Current History, Vol. VIII, No. 3, June 1918
by Various · English · Gutenberg #41479 · 753,900 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Current History, Vol. VIII, No. 3, June 1918
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Current History, Vol. VIII, No. 3, June 1918
Author: Various
Release date: November 25, 2012 [eBook #41479]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41479
Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Wayne Hammond and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURRENT HISTORY, VOL. VIII, NO. 3, JUNE 1918 ***
[Illustration: VISCOUNT MILNER
The new British War Secretary in succession to Lord Derby. He had been a
member of the War Cabinet since its creation in December, 1916
(_Central News_)]
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR W. R. MARSHALL
Commander in Chief of the British forces in Mesopotamia
(_Central News_)]
[Illustration]
CURRENT HISTORY
_A Monthly Magazine of The New York Times_
Published by The New York Times Company, Times Square, New York, N. Y.
Vol. VIII.
Part I.
No. 3
June, 1918
25 Cents a Copy
$3.00 a Year
[Illustration]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
CURRENT HISTORY CHRONICLED 381
BATTLES IN PICARDY AND FLANDERS 389
THE GREATEST BATTLE OF THE WAR, By Philip Gibbs 398
America's Sacrifice, By Harold Begbie 410
AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN BATTLE 411
Overseas Forces More Than Half a Million 413
American Troops in Central France, By Laurence Jerrold 415
American Shipbuilders Break All Records 418
THIRD LIBERTY LOAN OVERSUBSCRIBED 419
Former War Loans of the United States 421
AMERICAN LABOR MISSION IN EUROPE 424
PROGRESS OF THE WAR 426
GERMAN LOSSES ON ALL FRONTS 431
GREAT BRITAIN'S FINANCES 432
TRADE AFTER THE WAR 434
FINLAND UNDER GERMAN CONTROL 438
Peace Treaty Between Finland and Germany 445
GERMAN AGGRESSION IN RUSSIA 449
MORE BOLSHEVIST LEGISLATION, By Abraham Yarmolinsky 455
LITHUANIA'S EFFORTS TOWARD AUTONOMY, By A. M. Martus 458
THE RAID ON ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND 460
GERMAN U-BOAT CLAIMS: Address by Admiral von Capelle 467
The Admiral's Statements Attacked 469
The Month's Submarine Record 470
A Secret Chapter of U-Boat History 471
SEA-RAIDER WOLF AND ITS VICTIMS 473
Career and Fate of the Raider Seeadler 476
TREATMENT OF BRITISH PRISONERS: Official Report 479
American Prisoners Exploited 484
THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF RHEIMS, By G. H. Perris 485
The Abomination of Desolation, By Dr. Norman Maclean 486
LLOYD GEORGE AND GENERAL MAURICE 488
THE NEW BRITISH SERVICE ACT 491
British Aid to Italy: General Plumer's Report 492
EMPEROR CHARLES'S "DEAR SIXTUS" LETTER 494
THE ISSUES IN IRELAND: Report of the Irish Convention 496
Greatest Gas Attack of the War 504
PLUCKY DUNKIRK By Anna Milo Upjohn 505
GERMANY'S ATTEMPT TO DIVIDE BELGIUM 511
STRIPPING BELGIAN INDUSTRIES: The Rathenau Plan 516
Spoliation of Belgian Churches: Cardinal Mercier's Protest 523
Belgium's Appeal to the Bolsheviki 525
SERBIA'S HOPES AND RUSSIA'S DEFECTION By Nicholas Pashitch 526
RUMANIA'S PEACE TREATY 529
Summary of the Peace of Bucharest 531
Bessarabia Voluntarily United to Rumania 535
THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY By Dr. Morris Jastrow 536
LICHNOWSKY'S MEMORANDUM 539
Full Text of von Jagow's Reply 541
German Comments on von Jagow's Views 545
Germany's Long Plotting for Domination By H. Charles Woods 548
THE EUROPEAN WAR AS SEEN BY CARTOONISTS: 31 Cartoons 551
ROTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS
VISCOUNT MILNER _Frontis_
GENERAL SIR W. R. MARSHALL "
CHARLES M. SCHWAB 394
JOHN D. RYAN 395
STAFF OFFICERS WITH PERSHING 410
LEADERS IN WAR ACTIVITIES 411
BARON STEPHAN BURIAN 426
LEADERS IN IRISH CONTROVERSY 427
BRITISH WAR LEADERS 458
FRENCH AND AMERICAN TANKS 459
AMERICAN REGIMENT IN FRANCE 474
FRENCH CHATEAU IN RUINS 475
MARCHING TO THE FRONT 506
HARVARD REGIMENT IN BOSTON 507
TRAFALGAR SQUARE IN WARTIME 522
TYPICAL SCENE IN FLANDERS 523
CURRENT HISTORY CHRONICLED
[PERIOD ENDED MAY 19, 1918.]
