THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 77, 27 September 1918, Page 6

THE WAR

The chief centres of interest,are still in Macedonia and Palestine, in both of which theatres Germany's allies' are in . process of ''■being very severely knocked about. General Allenby's operations were so swift and successful that in a few days Ihey cleared nearly the whole of Samaria of the two Turkish armies which occupied it, at a cost reported to be only about one-tenth of the number of prisoners captured. The northern limit of his advance is, roughly, a, line from Acre on the Mediterranean coast to the west side of the Sea of Galilee, and here hia troops, already well into the Galilean hills, hold the only road from the coast inland until Tyre is reached. At present it seems that his object here will be not to advance north, but to hold sufficient country to ensure the safety of the Haifa railway from attacks from the north, so that it will be a. safe main line of communication. Acre is an admirable left flank for this defence; on the right Tiberias, on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee, has now been occupied.

For all practical purposes the country west of the Jordan may, be considered as done with for the time being, and the war zone has been removed east of the river. Somewhere south of Dera, where the Haifa branch . joins the Hedjaz railway, is the Fourth Turkish Army, along with such broken remnants of the •Seventh and Eighth as managed to escape across the river. The position of these forces is not disclosed, and it is not clear whethor Dera is occupied by the troops of the King of the Hedjaz. . But Amman, fifty miles further south, is in British hands, and the Turkish Army a.ppeai-s to be south of this point, with its base at Maan,. 70 miles south of the Dead Sea, its business being apparently the protection of the Hedjaz railway from attacks by.the British in Sinai and the Arabs. This army's communications with the north are thus effectively cut off, and. it is reported to-day that ■ the army is surrounded and in danger of annihilation. Its exact degree of danger cannot be gauged until more is known of its freedom in the south; but so long as the Hedjaz railway remains firmly held in part it is not likely to become very dangerous.

The Macedonian offensive goes ahead by leaps and bounds. Veles has been captured, and 'the British have entered Bulgaria south of Strumnitza. The occupation of Veles, as can be seen from the map published yesterday, cute all the roads and railways leading ;north from the Serbian frontier, except; that of Tetovo (otherwise Kalkandclen), and this is a bad road. The British advance upon Strumnitza has cut the only road leading east from the Vardar Valley. When it iB remembered that the existing roads represent, in such highly' mountainous country, the only channels by which an army, or oven large numbers of men un: hampered by impedimenta, can move freely, it will bo seen that the Bulgars who have not already escaped are in a terrible position. Allied forces have readied almost to Ishtip, east of Veles, and at this point will block important roads which run north and south and cast and west through it, and further interfere with the Bulgarian movements.

In the meantime the Bulgarians on the Monastir front are not clearly located. Apparent^ there are still fighting forces in tho neighbourhood, but their withdrawal along the Tetovo (Kalkandelen) road is to be expected as an early development in view of the large risk that the Serbians may move out of Veles to Uskub and along the road west to Kalkandelen and cut them off. The enemy will almost certainly carry as many troops as possible from his western sectors to Uskub and try to save the situation on the plains of Kumanovo, east of that centre; but he must gain as much time as possible in order to disentangle his force* in Albania, where the communication's are very scanty for swift movements.

A new offensive on a big scale has been begun by the French and Americans. It is not located, at the time of writing, beyond the statement that it is in the Champagne; but, as it is stated to cover a front of 54 miles, it must, if in the Champagne, extend from the Argonne Forest, which bounds the Champagne on the east, to well west of Reims, along the Vesta front. The only information available at the moment is that all the first objectives have been captured. ' On the front facing the Hindenburg line there is no notable change in the past few days. There has been much heavy fighting in the neighbourhood of St. Quentin, where the country is hilly and presents problems of considerable strategical interest. Mr. Beach Thomas supplies an interesting note today on the development of water-power by the enemy along linos not contemplated by ecouomiite. -They-fti'e.estend-

ing the flooding of the broad river valleys south of Douai and east of Lens, so as to block the manoeuvres of the British tanks and render safer the flanks of the defences of Douai and Cambrai.