The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1916. FRANCE’S PART.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 57, 4 October 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1916. FRANCE’S PART.

That wo need have no fear regarding the ability of France to hear her full burden in the great task of crushing German military despotism has be 3 u made evident by her splendid showing of late, and in the way her soldiers have equalled and beaten the much-vaunted “supermen.” Quite an amazing array of resources for smashing the Germans on the Somme were shown to a special correspondent of the Now York Times, who was permitted to spend a week with the French Headquarters Staff •, at the beginning of August. It is the first time during the war that a. neutral correspondent accredited to the French Army had been officially permitted to witness an action on snj gigantic a scale. As a spectacle it proved superb, overwhelming, and concerning it he says: “If any American has the idea that France has been bled white at Verdun and must now depend on the Allies to win, it shouhj be quickly forgotten, for i what I saw on the Somme is the greatest human in all history. The French Army to-day is better, stronger, and greater than it ever was.” The lighting of the past two months proves the truth of this assertion, for to-day Verdun is clear, much ground is retaken, and toe enemy after enormous losses is shaken and whining for peace.- When he previously visited this front the I Now York writer had a fooling that while he was with an unbeaten army, an army that was undiscouraged and hopeful, yet it was an army that was only holding Germany after all. This, time the feeling was so strong it 1 amounted to positive conviction that, this army knew that it "as winning - that when the offensive on the Sera me is over Germany will be final- 1 l y and thoroughly whipped. Whatj impressed him most about it was its steady grinding, its awful implaca-| bility, and, at the same time, it; | deadly precision. What had just commenced on the sector on the oc-| ' casion of Ids visit "’as the same that had happened to the village behind 1 them. The order had given to Je- ! stroy everything. So as he watched, ! ;m d saw what destruction really j meant and how the French guns, dominated and put out of existence, I the German batteries and the Gert man battalions. Fven then, fiom ; Jus own personal knowledge', this coij respondent was able to state that tin* • German losses had been so great and 1 the French so small, as to be one of | the wonders of the war. The. colonel j ,of one regiment said to him: ‘ Gui- [ ing the entire offensive 1 l° st fm!r men killed and fifty wounded. Those

who wore killed were careless.” Tn the great advance on the Sunday before he wrote the German losses were estimated at ten thousand against seven hundred trench killed and wounded. If is not wonderful that Germany now prays foi peace. >