Progress of the War.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16209, 11 May 1918, Page 8

Progress of the War.

Tho official messages- published this morning record no great effort on the part of either side on tho Western front, the only activities mentioned being local fighting on tho sector south of Itpres. Sir Douglas Haig reports a successful action on tho sector La-Clytte-Voormezeele, a British counterattack re-establishing the positions captured by the Germans in the recent fighting. Having failed in his attempt to clear the way to Scherpenbcre from the north-east the enemy appears to bo testing the possibilities of effecting this object by an attack from a point farther south, fighting having developed in the neighbourhood of ELemmel, where tho British line has been slightly pressed back. These operations, however, aro of a purely local character and represent a struggle for points d'appui rather than initial attacks in a major offensivo. Only artillery activity is reported from the French front, and the firing does not appear to be of any special import. A communique from tho Italian front shows that the Allied forces in this theatro aro continuing their policy of attrition, harassing the enemy both on land and from the air. A movement which may havo an important be&ring on the British campaign in Macedonia is recorded from tho Caucasus, the President of tho Union of Georgians of the Caucasus announcing that the Georgians refuse to recognise tho Brest Litovsk treaty and cro determined to resist to desperation tho Germano-Turkish invasion. Ho adds that they will make any sacrifices in order to block tho road to Bagdad and India, and will never suffer the German yoke. If an effective resistance to the Turks materialises in this quarter it will lessen the danger of an attack on the British flank and leave General Marshall free to push on to Aleppo and cut the Bagdad railway, t|ic niain Turkish artery of communication with Mesopotamia, thus crippling Turkey's operations to the east and obviating all danger to Bagdad.

The bail example of Russia has stirred the Bolsheviks of Australia to emulation. The Victorian Railway Union, at its annual conference last month, passed unanimously a resolution to tho effect that as the Federal Government had mado no attempt to deal with tho probloms that had arisen and would arise through tho ivar, and as tho whole burden of the war would fall on tho workers, the conference advocated the repudiation of the national war debt. It would bo easy to prove that the premises on which this astounding claim was made were wholly falso, but even if they wero true—if the Government had clone nothing in regard to the financial problems of tho war, and the wholo burden thereof did fall on thp workers, two blacks never yet made a white, and tho proposal to repudiate the war debt would be suicidal as well as absolutely unjustifiablo.

Most prominent politicians in tho Labour party, when invited to express their views on the union's decision, "sparred for time'' to consider it. An ox-President of the Trades Hall Council, however, rushed precipitately at the opening offered him, heartily endorsed tho resolution, and expressed the opinion that tho working-class in all belligerent countries would do the same. "They will follow," ho said, ■'the example of the Boishevihs in Russia." He spo}je too soon. Not only did the President of the Trades Hall Council express disapproval of tho resolution, pointing out that some of the workers had put all they had into the war loans, but tho secretary of the Railways Union, in the presence of a deputation to the Minister of Railways, tried to explain it away. After admitting that the motion, '"if read rather badly, was capable of misinterpretation/- he asserted that its real object was to make all investments in the war loan taxable, and that no interest should ho paid on the loans. If this was really what was intended the union ought to get some intelligent person to draw up its resolutions, so that they may convey the union's meaning. But the explanation was, of course, a second thought, prompted by the hostile reception that the public gavo to tho proposal, and only a very credulous person, such as, apparently, the Minister of Railways is, would believe that when the union dcmandpd repudiation of the war debt, it merely njeant repudiation of the obligation to pay interest on it, which, of course, is next,door to total repudiation, and if actcd upon, would probably lead to "going the whole hog" in the matter of thieving and dishonesty.