TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GENERAL FOCH'S COUNTERSTROKE.
WITH General Foch's sledge-hammer blow at the German flank between the Aisne and the Marne on Thursday week, the great battle entered on a new and promising phase. It is far too soon to say that the crisis is past, or that the enemy has lost for good the strategic initiative which he has enjoyed for the past four months. But we may fairly con- clude that General Foch in assuming the offensive with such vigour and skill has inflicted very heavy losses on the German armies, and upset the ambitious plans of General Ludendorff for an advance on Paris by the Marne as well as by the Aisne and the Oise. It is now clear that the grand attack made by the enemy on July 15th on either side of Reims was a colossal failure. The Germans made their main effort with two armies east of Reims, intending to break through General Gouraud's lines and reach the Marne at Chalons. Meanwhile a third army, west of Reims, crossed the Marne and made for Montmirail. Had this scheme succeeded, Reims and the positions south of it would have been enclosed in a narrow pocket and would have become untenat)le, the whole of the French eastern line would have been outflanked from the north, and the Germans would have profited by the confusion to advance on Paris. The danger was great, but the French Army in Champagne averted it on the first day by maintaining its battle-positions intact and repulsing the armies of Generals von Einem and von Mudra with such prodigious slaughter that they were unable to renew the attack. Having failed in his chief design, General Ludendorff decided to profit by the partial success of General von Below's army to the west of Reims, which had gained ground in the hills south-west of the city and had obtained a footing on the ridge to the- south of the Marne. On the second day of the offensive the enemy made a strenuous attempt to deepen his bridge- head across the Marne, and at the same time to push up the river eastwards towards Epernay—a movement which had some success at first, and which threatened the left rear of the Reims positions. The French Armies, supported by an Italian corps near Reims, offered so strong a resistance that General von Below had to throw in his reserves, and at the end of the third day was still confined to a narrow strip along the southern bank of the Marne. While the enemy was thus absorbed in the attempt to push eastward and southward, General Foch on Thursday week suddenly struck hard at the lon,,g German western flank, and in a few hours had transformed the situation. Good strategy always seems to the layman to be obvious. The German General Staff must have known that it was taking grave risks in holding the long line of thirty miles between the Aisne west of Soissons and the Marne at Chateau-Thierry with the army of General von Boehn, who had at most twelve divisions. But in war it is necessary to take risks, and if the German plans west or east of Reims had been successful, the Allied Commander-in- Chief would have been fully occupied in patching the broken lines. • General Foch's genius lay not in the selection of the place of attack, but in the choice of the right moment when the enemy, having failed in his original design, was hesitating as to his next move. Had General Foch moved on the Tuesday or Wednesday, before the enemy was committed so deeply to the Epernay manceuvre, his opponent might have been reinforced more heavily and more rapidly than was possible on the Thursday. Had General Foch waited a day or two longer, he would have found General von Boehn's army reorganized, and probably far stronger in numbers than it was when the French and Americans attacked. The immediate success of his movement proved that General Foch had timed it correctly. The capture of four hundred German guns by last Saturday morning, to say nothing of over twenty thousand prisoners and many square miles of territory, showed that the enemy did not anticipate a French attack last week, and had been completely surprised and over- whelmed. A Commander-in-Chief who has such intuition and such a power of swift decision as General Foch displayed is a tremendous asset to the Allied cause. Without good leader- ship the best armies may be used to little purpose, as Lincoln found to his cost. We are almost inclined to think that the greatest result of last week's offensive is the revelation to all the world that the Allies have in General Foch a new Marlborough.