SUMMARY OF WAR ACTIVITIES
Four weeks of comparative calm on the western front intervened after the
furious fighting that had continued throughout the preceding month. The
Germans made several desperate efforts to smash their way through the
British lines to the channel ports, but they failed. The British and
French lines stood firm as granite, and the enemy suffered frightful
losses. The battle lines remained practically unchanged.
From the English Channel to the Adriatic there was complete union of the
British, French, American, and Italian forces under a single command;
these forces, including reserves, were estimated at 6,000,000 men. No
military event of importance occurred on the other fronts, though the
British made some further advances in Palestine and Mesopotamia.
In political matters the month brought events of more importance, chief
of which was the renewal of an alliance between Germany and Austria;
this was accomplished at a meeting of the Emperors.
The acceleration of troop movements from the United States to France was
a feature of the month, the estimate for the four weeks running as high
as 150,000; it was semi-officially stated that in April, 1918, more than
500,000 American soldiers were in France, and that by Jan. 1, 1919,
there would be 1,500,000 of our fighting men at the front, with 500,000
more at transportation, supply, and civil work; the speeding up of
shipbuilding and other war work was significant. The Third Liberty Loan
aggregated more than $4,000,000,000, with 17,000,000 subscribers,
proving a brilliant success. The President by proclamation extended
enemy alien restrictions to women also. A bill was passed enabling the
President to consolidate and co-ordinate executive bureaus, thus giving
him extraordinary executive powers. The sedition law was strengthened. A
new commercial agreement was made with Norway.
In Great Britain the chief event was the triumph of the Premier over a
military group that tried to overthrow his Ministry. There was a
recrudescence of the spirit of rebellion in Ireland. In France the
conviction of the Bonnet Rouge editors on a charge of treason deepened
confidence in the stability of the Government. The German penetration of
Russia continued, and all the evidence indicated that the country was
coming under Teutonic control, economically, industrially, and
financially. The humiliating peace forced on Rumania was ratified, and
the country passed practically under German and Austrian domination.
The month's record of enemy U-boat losses strengthened faith that this
menace was being eliminated and that new allied tonnage would exceed
losses in increasing ratio from May 1, 1918.
The chief naval event was the daring British raid on the German
submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend; the channel at the first named
port was blocked, and the harbor entrance at Ostend, by means of a
second raid, was partially blocked, resulting in a serious hampering of
submarine operations. The Italians penetrated Pola Harbor, May 14, with
a small torpedo boat and sank a 20,000-ton Austrian dreadnought.
SINN FEIN PLOT FRUSTRATED
During the night of May 18 the British authorities in Ireland suddenly
arrested at their homes about 500 of the leading Sinn Feiners on the
charge of having treasonable communication with the German enemy. Among
those arrested were the Sinn Fein members of Parliament, also the
conspicuous Irish agitators and irreconcilables, both men and women. A
proclamation was issued by the Lord Lieutenant declaring that a
conspiracy with Germany had been discovered, calling upon all loyal
Irishmen to assist in suppressing it, and urging voluntary enlistments.
It was believed that this prompt action had prevented a contemplated
uprising, which was being aided by German spies. Comparative calm
followed the arrests.
FOCH'S ARMY COMPRISES ALL RACES OF EARTH
It seems certain that never in the world's history were so many
different races, peoples, and tongues united under the command of a
single man as are now gathered together in the army of Generalissimo
Foch. If we divide the human races into White, Yellow, Red, and Black,
all four are largely represented. Among the white races there are
Frenchmen, Italians, Portuguese, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish,
Canadians, Australians, South Africans, (of both British and Dutch
descent,) New Zealanders; in the American Army, probably every other
European nation is represented, with additional contingents from those
already named, so that every branch of the white race figures in the
ethnological total. There are representatives of many Asiatic races,
including not only the volunteers from the native States of India, but
elements from the French colony in Cochin China, with Annam, Cambodia,
Tonkin, Laos, and Kwang Chau Wan. England and France both contribute
many African tribes, including Arabs from Algeria and Tunis, Senegalese,
Saharans, and many of the South African races. The red races of North
America are represented in the armies of both Canada and the United
States, while the Maoris, Samoans, and other Polynesian races are
likewise represented. And as, in the American Army, there are men of
German, Austrian, and Hungarian descent, and, in all probability,
contingents also of Bulgarian and Turkish blood, it may be said that
Foch commands an army representing the whole human race, united in
defense of the ideals of the Allies. The presence, among Foch's
strategic reserves, of 250,000 Italian soldiers is peculiarly
interesting, as no Italian force at all comparable to this in numbers
seems ever to have operated on French soil, though French armies have
again and again fought in Italy. During the early wars of Napoleon this
was the case, and again in 1859, when the battles of Magenta and
Solferino gave names to two new shades of red. In 1870 also there were
French troops in Rome; their withdrawal, in the Summer of that year,
opened the way for the final union of Italy.
MEETING OF THE GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN EMPERORS
The German and Austrian Emperors held a consultation at German Great
Headquarters on May 12 to discuss future relations between the two
empires. Emperor Karl was accompanied by Foreign Minister Burian, Field
Marshal von Arz, Chief of the General Staff, and Prince Hohenlohe,
Austrian Ambassador at Berlin. Germany was represented by Imperial
Chancellor von Hertling, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, General
Ludendorff, Foreign Secretary von Kuehlmann, and Count von Wedel,
Ambassador at Vienna.
According to an official statement issued in Berlin, all the fundamental
political, economic, and military questions affecting present and future
relations were thoroughly discussed, and "there was complete accord on
all these questions, tending to deepen the existing alliance." In many
quarters the impression prevailed that the result of the meeting
was to define and recognize formally the subservient relations of
Austria-Hungary toward the German Empire. The State Department at
Washington made public a report based upon indications given by the
Berlin newspapers that the agreement made at the meeting concerned three
points:
1. The duration of the alliance was fixed for twenty-five years.
2. Germany and Austria-Hungary are to sign a military convention
imposing upon each much stricter military obligations than did the
preceding treaty.
3. The economic relations will be regulated so as to realize the
plan of Mitteleuropa.
A solution of the Polish question was also arrived at, according to a
newspaper statement published in Berlin, on the lines of complete union
between Austria-Hungary and Poland. Another message said that the German
and Austrian Emperors had selected monarchs for Poland, Lithuania,
Courland, and Esthonia. It was officially stated that no actual treaty
was signed.
One of the most interesting subsequent revelations was that King Ludwig
of Bavaria and King Frederick August of Saxony were also present at the
meeting at German Great Headquarters. Some of the reports represented
these two monarchs as having been present uninvited.
THE PRINCE SIXTUS LETTER
Arthur J. Balfour, British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, replying to
inquiries in the House of Commons, May 16, stated that Emperor Karl's
peace letter to Prince Sixtus, which had been received while Mr. Balfour
was in America, was
a private letter written by Emperor Charles to a relative (Prince
Sixtus of Bourbon) and conveyed by him to President Poincaré and the
French Premier under seal of the strictest secrecy, but with no
permission to communicate it to any one except the Sovereign and
Premier of this country, [Great Britain.] The letter was
communicated to the French and English Premiers under these pledges.
He stated that he had no secrets from President Wilson, and added:
"Every thought I have on the war or on the diplomacy connected with the
war is as open to President Wilson as to any other human being." He
declared that he regarded the Sixtus letter as not a peace effort, but a
manoeuvre to divide the Allies. He declared that they were not fighting
for "a bigger Alsace-Lorraine than in 1870," and added:
If any representative of any belligerent country desires seriously
to lay before us any proposals we are ready to listen to them.
Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade, in the same debate, after
indorsing the preceding statement of Mr. Balfour, added this reference
to Russia:
We have no quarrel with Russia at all. On the contrary, with the
Russian people we have always desired to be on the closest possible
terms of friendship. We are anxious to do all we can to support and
assist the Russian people to preserve Russia as a great country, not
only now, but in the period after the war.
Lord Robert denied that Great Britain had any quarrel with the
Bolsheviki over their domestic policy, saying:
That is a matter for Russia, and Russia alone; we have no other
desire than to see Russia great, powerful, and non-German.
ATTACKS ON HOSPITAL SHIPS
The British Admiralty issued an official announcement on May 1, stating
that it was considered proved conclusively that the British hospital
ship Guildford Castle was attacked by a German submarine in the Bristol
Channel, March 10, and narrowly escaped destruction. At the time the
Guilford Castle was carrying 438 wounded soldiers and flying a Red
Cross flag of the largest size with distinguishing marks distinctly
illuminated. The attack occurred at 5:35 P. M., in clear weather. Two
torpedoes were fired. In evidence of attacks on hospital ships the
British Admiralty quotes the following extracts from the German official
message, sent through the German wireless stations on April 24, 1918:
With respect to the results of the submarine war for the month of
march, the Deutsche Tageszeitung says: "Lloyd George and Geddes
falsify the losses of ships plying in the military service (?
ignoring) so-called naval losses, auxiliary cruisers, guard ships,
_hospital ships_, and very probably also troop transports and
munition steamers, that is to say, precisely that shipping space
_which is particularly exposed to and attacked by the U-boats_.
TWO MORE LATIN-AMERICAN REPUBLICS ALIGNED AGAINST GERMANY
On April 22, 1918, the National Assembly of Guatemala declared that that
republic occupied the same position toward the European belligerents as
did the United States. Guatemala had broken off diplomatic relations
with Germany in April, 1917. On May 7 Nicaragua declared war against
Germany and her allies. The declaration was in the form of a
recommendation of President Chamorro, which the Nicaraguan Congress
adopted with only four dissenting votes. A further declaration was
adopted of solidarity with the United States and the other American
republics at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Nicaragua was the
twentieth nation to declare war against Germany. Uruguay remains a
neutral at this writing. On April 12 the Government asked Berlin,
through Switzerland, whether Germany considered that a state of war
existed with Uruguay, as stated by the commander of a submarine who had
captured a Uruguayan military commission bound for France. The German
Government replied on May 16 that it did not consider that a state of
war existed. Chile refused to ask free passage of Spain for a commission
of Chileans who sought to reach Germany, thereby indicating partiality
to the Germans. Argentina in the President's message, delivered May 18,
1918, reaffirmed its neutrality.
FRANCE'S SECOND TREASON TRIAL.
Duval, who was director of the suppressed Germanophile newspaper, Bonnet
Rouge, was condemned to death May 15 by court-martial for treason, and
six other defendants were sentenced to imprisonment: Marion, assistant
manager, for ten years; Landau, a reporter, eight years; Goldsky, a
reporter, eight years; Joucla, a reporter, five years; Vercasson, two
years and $1,000 fine; Leymarie, former director of the Ministry of the
Interior, two years' imprisonment and $200 fine.
The Bonnet Rouge was an evening paper of decided pacifist tendency,
which lost no occasion of belittling the military and political leaders
and policy, not only of France, but also of England. The attention of
the Government was drawn to it early in 1917, and its editor, Almeyreda,
and its manager, Duval, were under lock and key by August, 1917.
The police investigations showed that the Bonnet Rouge was to a great
extent dependent for its capital upon men whose ardor in the allied
cause had not been notable, and revealed the astonishing fact that M.
Malvy, as Minister of the Interior, had thought fit to subsidize the
paper to the extent of $1,200 a month and to encourage it in other ways.
It also became known to the public that Almeyreda before the war had
been in the closest contact with M. Caillaux and that he had received
from that politician, at the moment when Mme. Caillaux was being tried
for the murder of M. Calmette, the editor of the Figaro, the sum of
$8,000.
Duval, whose journeys to Switzerland had aroused the misgivings of the
Government, was detained at the French frontier station, searched, and
found to be in possession of a check for $32,800 drawn to the order of a
Mannheim banking firm, the business relations of which will appear in
subsequent trials. This check was photographed and was handed back to
Duval by some one of the French military or civil secret service
officials.
Almeyreda had hardly reached prison when he fell seriously ill and was
removed to the infirmary prison at Fresnes. There he died. The official
doctors first of all declared that he had been strangled, and then gave
it as their opinion that he had committed suicide.
Louis J. Malvy, who was at the time Under Secretary of the Interior, and
was Minister of the Interior under Ribot, will be tried by a
parliamentary court on the charge of having been in personal relations
with Duval and of having delivered to the Germans the scheme of the
abruptly ended French offensive in the Champagne in April, 1917.
THE CITY OF AMIENS.
Amiens, the old capital city of Picardy, goes far back into the military
history of Europe. Probably deriving its name from the Belgic tribe of
Ambiani, it was the centre of Julius Caesar's campaigns against those
warlike tribes. Several Roman Emperors had military headquarters there,
and it early gained importance as a bishopric. Evrard de Fouilloy, the
forty-fifth Bishop, began the great Gothic cathedral of Amiens, one of
the finest in the world, in the year 1220, the plans being made by René
de Luzarches, while the work was completed by Thomas de Cormont and his
son Renault in the year 1288, though the two great towers were not
finished until a century later. Because it is intersected by eleven
canals Louis XI. called Amiens "the little Venice."
Only second to the great cathedral in fame is the Hôtel de Ville, built
between 1660 and 1760, in which, on May 25, 1802, was signed the famous
treaty of Amiens, Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, being
plenipotentiary for France. The parties to the Peace of Amiens were
France, England, Holland, and Spain. To Holland were restored the Cape
of Good Hope, Guiana, and other colonies; France received Martinique and
Guadeloupe; Spain received Minorca; Malta went to the Knights of Saint
John of Jerusalem, while Egypt was restored to Turkey. England was
secured in the control of India, and received Ceylon, (which had been
first Portuguese and later Dutch,) and the island of Trinidad. But many
of these dispositions were greatly modified thirteen years later, at the
close of the Napoleonic wars.
In Amiens there is a famous Napoleonic Museum, which has many fine
paintings by Puvis de Chavannes, including "War," "Peace," "Work," and
"Rest." When, on Nov. 28, 1876, Amiens was captured by the army of the
Prussians all religious monuments, including the cathedral, were
scrupulously guarded against any possible damage, and the rights of
private property were respected. Another of the titles of Amiens to fame
is the fact that Peter the Hermit, leader of the First Crusade, was born
there in 1050.
THE RUMANIAN NATION
Of the Emperor Hadrian's colony of Roman veterans at the mouth of the
Danube there remain many architectural monuments, including parts of two
fine bridges across the great river, a language largely Latin in
substance, and the name Romania. The Roman colony spread through the
Carpathians along the Roman road into Transylvania. It was in part
submerged by Hun and Magyar waves of invasion, and the western part of
the Rumanian people, west of the Carpathians, is still under Magyar
rule, while a small number of Rumanians inhabit the Austrian crownland
of Bukowina, once Rumanian soil. The Turks, following in the track of
the Huns and Magyars, once more swept over Rumania and on toward Vienna
and Russia, completely submerging the Balkan Peninsula, with the
exception of the Black Mountain, Montenegro, held by Serbs.
In the nineteenth century the Balkan nations began to extricate
themselves: Greece, with the aid of France, England, and Russia; Serbia,
with the aid of Russia; and the two principalities of Wallachia and
Moldavia, which were later to become Rumania. In the wars of Catherine
the Great and Suvoroff, which Byron has embodied in his comedy epic,
making Don Juan take part in the siege of Ismail, Russia took from
Turkey the Province of Bessarabia, named from an old Rumanian princely
house and largely populated by Rumanians.
The western half of Bessarabia was taken back from Russia and restored
to Turkey after the Crimean War, immediately after which, in 1861, the
two principalities were united in the single principality of Rumania,
under Colonel Cuza, a Rumanian, as Hospodar, or Lord, Turkish suzerainty
being acknowledged. In this way the strip of Bessarabia which had been
Russian for half a century became not Turkish, but Rumanian. When Russia
declared war against Turkey in 1877 she announced to Rumania that she
sought the restoration of her strip of Bessarabian land; and, knowing
this, Rumania became Russia's ally in the war against Turkey, with
Prince Carol as commander of her forces, he being of the Roman Catholic
branch of the Hohenzollerns. In 1881 he took the title of King, to which
his nephew Ferdinand succeeded in 1914.
THE HETMAN OF THE UKRAINE
Writing in 1818, Byron described Mazeppa as "the Ukraine Hetman, calm
and bold," and it is to the period of Mazeppa and even earlier that this
title and office goes back. The word Hetman is of uncertain origin, but
is probably derived from the Bohemian Heitman, a modification of
Hauptmann or Headman. When the Ukraine, the "borderland," was under
Polish suzerainty, in the period from 1592 to 1654, the epoch of "Fire
and Sword," "Pan Michael," and "The Deluge," the Hetman of the
Cossacks, (a Tartar word, kazak, meaning warrior,) was a
semi-independent viceroy.
After the acceptance of Russian suzerainty by the Ukraine under the
great Hetman, Khmelnitski, in 1654, the title and authority of the
Hetman were at first continued, but his power and privileges were
gradually curtailed and finally abolished. It is not certain whether the
word Ataman is a modification of Hetman or a Tartar title; at any rate,
we find the title, "Ataman of all the Cossacks," coming into use as an
appanage of the Czarevitch, or heir apparent of Russia, somewhat as the
title of Prince of Wales is an appanage of the heir apparent of England.
The Czarevitch was represented by Hetmans by delegation, for each
division of the Cossacks, these divisions being military colonies
westward as far as the Caspian, like that described by Tolstoy in his
novel, "The Cossacks."
Writing in 1799, W. Tooke, in his "View of the Russian Empire,"
described the insignia of the Hetman as being the truncheon, the
national standard, the horsetail, kettledrums and signet, a group of
emblems strongly suggesting Tartar influence; the dress of the Cossacks
was, likewise, borrowed from that of the Caucasus Mohammedan tribes, and
in this Caucasian dress the new Hetman of the Ukraine, Skoropadski, took
office at Kiev. His name indicates that he is not a Ruthenian, (Little
Russian,) but a Pole. It has been a consistent element of Austrian
policy to favor the Poles at the expense of the Ruthenians, with the
result that many Poles are strongly pro-Austrian, and hold high office
under the Austrian crown.
PRECEDENTS FOR A SEPARATE ULSTER.
When the Dominion of Canada was formed by the British North America act
of 1867, it included only four provinces, Upper and Lower Canada,
(Ontario and Quebec,) Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Provision was made
in the act for the voluntary admission of Prince Edward's Island, the
Northwest Territories and Newfoundland into the Dominion. While the
Northwest Territories took advantage of this provision, and are now
organized as the Provinces of Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, Newfoundland, with
Labrador, the latter 120,000 square miles in area, preferred to remain
outside the Dominion of Canada, and has a wholly distinct Constitution
and administration, as independent of Canada as is that, for example, of
British Guiana. Compulsion was never suggested to bring Newfoundland and
Labrador within the Dominion of Canada, though Labrador is
geographically a part of the Canadian mainland.
In Australia likewise the union of the colonies was entirely voluntary.
Five of these, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia,
and Tasmania, by legislative enactments, approved by the direct vote of
the electors, declared their desire for a federal union, and the
Imperial Parliament gave effect to this by the act of July 9, 1900. This
act provided for the inclusion of Western Australia in the Australian
Commonwealth, if that colony so desired; and Western Australia shortly
expressed and carried out that desire.
