Forward with the Americans
New murder traps have been set by the Germans to catch unwary Americans in the towns and cities from which the enemy has been driven. On the floors in houses were found glass bulbs or bladders, full of phosgene gas to poison our men when entering. Other deposits of the same gas were left in tiny bags under helmets, as the Germans know that souvenir collecting is a passion of Americans. The captain who led the advance patrol of 30 Americans into a captured town saw in the dining-room of a small hotel a loaf of bread on the table, with a knife sticking in it. Suspecting a snare, he called upon a German prisoner to withdraw the knife. The effect was a violent explosion. A bomb had been left in the loaf, but only the prisoner was injured. When the captain reached the hotel a German officer came out, speaking excellent English, saying he desired to surrender. The American pulled out his revolver and jumped back barely in time to escape a rain of bullets from a machine-gun hidden under a cellar door.
Machine-guns, which have practically supplanted rifles with the Germans, are the bane of the overseas soldier, yet the Americans throw themselves against the pernicious weapons with almost superhuman audacity. Set up in rocky nests, clumps of bushes, or along ridges commanding fields of uncut grain, they are handled by an experienced enemy who keeps his presence of mind and offers the most desperate resistance before his opponents can come to hand-to-hand conflicts, where the superiority of the fresh and well-fed American troops always manifests itself
In the operating room of a hospital left by the enemy were some rolls of crepe paper, which the Germans have been using for dressing wounds, showing they have little cloth left. We also discovered that some burned bits of harness, instead of leather, were made from composite paper and hemp. A number of motor-cars burned and abandoned by the Germans in their flight had iron tires, indicating that the enemy was out of rubber. Millions of dollars’ worth of German supplies have been destroyed by the retreating enemy. The horizon at night is a succession of gigantic red patches, with occasional roars of touched-off ammunition which they could not remove.
AUGUST 7, 1918Zeppelin down in flames
The Secretary of the Admiralty made the following announcement at 1.40pm yesterday: Five enemy airships attempted to cross our coasts last night, but while still at sea were attacked by Royal Air Force contingents working with the Navy. Three were brought to action, one of which was shot down in flames 40 miles from the coast, and another was damaged, but probably succeeded in reaching its base.
The following communiqué, issued by the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Home Forces, appeared in the later editions of The Times yesterday morning: Hostile airships approached the East Anglian coast about half-past 9 last night (Monday), but have not penetrated far inland.
Aug 6, an East Coast town: The enemy gave the townspeople and visitors in this seaside resort an unexpected, and happily not unpleasant, diversion on Bank Holiday night. In no summer since the beginning of the war have we had so many holiday-makers among us as now. Towards the end of last evening they were amusing themselves in the theatres and picture palaces, strolling along the darkened sea-front, or making merry indoors in little sing-song parties. Suddenly the lights went down. In one crowded theatre every light on the stage and in the auditorium went out. There was no trace of panic among the audience. In a minute or two other lights were provided and the entertainment was resumed, and the audience remained in their places until the end. People standing on the promenade could see 10 or a dozen flashes far out at sea, and could hear the sound of distant explosions, but whether these were the reports of bombs or of gunfire it was impossible to tell. Curiosity was the only feeling aroused. From the standpoint of the onlookers on the shore it was only an added holiday entertainment.
■ In 1916, L15 was shot down in the Thames in March; a Schütte-Lanz airship was destroyed at Cuffley, and L32 and L33 were brought down in Essex, in September; a Zeppelin was destroyed at Potter’s Bar in October; and two Zeppelins were destroyed off the East Coast in November.
In October, 1917, the enemy lost five Zeppelins, which were brought down or destroyed in returning from a raid on England.
Hold fast: message to nation
As the British peoples enter upon the fifth year of war, the Prime Minister bids them “hold fast”. Of course we shall. We have held fast through all the vicissitudes of four years filled with heroic effort, sacrifice unexampled, brilliant hopes, bitter disappointments. Never once under that searching ordeal has the nation weakened in its purpose or doubted itself.
To stop short of victory is unthinkable. We know that we have got to beat Germany, and we know why. Mr Lloyd George does well to remind us that she is not beaten yet. The heavy blows she has received on the Marne have, it is true, filled her with despondency. On all sides there are signs of deep and real depression in Germany. Doubtless the dejection in Austria-Hungary is yet more profound. But the Prime Minister is right when he warns us that the Prussian autocracy is still a long way from making a confession of defeat. The “militarists” know what such a confession would mean for their whole “world-view” and for their whole caste. It would spell ruin, and so long as they imagine that they can escape a step fatal to their every tradition and interest they will try to avert it “by violence or guile”.