The effect of this brilliant episode on the fortunes of a battle which is being waged on the whole front from Flanders to the Vosges must not be overestimated. We may speculate aa to whether the large German salient south of the Aisne from Soissons to near Reims, will be partly or wholly reduced ; whether General Foch will think it worth while to press his advantage ; or whether the enemy will mass such large forces on the Aisne as to make further progress unduly expensive for the Allies. It is• possible that General Ludendorff may seek to imitate General Foch by creating a diversion elsewhere, perhaps in Flanders, or on the Meuse south of Verdun, or before Amiens. A new German offensive may be launched at any moment in these or other sectors of the Western Front. Ypres still lure a the Bavarian Crown Prince just as Reims has tempted the German Crown Prince, and it would not be surprising if the enemy were to seek in Flanders the victory denied to him in Champagne. He may think that British reserves have been used in the stiff fighting west of the Montagne de Reims, where our troops have done so well, and that a renewed 'attack on the Ypres Salient would at last, after four years, give him the battered ruins of which we have denied him possession. The under- lying problem, to which the General Staffs alone possess the key, is that of man-power. If the enemy has still considerable reserves, he will resume the offensive. If his reserves are running low, he will probably not do so, unless, indeed, he is actuated by sheer desperation to try the gambler's last throw, regardless of consequences. We have no means of elucidating this problem, but we may at least point out one or two considerations which bear on it. First of all, the enemy's total losses in this year's campaign must have been very great. He has made five offensives on a very large scale, each of which meant days of heavy fighting on wide fronts, and each of which was indecisive. Modern attacks which do not succeed are apt to be very costly. In a single day at the Sorame some of our divisions are said to have lost forty per cent. of their numbers. In view of the ever-increasing intensity of artillery and machine-gun fire, it is probable that the proportion of losses sustained in an attack that is pushed home and yet fails is larger now than it was two years ago. There is nothing inherently improbable in the French report that the two German armies, a quarter of a million strong, which attacked in Champagne on Monday week lost fifty thousand men. It is stated also that the 123rd German Division, which was engaged first with the Italians and then with the British to the south-west of Reims, had last Saturday night less than six hundred men surviving out of its nominal strength of nine thousand. Of course such heavy losses are exceptional, but when hundreds of thousands of men are engaged a moderate daily rate of casualties means a very large butcher's bill. Dr. 1Vekerle told the Hungarian Parlia- ment that the Austrians in their defeat on the Piave lost a hundred thousand men, and that their former offensives had involved equal losses. He may have been guilty of an under- estimate, as the Hungarians seem to think, but his statement illustrates the necessary cost of a large modern offensive. At least three out of the five German attacks of this year have been carried out on a scale comparable to that of the Austrian venture, and there have been innumerable lesser actions. General Foch's offensive alone, in yielding over twenty thousand prisoners, probably placed four times as many Germans on the casualty-list. We may safely infer, then, that the enemy's losses since March have considerably exceeded half-a-million, and that half of his reinforcements from the Eastern Front have been put out of action. Again, it is possible that he has used up a good deal of his best material in these attacks. There is same uncertainty as to the nature of the much-advertised "storm troops," who do not appear to be such picked specimens of the German soldiery as is commonly believe& But it is natural that the enemy should employ his best divisions in critical operations, and where these have failed, his loss has been all the greater. Furthermoredt must be remembered that Germany is not able even now to con- centrate her whole effort on the Western Front. She has a considerable force in Russia and in Finland. She has had to send reinforcements to stiffen the Turks in Syria and, oddly enough, to check the Turks in the Caucasus. It is possible, too, that she may have to help the Austrians in Italy and nearer home as well. With these liabilities to meet, and . with her heavy casualties, Germany cannot have much left of her Eastern armies to spare for further offensives. We are confirmed in this belief by the mere fact that General Foch has struck. He has held his hand until now because he was conscious of his inferiority in numbers. His attack shows that in his opinion the Allies, with the splendid support of America, are now once more on level terms with the enemy.
It must be remembered, however, that the German Govern- ment are not free to consider their next move from the purely military standpoint. They have staked their existence oh victory, and if they see that defeat is inevitable next year, when the American Army in France may be two millions strong, they may decide to precipitate the issue by resuming the, offensive when cool judgment would dictate the opposite course. On the other hand, there is evidently a strong party within the Government which dislikes the further expenditure of German lives to no purpose. Herr von Kuhlmann in telling the Reichstag that a military victory had become impossible was not speaking for himself but for the high personages who distrust General Ludendorff but are afraid to quarrel openly with him. The singular disappearance of Germany's former idol, Marshal von Hindenburg, suggests that there have been violent disputes in the inner circle of Germany's rulers, and General Ludendorff's failure on the Marne must accentuate these quarrels. It is clear that the German masses want peace very badly indeed, and that they are feeling the pinch not of starvation but of insufficient feeding to a greater extent than in former years. They are very far from being ready to admit defeat, since the Govern- ment have taught them to regard even reverses as victories, but they are becoming despondent and unsettled. General Foch's counterstroke on the Marne and his successful thrust near Montdidier may have a greater effect on the dispirited German public than is supposed, since they have been encour- aged to look for a victorious advance at all points. In these circumstances the German Government may conclude that it is safer to proceed with the offensive, if they can, than to dis- courage and depress their .people by returning to the passive defensive tactics of last year. On the other hand, Germany May try to seek new victories elsewhere, in Macedonia or Syria, and thus maintain the Emperor's prestige among the people. The Allies can await the issue with perfect confidence. The enemy may gain further local successes, but his final defeat is now assured.
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