Evening Post. THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1918. THE GERMAN EFFORT

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 16, 18 July 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1918. THE GERMAN EFFORT

The big German attack seems to have been a failure. How costly a failure, reckoned not alone in enemy losses but balancing these against the Allied losses and also the ground gained and still to Ie gained, is still to-be told. The offensive is not yet over;, we do- not know yet whether Reims can be retained by the French. Very likely it will have to be given up; but even if it is, unless the Germans have much better results than they have had so far, the failure will be relatively considerable. Some of the reasons for the inadequate results attained may be arrived at easily enough. The first and chief of them is that the French had a very good idea of what was going to happen. This is proved by tha remarkable promptitude of their counter-bombardment, which, according to one account, began before the German batteries opened their heavy preparatory fire. This foresightedness was due in part, no doubt, to the collection of information, by the various available channels, much, of it perhaps as the result of the long series of effective raids of' which we have, lately heard so much. And, assuming that an offensive intended primaiily as a diversion.on a big scale was probable, the Reims sector was that on which ifc might very reasonably have been expected. Surprise, then, failed, and by so much the attack was robbed of its sting.

Another causs for the small success attained may have been inferior artillery preparation, for the reports lay emphasis upon the number of Germans killed in the French entanglements east pf Reims—a rather surprising feature of the battle. Then it is quite likely that the enemy has had to use in this attack troops of lower quality than he' has hitherto entrusted, with such work, for tho simple reason that many of his best are gone, and the remainder are too valuable to waste upon subsidiary efforts. The Authors of' the reports from which the cabled extracts are taken are curiously reluctant to give up the idea that this is the enemy's great effort. It is a case of the wish being father to the thought. From the beginning of this year, at least until circumstances compelled the adoption of a different point of view, it has been widely asserted and accepted that the enemy's man-power had so little margin, if any, that liis offensive power was likely to be restricted to very few efforts. ■ This view cannot have been entertained by those at the head of affairs, and they" have to some extent endeavoured to correct it; but each German attack has been heralded in the cable news in the same way.

Everything about the offensive argues against its being the enemy's big effort,, except the statement that the troops used include some from Prince Rupprecht's army, which is the force hitherto massed against the British. Even that is not very important evidence in the present state of oui information, because the loan of these troops may have been made up for in a, quite adequate way. There is every probability if the offensive had prospered, in the way that the Crown Prince's did a month ago in its early stages, the Germans would have been ready to follow, up their advantage; equally likely that, whatever their preparations were for so doing, they would not pursue them without due encouragement from the early results. To that extent we may consider that the offensive contained the germ of a possibly decisive operation. But the locality of the offensive is the strongest argument' against a real decision being attempted except as the indirect result of the battle.