VICTORY DESPATCH.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 March 1919, Page 7

VICTORY DESPATCH.

WONDERFUL DRAMA SIR DOUGLAS HAIG TELLS A GRAND STORY.

London, Jan. 9. Sir Douglas Haig's Victory Dispatch is the most fascinating document of the kind ever issued from the Press. It has the advantage of being penned at a time when it is no longer necessary to observe more than a modicum of official reticence about the facts. What a wonderful drama of high history the dispatch unfolds! At the end of April last, "the immense weight of the enemy's first and heaviest onslaughts, and the unprecedented masses of men and material employed by him, had called for practically the whole strength of the British armies to withstand them, and had left our forces greatly weakened." No fewer than fifteen of our divisions had temporarily to retire from active business owing to this cause, leaving available only 45 others, most of them below establishment, and threefourths of them heavily strained in the recent fighting. Our French Allies were in scarcely better plight, and our American friends, "though rapidly increasing in numbers and efficiency," were not yet ready to take the field in material strength. In fact, the situation was one of "grave anxiety." Everything depended on whether the Allies could keep an unbroken front until August. Sir Douglaß Haig tells how this was done, and how, by a combined process of heavily mounting German casualties and American reinforcements, at l 1 ,« -end of July the complete success °° the counter-attack near Soissons marked the turning point in the fortunes of a terrific gamble on which were staked no less than the future destinies of the world. Sir Douglas Haig pays a high tribute to the foresight and determination of the French Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Foch, in whose hands, the co-ordination of the action of the Allied armies was placed. Sir Douglas Haig throws a flood of interesting light on the period of active defence on the Western front from April to July last, showing how admirably Marshal Foch was served by his Intelligence Department, how skilfully the Allied plans were laid to check the aggressive hopes of the German Grand Staff, how splendidly the fighting men played their part in the drama, and how vitally the single command affected the efficiency of the united armies during that very crucial period. Sir Douglas then proceeds to tell the grand story of the long offensive which, starting with Marshal Foch's smashing drive against the exposed German right flank in the Second Battle of the Marne, a stroke which he tells us had been long in preparation, never ceased until the whistle blew on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of last year. The first great British assault was on the Amiens front,-and this was cleverly camouflaged by an impressive movement of the Canadians towards the Kemmel sector in order to put the wind up the Boche in that locality. Sir Douglas Haig pays a high tribute to "the brilliant and dominating part taken by the Canadian and Australian Corps" in the Battle of Amiens, which within fivo days entirely relieved the great railway centre and saw twenty German divisions heavily defeated by thirteen British infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions, one American regiment and 400 tanks. Nearly 22,000 prisoners and over 400 guns were taken by us and we advanced about twelve miles on a vital sector. • The British Field Marshal's comment on the Canadian and Australian Corps is "the skill and determination of these troops proved irresistible, and at all points met with rapid and complete success." Nor does Sir Douglas fail to do justice to the valor of the New Zealanders at the capture of Bapaume and of the Australian sat the capture of Peronne. In the battle of Bapaume, which included these items "23 British divisions, by skilful leading, hard fighting, and relentless and unremitting pursuit, in ten days had driven 35 divisions from one side of the old Somme battlefield to the other, inflicting the heaviest losses in killed and wounded, and capturing over 34,000 prisoners and 270 guns." Sir Douglas does full justice, if that were possible, to the magnificent campaigning qualities of all his troops—and the Imperial troops were second to none, even in competition with the best of the overseas warriors and the almost incomparable fighting Poilus of France—and he also says a good word for the staffwork of his subordinates. Perhaps the finest feat of arms, however, was the storming of the Drocourt-Queant line, in which the Canadian Corps of the First Army and several crack British divisions specially distinguished themselves. And so the tale goes on until the German General Staff, unable either to fight or to avoid fighting, threw up the sponge to avoid utter disaster and the armed invasion of Germany. The interesting point is that Sir Dougla? regards the victory as one of the most complete in history, and that throughout British armies, which played a preponderating' part, stormed to the assault of "impregnable" positions with the actual numerical odds against them. What the Germans failed time and again to do with the odds, our men did triI umphantly against the odds. .