The Press Bureau states that, in the neighbourhood of La Bassée, the enemy delivered several violent attacks against the Ist Division and were repulsed with We found in one place on the La Bassée Road 300 German killed while we took fifty-five prisoners including two officers.
Such was the brief unemotional statement which Reuter's agency transmitted from London on January 6. There have been nian like it before and since and only occasionally do we grt glimpses of what such messages really mean. The Siberian mail just to hand brings a graphic description of this very encounter, written by the "Daily Chronicle's" special correspondent on the day on which the Preas Bureau published ite announcement. From the details he supplies it ie possible to _reconstruct the main features of the battle which will, in all probability, be known in history as the second battle of La Bassée, and will be regarded as one of the most important episodes in the present stage of the war,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.