BRITISH VICTORY NOT CONFIRMED

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2363, 20 January 1915, Page 5

BRITISH VICTORY NOT CONFIRMED

-' DENIED BY "EYE-WITNESS" FRENCH STAND AT THE BATTLE OF. SOISSONS TOLD BY A WOUNDED SOLDIER "THEIK LAST CARTRIDGE" GERMANS' FIGHTING HARD IN POLAND To-day's news from the theatres of the great -war is very scanty. There appears to be some mystery about the previously-reported "brilliant success" of the British at La Bassee.The victory is not confirmed. "]sye-witness," an authoritative commentator at Headquarters, denies it; and the Paris "Mating publishes a report that the place was, abandoned by the Germans. The village of Laboiselle, which had to be , evacuated by the, Allies owing to an explosion in the magazine store, has been retaken. Snowstorms are raging in the Argonne and the Vosges. There is nothing new to report regarding the development of events at Soissons; a wounded Frenoh soldier has given to the wo.rld a vivid narrative of the desperate fight whioh the French engaged in to , stem the attack of the overwhelming German masses. At the critical - moment of the retirement the French were at their last oartridge. Hea\y ' fighting, with night attacks, is proo ceding in Poland, and in the Carpathians the Russians are said to have occupied all the important passes. From the Caucasian theatre, the news is meagre. The Russian pursuit of. therretreating Tui-ks is being hotly pressed, and a two days' battle has been fougbt. Tho great battle of Kara TJrgan waß fought in a temperature of thirteen degrees below zero, many, of the unfortunate Turks being frozen to death in the ioy. altitudes where the battle raged. Those who were not frozen "actually attempted to fight I" A derelict German seaplane, presumed to have been connected with the recent British raid'an Cuxhaven, has been found, but there la no trace of its former occupants. Dead bodies, some with . English money in the pooketa of their clothes, have come ashore on the, Danish coast. . ,