_Friday, April 12._--The enemy is playing a great game in which he is
flinging all he has into the hazard of war. He has, of course, a
stupendous number of men, and, while holding his lines across the Somme
after his drive down from St. Quentin and playing a defensive part
against the French on the British right, he has moved up to the north
with secrecy and rapidity a large concentration of troops and guns for
new and tremendous blows against Haig's forces. This is continuing his
now determined policy to crush England before either France or America
is able to draw off his divisions by counteroffensives.
So now the British troops in the north are faced by enormous forces.
Nearly thirty German divisions are against them from Wytschaete to La
Bassée Canal, and with those troops are innumerable machine guns, trench
mortars, and massed batteries of field guns, very quick to get forward
in support of their infantry.
This northern offensive is as menacing as that which began to the
southward on March 21, and the gallant men among these little red brick
villages in French Flanders and in the flat fields between Bailleul and
Béthune are greatly outnumbered and can hold back the enemy only by
fighting with supreme courage.