The Offensive

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16310, 6 September 1918, Page 6

The Offensive

Each day of the offensive now is very like the last —stubborn fighting on all sectors, heavy rearguard actions at some points, and rearguard collapses at others, and a continued steady progress into the territory so long held by the enemy. To those who have failed to grasp the character of modorn warfare, there may appear to be cause for disappointment in the persistency with which the enemy eludes the delivery of some kind of decisive blow. But the stage has not been reached —and perhaps the nature of modern warfare provides that it cannot 'bo reached— when the Allies can deliver such a blow, for example, as that which ended the Hundred Days. One sentence in General Maurice's lateat comments appears to suggest that he, at any rate, can imagine the delivery of such a blow, but perhaps his roference to a " coup-de-graco" is only his graphic way of alluding to a largo and decisive overturn of the enemy's power to continue an effective strategy. There is good reason for believing that the offensive is really decisivo already. The enemy has been driven out of the Marne salient, and is evidently preparing to withdraw to tho Chemin des Dames or beyond. His positions at the western end of the Chemin des Dames are overlooked and threatened by the FrancoAmerican establishment on the plateaux north of Soissons. His hold between tho Somme and the Oise will grow weaker with the British progress above Peronne, and with the advance of Humbert and Mangin towards Chauny. He has been forced back to Moeuvres, seven miles from Cambrai, and along the Sensee he is retiring towards the Douai-Cambrai road. In order to avert collapse on this, the northern J sector of his main. Western defensive

line, ho has had so far to weaken his armfes in Flanders that Haig is now almost in Armentieres, and the Lys salient is hardly a salient any longer. All of these reverses are consequences resulting from Foch's movement on July 18th on the Marne. General Maurice chooses a very striking and pertinent point to illustrate the character of the present developments. A week ago, ho says, no one expected to capture Kemmel, Neuve Eglise, Bailleul, and Estaires without many thousands of casualties, yet the enemy has been forced to retire without any heavy resistance. Neither General Maurice himself nor any other military writer had the least idea, after Foch had been hammering his way north for a week from the Marne, that in six weeks the battle line from Ypres to Rheims would have its present shape. General Maurice did, indeed, at the time, reckon Foch's counter-attack as the turning point in the campaign of 1918, but he looked for either a pause on one side, or a vain offensive from Ludendorff.