SATISFACTORY NEWS

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 139, 12 June 1918, Page 7

SATISFACTORY NEWS

EFFECTIVE FRENCH RESISTANCE

ENEMY SUCCESS NARROWLY

LOCALISED

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, 10th June.

The news from the battlefront continues to be most satisfactory. In spite of enormous losses the,_enemy has only succeeded in. penetrating our positions to an average of from half to three-quarters of * mile. His chief success was in the centre, round Lassigny, where the Germans are making a fierce thrust for the BeJlinglise Plateau. Their general purpose is to avoid the forest fighting around Compiegne and Villers Cotterets, where the French and American defenders have already taken a. huge toll of the i attackere, and brought the Crown Prince's thrust towards Paris to a standstill. In conjunction with the advance on the Marne, Yon Ludendorff's new j move represents a vast encircling project, with the purpose ot getting the French and Americans within the jaws of a pair of gigantic pincers. The Germans between Montdidier and Noyon had no advantage of surprise. Though they used new gas shells, the_ heroic French troops never flinched. Five German divisions have already been withdrawn. The attack was launched from a ridge 320 feet high around Assinvillers and Orvillers. The enemy forced his way into the hollow, but failed to scale the opposite slope towards the Plateau of Le Ployron and Mery, and is still pinned in the depression. The Germans were scarcely more successful on our right wing between Lassigny and Noyon. There they carried the isolated knoll of Plemont, but were stopped before the French strong point at Thiescourt Wood. MATZ VALLEY SWEPT BY FRENCH GUNS Here again the enemy remains in a hollow, dominated by the French fire from a heigfit of 250 feet. The only German success was on the Roye-Senlis road, where a, few filtered forward lor three miles astride the valley of the Matz, which, however, is ewept on all sides by the French guns. Yon Hutier, who is directing the latest German thrust, is the pioneer of the new tactics. He had six weeks in which to prepare since the stoppage of his March offensive, but the arrest of Yon Boehm's army before the forest of Villers Cotterets forced Yon Hutier to act. This time he lms not attempted to secure with scrupulous secrecy the concealment of his troop movements.

The French command for several days had been aware of exceptional traffic of convoys, and the suspicious activity of the enemy's batteries in the correction of ranges. Otherwise the familiar Yon Hutier tactics were repeated, including the use of shock battalions, light machineguns, machine-rifles, and efforts to effect a local breach in the Allied line, leaving the task of cleaning up the "islands of resistance" to the support troops, while the shock battalions went on to exploit the early successes. If Yon Hutier is able to push down to 'Compiegne, the Germans will probably bring their front from the line of the Aisne to within forty rnilea of Paris, for a final thrust