FRENCH PRESS COMMENTS

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 140, 13 June 1918, Page 7

FRENCH PRESS COMMENTS

(published in the times.)

PARIS, 11th June. Paris is still the most optimistic city in Europe, and regards in a stoic spirit the present campaign and the enemy's prolonged effort for the destruction of the French armies. L'Himme Libre says : "Critical moments will recur. Yon Ludendorff aims at a distant objective, in which Paris is only an incident." The Petit Journal warns the public of the seriousness of the present fluctuations. , The present objective is not Paris, but Compiegne and Villers Cotterets, as preparations for a supreme effort converging on Paris. The fighting indicates that the Franco-American reserves are entering the battlefield. , The Matin declares that the enemy's efforts cannot continue.

{HEUTER'S, TELEGRAM.)

PARIS, 11th June. M. Henri Bidou, writing in the Debats, bases the hope of the' Allies' success on the stupendous wastage of the Gorman effectives. In the first two offensives the enemy employed the equivalent of 260 divisions, and then threw in the equivalent of a further 53 divisions ;for the offensive which commenced on 28th May, and a further 15 in the present attack. M. Bidou maintains that this prodigious effort cannot be kept up indefinitely, and calculates that the time is approaching when the German Army will reach a state of dangerous fatigue, which will synchronise with the final preparedness of America's young and vigorous army. M. Marcel Hutin states : "The advance in the centre is due to a large number of tanks, which were suddenly launched, and which our artillery had not succeeded in destroying. The. enemy's object clearly is to establish a straight front along Montdidier, Compiegne, and Chateau Thierry, outflanking the Forest of Villers Cotterets.''