When Germany Was Defeated
Captain Cyril Falls, the Military Correspondent of The Times, has performed an important service in preparing his excellent pamphlet, Was Germany Defeated in 1918? (Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs, 3d.). None of Hitler's lies has been more persistent or more congenial in Germany than the fiction that the Allies did not inflict upon her a military defeat; but it can only be shown to be a lie by a careful his- torical account of the hundred days' fighting in 1918 in which the German armies were so thoroughly hammered that they could neither continue their resistance nor retreat without breaking up in disorder. The Allied offensive at length deprived the German armies of the use of one great lateral railway running through Mezieres, Hirson and Aulnoye, and the capture of these junctions restricted them to lines of retreat wholly incapable of bearing their full weight. Such was the strategy. By November 6th the Allies were near Aulnoye and Mezieres and the Germans were compelled to accept Marshal Foch's terms for an armistice. The account given by Captain Falls is simple and clear. The evidence is well marshalled. Anyone who reads the pamphlet must be convinced that the Germans were completely defeated in the field. The lie they persistently disseminate regarding that is irrefutably exposed for what it is.
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