THE ADVANCE.

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 3001, 24 July 1916, Page 4

THE ADVANCE.

FORETOLD BY COL. MAUDE. BEGINNING OF THE END. Wo are very surely nearing the point whore the enemy, for want of men, will no longer be able to hold his immensely extended fronts;- then his overstrained system will collapse under tlie heavy blows our armies are ready to rain upon it (wrote Col. F. N. Maude, the well-known military expert, in the June number of the Royal Magazine).

An illustration as follows will precisely indicate the position. Take the map of Europe, in any sixpenny school atlas, and stretch an ordinary indiarubber baud round the German and Austrian boundary lines as they existed before the war; pin it down with drawing-pins, and then" stretch if to include .successively all the territory overrun by the enemy forces. Then imagine insects capable of eating rubber, if such creatures exist, steadily gnawing it —in France, all across Russia, in the Balkans, and so forth—always keeping pace one with the other, so that the band will snap as nearly as possible siniultaneously 011 every front, and picture how the broken pieces will roll upon their several centres —the drawing-pins.

Something very like this must happen to the German armies before very many months are over, and the more simultaneously the ruptures occur at the different points of attack, the more catastrophic will be the final destruction.

The groundwork of this plan was laid at the French General Headquarters at a meeting which took place shortly after the failure of the Germans to break our lines at Ypres. How far we may have to light our way beyond the Rhine into Ihe middle of Germany will depend principally on the progress made by the Russians and Italians 'Towards the meeting of the Allies. My own ddea has always been that the Germans will attempt a final stand between Muiden-Padenborn and Hanau, their extreme left resting on the Tlniringian Forest, where a groat French army moving down the right bank of the Rhine from Basle will work round their Hank, while the rest of the Allied forces from the West will press forward on a broad front by all possible roads and river crossings. Once the Allies have reached Berlin ami joined hands, will follow a period of negotiations, during which as the Germans did before Paris in 1870 for the French, we shall give the enemy facilities to elect a new Government with which we can treat.

Exactly how long this final stage may take, no on e can tell with certainty, but from the experience of many former campaigns six months to a year should see the end of the reckoning with "that bitter and hasty nation," who, like the Chaldeans of old. "marched through the breadth of the land to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs."