"FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

Western Star, 20 March 1917, Page 1

"FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

The London “Times’” correspondent with the French armies writes under date December 10; On the whole of the French front there is only one opinion about the war and its inevitable future. It is important that the public in England should know exactly what that opinion is. Let there be no mistake about it. The soldiers of France are absolutely resolved that the war shall be fought to a finish, and they have not the faintest shadow of a. doubt that the end of it will be a decisive victory for the arms of the Allies. Nothing short of that will satisfy them. During the last two months I have visited all the chief points of their lino from the Somme to Belfort. Everywhere I have found the same spirit. In the mud of the Somme and Verdun, where the tornado of shells never stops, in the snows of the Vosges and of Bois le I’retre, where, as they say, tout cst calme, there is everywhere the same unanimity of feeling. Any suggestion of peace, except a peace on the terms of France and the Allies, the soldiers \ ould vehemently resist as an act of foul traitorism to the r I dead brothers-ip-arms. No matter at what cost, no matter how much more of their blood must be shed before the the only one possible —oiid-'V-—('cached, they have counted the cost and they are ready to make the sacrifice. The French soldiers who are doing the fighting have unshaken confidence in General Joffre and their other chiefs, and nut a hope, but a certainty, that the German on the west front is a beaten man. The infantry especially—and it is the infantry who will win the war—know that in every respect they are the superiors of the troops opposed to them. The war is long. It marches slowly. Yes. That they admit. But as they look back on the last twenty-eight months they remember that on every one of the great occasions, the crucial tests, when the battle has resolved itself into the obligatory final attack by ■ the infantry, the German infantry has failed. It was the same on the Marne, the same in front of the Grand Couronneof Nancy, the same at Ypres, the same at Verdun.' It will,..they are convinced, be the same always. On the other hand, they know that when they themselves have attacked in force—m Champagne, on the Somme, at Verdun —they have always proved themselves the better fighters, however small the advance, owing to the conditions of modern ' warfare, which they have made. The way in which they are waging the war is in itself one of the strangest possible proofs of their determination to wage it to the end. They are no mere anxious to be killed or to suffer exposure and privations unnecessarily than the people who are living in comfort and security in the towns and countryside in the rear which they have defended from the ruthless invader. Therefore they and their office; s spare no pains in making their positions as secure and as weatherproof as is possible. Wherever I have gone along the “calm” sections of the front—that is to say, over by far the greatest pm t of it—l have found the most complete ami elaborate organisation ; in the way of life-saving-device., A ' a secondary but enormously important measure, of contrivances and arrangements for making existence* in the trenches and behind them as much like normal peace-life as is possible.