The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-29

He held in his grip the sea, the land and the air. Inshore Lay ships ready to sweep part Of his front with pro tecttve ire. On land his advance forces had seized roads and railroads, his engineers were repairing what had been destroyed and his cavalry was guarding all approachess His air men, overwhe elm1ngly numerous, spied on the American army almost with impunity and parried with sure aerial thrusts all American attempts to spy on their own lines.
 The aerial guard, steel breasted, with the wings of speed and ta1ons Of fire, could be broken only by eQuaI num- bers equally terrible, Individual dar- Ing, individual skill were nothing against this aRmOred brood Five times American dkers rose to try it. and five times they were grappled in midair and torn with shot and dropped to the earth far below No more.s' said the general in command
 He sat with his chin in his hand studying the dispatches that were laid before him They were piled high, though twenty operators and half dozen aids struggled to eliminate from the torrential confusion the news that might be deemed most reliable.
 There were messages from Washing ton. messages from coast defenses, messages from patroas and oufposts, from scouts and from company com manders. There were wild reports of enemy invasion from places so far in land that 1t vas palpable that they nouId not be true. There were reports from places so near by that they might mean imminent danger
 Excited officials of towns and cities sent long Involved. dispatches or hung Tor long minutes to telephones to re- count interninable tales
 One hundred thousand men had land Rd according to spies who had made their way into Fort GrebIe in the Mar agahsett d.s6enses. It was 100000, teIephoned Providence, transmitting messages from the coast. The arny's own scouts and spies and patrols, grop- ing in insufficient numbers and finding wall of cavalry and foot and ma chine gun detachments opposed to them everywhere, sent in estimates that varied all the way from 5000 to Z SoB0o.
 These American advance detach- ments were striking tue enemy out posts east and west. Near Watch Hill three American motorcycle companies with machine guns ambushed and cut up two troops of cavalry. American cavalry drove back a battalion of en- g1neefs who had begun work on the railroad at Kingston At Mantle two American motor patrols ran into the fire of q concealed field gun and were destroyed
 From Fort 1Gichie, on Gull island, came the news, brought by a Montauk point fisherman who had managed to make his way across the sound in q small boat that men had landed on that end of Long Island They had destroyed all coTnmunicat inanedi- ate1y and had seized the railroad lead ing to New York, but it was impossi- ble to guess how great this force was.
 Only one certain fact was developed from all the news It was that the transports were unloading troops still
 Suddenly, almost simultaneously, the American patrols were driven back ali 2 along the line On a front that ex- tended quickly, irresistfbly. clear across " Washington county B T., from east to west the invader army expanded It seized Watch HflI Kingston was occupied in force. Wickford Junction was occupied. Narragansett Pier was 2 flooded all at once with men and guns.
 With the swiftness of a blow from fighters fist the invader had struck and won the entire railroad system of the New York. New Haven and Hart ford railroad in Rhode Island and com handed the way to Providence
 The foe had filled his divisions For ty thousand men were ready for battle on American soil, with 10000 in re- serve on the coast
 Now the wind t1xned southeast. Te1o 4111 coastwise mariners cali the Fog Hole began to brew one of it's April fogs, gray and blind and wet
 It's first effect was kind to the Amer tcans The enemy air craft, seeing the t vapory bank growing from the sea fled toward their lines. From all dt rections they came in like gulls flee ing before storm. They could not dare to remain in strange territory All their fine maps, all their ingenious instruments, would be impotent against it They came in and alighted behind their army.
 Freed from them and masked by the fog, the American scouts went forward again and groped once more along the foes front In an hour field tele phones and telegraphs and aerial told the Anerfcan commander enough to assure nm tnaL the enemy Iofce ID men was at least nearly equal to his own He knew, too, that the invader had brought up pEeponderating artiI- iery- Every road, every piece of ne Z gotiable country, was held by guns.
 The American army held tight. h it's front, between it and the foe, there was not a rail line. not a bridge. All had been destroyed Behind it lay g perfect railroad system, with long trains and giant locomotives under steam and all the gathered motor ve ss hfcles ready to speed
 30 far the fog was kind to the de lenders But the invader, too, was aIjiek fo znfSa i4s fsvop