"Fight to a Finish"

Levin Daily Chronicle, 6 March 1917, Page 3

"Fight to a Finish"

SPIRIT OF FRENCH ARMIES. (From a London Times Chrrespondent with the French Armies). On the whole of the Frencli 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. Dui'ing the last two months I have visited all the chief points of their line from the S'omme 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 Hois Le Pretre, where, as tliey sayi, tout est calme, there is everywhere the same unanimitw of feeling. Any suggestion of peace, except a peace on the terms of France and the Allies, the soldiers would vehemently resist as an, act of foul tnaitorism to their dead brothers-in-arms. No matter at what cost, no matter how much more of their blood must be shed before the end—the only one possible end—is reached, 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 not a hope, but a certainty, that the German on the west front is a beaten man. The infantry especi : ially—and it ds the infantry who .will win the war—know that in every respect they are the superiors of the troops that are opposed to them. The war is long.- It marches slowly. Yes. They admit that. 'But as tliey" look back on the last 2S 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 Ma-roe, the same in front of the Grand Couronne of Nancy, the same at Ypies and the same at Verdun. It will, they are convinced, be the same al'ways. On the other hand, they know that when they themselves have attacked in force—in 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 liave made.

The way in which the.v are waging the war is in itself one of the strongest possible proofs of their determination to wage it to the end. They arc 110 more anxious to be killed or to suffei exposure and privations unnecessarily than the people who are living in comfort and security in the towns and countryside in the Tear which they have defended from the ruthless invader. Therefore they and their officers spare no pains in making their positions as secure and as weather-proof as is possible. Wherever I have gone along the "calm" sections of the front, that is to say, over by far the greater proportion of it, I have found the most complete and elaborate organizations in the way of life-saving devices, and, as 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.