BERLIN COMMUNIQUES

Grey River Argus, 23 December 1916, Page 8

BERLIN COMMUNIQUES

- GLOSSING OVER DEFEAT. The following notes were communicated to the British Press by the military authorities:— To do his justice . the German official reporter. whose communiques are sent out by wireless for nervous Allies and critical neutrals to read day by day. has been less untrue than usual during the second half of August. " His report is still- a work of fiction, but, like some other novels, it partly rests upon fact, although the facts of the fortnight are, from the author's point of view all bad. They are these : — The Germans have lost Maurepas to .the French. They have had the nose of their Leipzig salient bitten off by the tnjrlish. who have advanced step by step to within 700 yards of . Thiepyal. A series of successful- local. attacks have planted the English Army gnnlv. on the central ridffe of the battlefield everywhere, except near Thiepval and near Ginchy. A similar series of attacks have carried the French to a new line 200 yards east of Maurepas. Along- a larffe part of the battlefront between the Somme and the Ancre the Allied troops are now holding- a line that was German on August 15th, and at no point in that front do the Germans now hold any c-round that was then held by tb£ ; Allies. There has been ding-dong fifirhtine- at many places, but all the net e-ain in all this fighting is an Allies gain. The Allies have taken more than 2500 prisoners during th- 155^ 1 ? 16 - The German ' wireless,, which has never been shy of claiming all the prisoners it can. claims 61. The chief losses of ground are admitted in the wireless with comparaive frankness. "A* corner forming a salient was lost." "The enemy secured advantages in the Longueval-Del-ville Wood sector." "The village of. Maurepas is at present in the enemy's hands." "South-west of Martmpn'ich the enemy succeeded in forcing back our first line on a narrow front." "On both sides of iGuille"'mont. . . the enemy raptured and Hold portions of trench." Of course, there are many omissions. Nothing is said about the almost continuous stream of German prisoners into our hands. Nothing in the wireless would convey to an unguarded reader the fact that the Allied advance was a general advance, though carried out by sections on dif ferent days, or that the dominant watersKed had as a whole passed into British hands. The hard facts, when admitted, are admitted briefly and -by the way. and their hardness is nadded with much verbiage about "sanguinary" repul<=»* of British attnrVs. sofie of which were never, made, so far as anyone in the British Army knows. When the wireless admits that "we somewhat shortened our lines." it arHs "in obedience to orders received" as though th.at made things better. When the enemy "succeed in forcing back our front line" near Martinpuich. it is "to another line close behind." as second lines generally are. When part of a German front trench is "gievn up" it is described as a "completely destroyed trench, in a way that reads as if the German troops had peacefully quit-, ted a' decayed residence to seek more modern quarters. We need not quarrel with this finessing. Compared with the past, it shows an improvement. For, as a rule, its author has not finessed about reverses, but simply 'denied them for quite a.' long .time after they took place. In the last fortnight of August he has been swallowing unpleasant pills almost promptly, and may perhaps be excused the wry faces which he finds helpful in doing so. But in. one particular case he goes rather too far. and. introduces us to a quite new trick for concealing reverses. The wireless of August 26th contains the sentences : "Infantry attacks took place . in . the evening in the Thiepval-Fourneaiix,. (High) Wood sector and. near Maurepas. They were repulsed." Who would have guessed that the infantry attacks ihus repulsed were German — being, in fact, made by the Prussian '"iuard ? This I ingenious employment of_ ambigum should be looked out for in the Geiman wireless in future.