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Show PUSHING TOWARD GERMRDER ADVANCE OF FRENCH TROOPS SOUTH OF VERDUN MAY CHECK THE INVADERS. Weather Condi '-ns Have Become Severe in France and Flanders and Fighting is Confined to Artillery Engagements. Weather conklitions have become so severe in France and in Flanders, where there have been heavy falls of 5now, that the fighting has been confined con-fined almost entirely to artillery engagements. en-gagements. There has been an exception, however, how-ever, to the Bouthwest of Verdun, near Pont-a-Mousson, where the French are reported to have approached ap-proached a few hundred yards nearer the German frontier. Military men attach considerable importance to the operations in this region, for, they say, in conjunction with the continued French pressure on the German lines to the westward of Perthes, they will check, if successful, suc-cessful, the German operations against Verdun, around which they have had a full circle drawn since they invaded France. Of the progress of the battles in east Prussia and Poland the official reports give less information than usual. Loquacity seems to be avoided avoid-ed when a big new movement is commencing, such as that which the Russians are carrying out between the eastern Prussian border and the lower Vistula. In this operation, so far as can be judged from the scant details furnished, the Russians are making a big sweep, to the west and north, evidently in an endeavor to prevent Field Marshal von Hinden-burg's Hinden-burg's forces from forming a junction junc-tion with the German troops in east Prussia. Some Petrogrid newspaper correspondents corre-spondents credit the Russians with crossing the Vistula river to the south and east of Plock. If this is true, military men say they must have a very large force and probably are in a position to threaten the left flank of the German army, which has been trying for weeks to force its way through to Warsaw. |