There has been another week of very heavy fighting in
France. The enemy's L-shaped front still hinges on the St. Gobain Forest between the Oise and the Aisne, but both the western and the southern sides of it are crumbling away under the incessant hammer- blows of Marshal Foch. The enemy evidently wishes to withdraw his centre so as to straighten and shorten his front, on a line from Ostend, or perhaps Antwerp, through Maubeuge, to the Meuse Valley and Metz. But he cannot make an orderly retreat while he is being harassed continually from the west and the south. Marshal Foch's evident object is to maintain the pressure on both the enemy's flanks so as to give him no choice. A definite breach in either flank would lead to a hasty retirement of the forces in the whole vast salient, with heavy losses in material if not in men, or to a new Sedan. •
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