NEWS OF THE WEEK
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ENERAL ALLENBY'S offensive in Palestine will go down to history as one of the most brilliant and successful operations of modern warfare. We may express its effect in terms of Biblical geography by saying that, starting from the borders of Judaea, he overran Samaria and Southern Galilee in four days. The Seventh and Eighth Turkish Armies, over sixty thousand strong, whom he attacked late on Wednesday week, had ceased to exist as a military force by last Sunday evening. The Fourth Turkish Army, east of the Jordan, was in full retreat northward towards Damascus by Monday, with our men hard on its heels and the Hedjaz Arabs worrying its flanks. This complete victory over the best troops that Turkey had left to her, stiffened by numerous Germans, who held a strongly fortified line and were well supplied with artillery and machine-guns, was a very great feat of arms. No praise could be too high for the General who planned it, for the British, New Zealand, South African, Indian, and French infantry who forced the Turkish entrenchments, or for the British, Australian, Indian, and French cavalry who with superb gallantry and endurance pene- trated far to the rear of the Turkish armies and cut off their retreat.
