PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 8, 4 October 1918, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

It is now evident that tlic Germans must execute a lengthy retirement on the West front. The only question open is whether they arc capable of doing it without disaster. As affairs are going it is by no moans ccrtain that even the. rains and mud of winter' will so impedo the Allies as to enable tho enemy to fall back in unbroken array. On the Cambrai-St. Qucntin front the Germans arc stubbornly defending the remnants of their fortified lines, but it is self-evident that these lines are fatally breached. Apart from tho progress they have made at and in the. near neighbourhood of Ca.nibrni and St. Qucntin, the British and American forces have driven a broad wedge, into the area northeast of St.' Qucntin, and appeal' to have good prospects of coming to grips with tho enemy in the open. North-east of St. Quentin our I,roups are half a dozen miles east of the lino on which the Germans stood last year, but it is more important that they are in a fair way to break right through the enemy's organised defences into the open country. * * * *

The French and Americans also arc rapidly gaining ground in tho region of the Aisnc and cast towards

Verdun. Tho Germans have been thrown back upon the Aisnc to a point south of Craonne, and are being dislodged also from high wooded country north and northwest of Reims. On both sides of the Argon no Forest also, the Allied armies are sweeping forward. west of the forest the French are now in contact with the important junction of Challcrange, a good eight miles north of the line on which' their present offensive opened.

The state of the ground in Flanders—converted into a morass by rain—and a rapid inilow of German reinforcements, have apparently slowed the Allied advance in that region, but the enemy's prospects are not appreciably improved. It is ovideut that he is now in the unhappy position of being able to meet attack in one quarter only by laying himself open to . new or continued attacks elsewhere. It still holds good that the Allied offensive, apart from its immediate effects, is laying him increasingly open to further attacks. His prospects, could not well bo worse, nor those of the Allies brighter. One correspondent observes to-day that the killing pace now attained cannot be kept up for any length of time, but a German collapse- seems much more likely than a slackening of the Allied offensive through exhaustion. *■* * *

Under such conditions as obtained at an earlier stage of the war the capture of the ancient city of Damascus would have been hailed as an epoch-making event. To-day it is accepted as an incident illustrating the.fact that Turkey's military energies and resources are all but exhausted. Thero is still no official news of Turkish peace overtures, but it is certainly not from any hope of retrieving the situation that they are delayed. ■

Scraps of political news from Germany indicate that the dictatorship of the General Staff has nob yet been effectively challenged. Efforts are being made to form a coalition Government, but tho Conservatives ' at one end of tfic political scale, and the Independent Socialists and Poles at the other, arc standing aloof. Indications thus are, meantime, that though 'the war lords are going far enough in the way of concession to displease tho most conservative faction, they have' no thought of instituting genuine reforms,