SHORTENING FOES' LINES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 210, 12 February 1915, Page 6

SHORTENING FOES' LINES.

GERMANS MUST RETIRE. Vancouver, January 2G. Mr Uillaire Uclloe', writing to the paper ami Water regarding tins of iSoissons, points out the remarkable similarity to what happened at Steinbach. a .strong French offensive wa« ordered with no more tilian the troops on the spot against a particular section of the long Gorman ■'•tie. It succeeded, and after a delay in tlic one case of 4S hours at Soissons. and iu the other of nearly four days at f?teinhach, very large German reinforcements arrived and reversed the French attack. The German count erod'encc spent itself, and did not 'proceed further. Mr Belloc deduces that the Germans, never knowing quite wit (ire the French are going to attack, are in great peril of having their line broken whenever an attack on a considerable scale is delivered. Tlicy are, therefore, reluctant to take the initiative, and hurry men from elsewhere to meet it. A further conclusion is that they draw men from other part* of the line, not from reserves or new formations.

Tie states that tile problem of the Allies i 3 not in gradually pushing back the opposing force, but in compelling Mat force under pressure to shorten lines already stretched as far as thev can be consistently with being held at all. When tilie time comes for'this compulsory shortening of these lines a retreat' by the enemy cannot take the form of a gradual retirement from one ]nv of trenches to another close behind Tl, can take the form onlv of a wholesale retirement, involving either tile evacuation bv_ the Germans of north France and half of Belgium, or of the evacuation of Alsace. Analysing the German renort that SOflO Frenchmen were killed in the reverse at, Soissons and fitlM 'prisoncs taken. Mr Belloc characterises it as nonsense.