangars, killing mechanics, damaging machines and blowing up workshop.-;. Similar attacks were made repeatedly on parties of marching troops, on working parties and on transports. "During the afternoon one of our airmen, air-men, cr.iising aloft several miles behind the German lines, spifd a German gfaff car containing four staff officers specking along a country road. He swooped down and chased the car five miles. The excited ex-cited passengers, while urging the chauffeur chauf-feur to find shelter, stood up in the car, drew their revolvers and fired wildly into the wings of the big bird which was circling overhead. "The British pilot finally got the car into the right position in front of his machine gun and swept the car with a hail uf bullets, killing two of the officers. The car then stopped abruptly and the two other passengers rushed to a farm houe for ref;ire. "That is the sort of thing whirh wnt on br-hind'the enemy's lines throughout the day of the attack. We had absolute abso-lute command of the air." |