_Special Correspondent with the French Armies_
[Copyrighted in the United States of America]
_The May and June issue of Current History Magazine contained detailed
descriptions of the first and second months of the great German
offensive in France, which began with a terrific blow in Picardy,
apparently with the object of driving a wedge between the French
and British, and then shifted to a deadly attack on the British in
Flanders, aiming to break through to the Channel ports. These phases
of the great battle were described by Philip Gibbs. The new phases,
sometimes called the third and fourth offensives, began May 27 and
June 9, respectively, and are known as the battle for Paris and the
battle of the Oise. The blow of May 27 was delivered between Rheims and
Montdidier, with the evident purpose of breaking the French lines and
clearing the way for a drive to Paris. The descriptions which follow
are written by George H. Perris, a special correspondent with the
French armies._
[This dispatch was written before the drive toward Paris was
was launched, and indicates that Mr. Perris had a clear
and correct idea of the German plan]
May 26, 1918.--The delay of the third act of the German offensive was
abnormal. The first was perhaps, in design and execution, the most
powerful operation in the history of warfare. The second, the attack
in Flanders in the middle week of April, almost certainly began as a
diversion intended to draw the British reserves from the Amiens front
and to fill the interval needed for the reorganization of forces.
Up to the middle of April the German armies not occupied in fighting
could do little but commence the strengthening of their new fronts,
as lines of defense and departure. Their staffs, high and low, must,
however, have been already engaged upon plans for the next push. Six
or seven weeks then have passed in constituting a new mass of attack,
with its armament and transport, in constructing roads and railways,
dumps and supply centres, in bringing forward batteries, airdromes,
hospitals, and so on.
True, this is not as long as the time of preparation for the first
phase of the battle, which may be broadly counted as from New Year's
to March 21. But there should be a vast difference between the mounting
of a wholly fresh offensive and its pursuit into the later stages. A
relentless continuity of pressure is evidently of very great importance
after the advantage of the initial surprise. It is the thing which a
commander will most aim at.
If the Germans did not keep going on the main line of their attack
north and south of the Somme after the middle of April, it was because
they could not do so; and the partial success of their ex-temporized
campaign in Flanders should not disguise from us this significant fact.
It would be useless at this period of the war, when all Germany demands
a decision and nothing less, if the new offensive did not lead to the
capture at least of some place of symbolic importance, such as Rheims,
Verdun, or Nancy. But that would require a force so large as to cripple
the major effort in the northwest. All the military virtue of the
German strategy is against such a dispersal of effort.