They have tried both, and both have failed. The Germans rejected the “just and reasonable settlement” proposed in the Prime Minister’s statement of our war aims to Labour six months ago. That, we remarked at the time, represented the irreducible minimum of our terms. They were refused, and the Central Powers persisted in the partition of Russia and the enslavement of Rumania, in flat defiance of the conditions mentioned by Mr Lloyd George and described, with more precision, in President Wilson’s address to Congress. The onslaught upon the French, now happily shattered, was a desperate attempt to overwhelm the Allies in the West before America could intervene in force. But America was readier than Germany knew, and this scheme has been defeated. We must expect it to be renewed in some form, and to see it accompanied by fresh “peace offensives”. We must be ready for both — indeed, the way of “guile” is, perhaps, more dangerous for the moment than the way of violence. Let us bear in mind that they are weapons of the same enemy, used for the same end.
Menace of a seven years’ war
Lord Rothermere writes in the Sunday Pictorial on “The Menace of a Seven Years’ War”. After four years of war, he says, “we are still very far from our goal”. The importance of the battle of the Marne, he holds, may be exaggerated. Though the strategy of the Germans was bad, their intelligence faulty and their confidence excessive, what should not be overlooked is the tactical efficiency of their withdrawal. There is no prospect of Germany’s early collapse, and there is much to justify those who believe that the war will last at least three years more.
Hopes of an early peace appear to be based on “something or other” happening in Germany, but Lord Rothermere believes such expectations to be unwarranted. The economic position of Germany is not bad enough to compel her to stop fighting, and Germany can dispose of vast forces.
As to the future, it is imperative for the Allies not to be recklessly wasteful of manpower in the field. No nation, certainly not Germany, has been so prodigal of manpower in the battle line as Great Britain has been. France learned her lesson early. We have not learned it even now. Our operations have been conducted as though we had an inexhaustible reservoir of men. The evil consequences which flowed from Passchendaele contributed to the breakthrough near St Quentin last March, which placed France and the Allied cause in jeopardy. There has been far too much secrecy in official statements with regard to these battles. The British tradition appears to be that while admirals must suffer for blunders, generals can do no wrong. This should not continue. A measure should be adopted such as M Clemenceau has introduced in France, by which military commanders, however exalted, may be tried by Courts-martial. In the fifth year of the war it is time British generalship was submitted to ruthless scrutiny, in the interests of the real fighting men.
Civilian control of the Army must be restored. “Mr Lloyd George and Lord Milner are not in control, as they ought to be. Mr Asquith first abdicated by handing unfettered charge to Lord Kitchener. He made matters worse by the notorious Order in Council, since annulled. In Army administration we have never got over these two blunders.”
World-views in conflict
With deepened faith in the goodness of their cause and a growing confidence in decisive victory, the British peoples enter tomorrow upon the fifth year of the war. The year which closes today has brought with it great events, good and evil, but the result has been to strengthen our convictions and to confirm our hope. It has seen the Bolshevists lay Russia prostrate at the foot of Germany, and it has seen America beginning to exert her boundless power on the side of the Allies. It has heaped proof on proof of the truth we have never doubted, that the conflict is one of elementary moral conceptions, between which reconciliation or compromise is impossible.
The German Emperor has himself avowed this truth. The struggle, he most truly says, is a struggle between two “world-views”: the Anglo-Saxon and the Prussian-German. Right, freedom, honour, and morality are at stake. He claims them as the attributes to Prussia-Germany, while he denounces Mammon as the idol of the Anglo-Saxon soul.
The deeds of the combatants are our answer. The people of the United States, President Wilson has told us, were incredulous of German infamies until the reality was burnt into their minds. When the truth was borne in upon them they did not wait to ask whether “militarism” constituted a menace to their material interests. It was a menace to their dearest principles — to their “world-view”, which is ours. These other “Mammon-worshippers”, with a chivalrous idealism unapproached in modern history, devoted their lives, fortunes, and sacred honour to the vindication of their faith in justice and righteousness for all. The Kaiser says their Armies do not frighten him. He knows, and his military advisers know, that their decision seals his doom.
Germany has done for us in four years what we would have failed to do in a generation for ourselves. The development of this new sense of America’s duty to humanity in the mind and conscience of her people has been immeasurably the most momentous event of the fourth year of the war. It is the reprobation, on grounds that are purely ethical, of the German “world-view”. It is the profession by a supreme national act of that “Anglo-Saxon world-view” which the Kaiser rightly judges to be irreconcilable with his own.
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