ALLIED ARMIES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVII, Issue LXXVII, 2 August 1918, Page 3

ALLIED ARMIES.

THEIR STRONG DEFENCES

THIRTEEN LINES OP EARTR-

WORKS

(Sydney Sun's London Correspondent.) LONDON, July 12. If anyone imagines that' the British armies are depressed or disheartened by the buffetmgs they have received this year he is wrong. I have had an unusual opportunity of judging their condition during my visit, and of seeing .the British defensive preparation from the air and from a motor car, during many miles of travelling, visiting the front lines and talking with men, regimental officers, and generals. The great percentage of the army has been through the fiercest trials, though some divisions, including Canadians and New Zealanders and various veteran British formations, missed the fighting and are still perfectly fresh. There is no noticeable difference in the morale of those which received the •worst handling and the fresh divisions. They are all as cheery and as confident as ever, and well satisfied that the transition to defensive tactics is now complete. Everything is ready for the Boche, wherever he may strike. Certainly a decline in the physique of the British as compared with early in 1917 has become obvious, but the ■standard of the Germans has declined far more. War inevitably takes the heaviest toll of the best men of the nations.

The men show the same imperturbability, almost cocksureoiess, the same cheery faith in Britain, the same gameness in fighting. The only noticeable difference in their habits is that reverses have taught them to dig. It wae always difficult in the old days to get the British to concentrate for long hours on trench-making. They were an offensive army, especially equipped with all manner of mobile transport and trained for advance. Now they are digging and engineering, concentrating day and night.

It is no secret, since the Boche aeroplanes see it, to say that the British have, in some places, 13 lines of earthworks, many miles deep, whilst along the whole front the defences seem to be morei stable than they were in March, You pass line after line of wired, half-dug trenches, far behind the front, and see men of all 6orts of nationalities still digging more. It is perhaps needless to say that the British armies are not ashamed of anything which happened in 1918. The general attitude is one of satisfaction that the Boches' enormous concentrations failed to pierce the line. The average Tommy does not donbt the armies' capacity to withstand the Germans until the Allies are ready for the supreme offensive^