The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1916. BATTLE OF THE SOMME.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 145084, 8 September 1916, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1916. BATTLE OF THE SOMME.

The lastcst, news from France is distinctly encouraging and cheering. The British and French armies are slowly hut surely establishing an undoubted supremacy over the enemy, and if the cables are to be believed they have now almost completed the capture of the most commanding positions held by the Germans in the sector where the severest fighting of the last ten weeks has taken place. The Germans, it is believed, attached immense importance to these positions, especially to that portion of the line which extends froip Thiepval to Guillemont.' Pozieres, Mouquet Farm, Martinpuicfi, Foureanx Wood, Delville Wood, Contalmaison, Bazentin, and Longrieval are all in this sector. All have been the scene of desperate fighting, and in every case .victory has eventually gone, to the British,

Tliiepval is still in German hands, but it is becoming nntenable and ! when it falls the German lino must, it would appear, fall back towards Bapaumc. The latest cables indicate that the summit of the high ground all along the line from the Ancre to the Somme has now almost wholly been wrested from the enemy. If that is really so it may well be that the immediate future will see a much greater advance, for the Allies will be fighting down instead of up hill. French guns, it is said, also command Peronno, while south of the Somme the French arc also pushing steadily ahead. How far, if at all, the important successes achieved during the last few days have been made possible by a transfer of Germans to the eastern front we cannot tell. Nor does it matter greatly, the essential fact being that if the Germans weaken their line at one point to strengthen it at another the Allies arc ready and able to take immediate advantage. General von Hindeuburg’s chief anxiety is—or was, for he may have changed his mind since he has visited the Somme — the eastern front and it was expected that he would transfer considerable forces from France to the cast. Whether ho has done so is by no means certain, but if be cannot find reinforcements his eastern lino will bo compelled to fall back rapidly when the Salonika armies, together with the Roumanians and Russians on both sicjps of the Carpathians, fully develop their attack. It is now quite certain that Germany cannot afford to send more divisions to the Somme, also that she cannot afford to take men away from there, and the line is gradually being forced back. It may bo suspected also that in no other part of the western line is Germany now strong enough to spare many men for the east. General .Tolfre is pressing hard at two points, on the Somme, and on the Meuse at Verdun. Thai pressure will require all the men Germany can muster to resist, and when the Allies’ pressure in the east becomes so great, as it shortly will, that the German line must be largely reinforced or break, General Joff re may effect a surprise by a new attack at- some unexpected point on the west. It would bring irremediable disaster to the German armies in Franco if the French were, to force their way northwards through Alsace and Lorraine and threaten Met,/, from that direction. The St. Mihiol salient, so long held by Germany, would then have to he given up and the position at Verdun would be completely reversed, while all the German troops westward would be in great danger of being caught iu a trap.