North of the Scarpe (north-east of Arras) the whole system of trenches was taken; and north again, along the Vimy Ridge, the Canadians and Highlanders of the 51st Division achieved a heroic success by gaining this high dominating ground, which was the scene of some of the fiercest French battles in the first part of the war, and which is a great wall defending Douai. It was reckoned up to noon to-day that over 3000 prisoners had been taken. They are streaming down to prisoners' camps, and to our men who pass them on the roads they are the best proofs of a victorious day.
Those of us who knew what would happen to-day--the beginning of another series of battles greater perhaps than the struggle of the Somme--found ourselves yesterday filled with a tense, restless emotion. Some of us smiled with a kind of tragic irony, because it was Easter Sunday. In little villages behind the battle lines the bells of French churches were ringing gladly because the Lord had risen; and on the altar steps priests were reciting the old words of faith, "Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum! Alleluia!" The earth was glad yesterday. For the first time this year the sun had a touch of warmth in it--though patches of snow still staved white under the shelter of the banks--and the sky was blue, and the light glinted on wet tree-trunks and in the furrows of the new-ploughed earth. As I went up the road to the battle lines I passed a battalion of our men--the men who are fighting to-day--standing in a hollow square with bowed heads, while the chaplain conducted the Easter service. It was Easter Sunday, but no truce of God. I went to a field outside Arras, and looked into the ruins of the cathedral city. The cathedral itself stood clear in the sunlight, with a deep black shadow where its roof and aisles had been. Beyond was a ragged pinnacle of stone--the once glorious town hall and a French barracks--and all the broken streets going out to the Cambrai road. It was hell in Arras, though Easter Sunday. The enemy was flinging high explosives into the city, and clouds of shrapnel burst above, black and green. All around the country too, his shells were exploding in a scattered, aimless way, and from our side there was a heavy bombardment all along the Vimy Ridge, above Neuville-St.-Vaast, and sweeping round above St.-Nicholas and Blangy, two suburbs of Arras, and then south-west of the city on the ridge above the road to Cambrai. It was one continuous roar of death, and all the batteries were firing steadily. I watched our shells burst, and some of them were monstrous, raising great lingering clouds above the German lines.