The population of Ulster in 1911 was 1,581,696, (that of Belfast being
386,947;) the population of Newfoundland with Labrador in 1914 was
251,726; the population of Western Australia when it exercised the
option of inclusion in the Commonwealth of Australia was 184,114; it has
since nearly doubled. A similar case of separate treatment, this time
within the United States, is that of West Virginia, which, in 1862,
determined to remain within the Union when the rest of Virginia seceded.
West Virginia became a State on Dec. 31, 1862, and was not re-integrated
in the Old Dominion at the close of the civil war.
COURT-MARTIAL IN ITALY.
Four principal Directors of the Genoese Electrical Power Company, named
Königsheim, Ampt, Martelli, and Hess, early in April were sentenced to
death by court-martial at Milan by being "shot in the spine," and a
decoy girl was doomed to twenty years' imprisonment, while three
associates were relegated to the galleys for life. It was proved that
the condemned men received from Germany wireless messages, to be
forwarded to North and South America for the purposes of its underseas
campaign, and incriminating letters of their treasonable acts were
discovered. Ampt and his three co-Directors received a decoration from
the Imperial Government, but were so successful in deceiving the Italian
Government that they were subsequently decorated as Cavalieres of the
Crown of Italy.
AMERICAN TRADE PACT WITH NORWAY.
The signing of a general commercial agreement between the United States
and Norway--the first agreement of the kind to be entered into by
America with one of the North European neutrals--was announced by the
War Trade Board on May 3, 1918. It was signed by Vance McCormick,
Chairman of the War Trade Board, and Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the famous
explorer, who was sent to the United States at the head of a special
mission.
Under the agreement Norway is assured of supplies to cover her estimated
needs so far as they can be furnished without detriment to the war needs
of the United States and its allies, and Norway, on her part, agrees to
permit the exportation to America and its allies of all Norwegian
products not needed for home consumption. It is provided that none of
the supplies imported from the United States or its allies or forwarded
with the aid of American bunker coal shall go directly or indirectly to
the Central Powers or be used to replace commodities exported to those
countries. This applies to anything produced by any auxiliaries to
production obtained under the agreement. In consequence of the agreement
the War Trade Board announced on May 9 that exports to Norway were about
to be resumed.
Another result of the improved relations between the two countries was
the chartering by the United States Shipping Board of 400,000 tons of
Norwegian sailing ships, to be put in non-hazardous trades, thereby
releasing other ships for traffic in the danger zones. This was one of
the most substantial increases which the American-controlled merchant
fleet has received since its inception.
BRITISH SHIPPING LOSSES
In the May issue of the Fortnightly Review of London appears the
following analysis of the gains and losses of the British merchant navy
since the outbreak of the war:
1914 (August to December.)
Tons. Tons.
Built 675,010? Total losses 468,728
Captured from
enemy 753,500 Total gains 1,429,110
--------- ---------
Total gains. 1,429,110 Balance +960,382
1915.
Built 650,919 Total losses 1,103,379
Captured from Total gains 662,419
enemy 11,500 ---------
------- Balance in
Total gains. 662,419 1915 -440,000
Brought down
from 1914 +960,382
---------
Balance at
end of 1915 +519,422
1916.
Built 541,552 Total losses 1,497,848
Captured from Total gains 545,052
enemy 3,500 ---------
------- Balance in
Total gains. 545,052 1916 -952,796
Brought down
from 1915 +519,422
---------
Balance at
end of 1916 -433,374
1917.
Built 1,163,474 Total losses 4,000,537
Captured from Total gains 1,174,974
enemy 11,500 ---------
--------- Balance in
Total gains 1,174,974 1917 -2,834,563
Brought down
from 1916 -433,374
---------
Balance at
end of 1917 -3,267,937
During the first three months of 1918 the net losses were 367,296 tons;
320,280 tons were built and 687,576 were lost, bringing the adverse
balance on April 1, 1918, to 3,635,233 tons.
GREAT BRITAIN'S WAR EXPENSES
The British Government has issued a White Paper estimating the cost of
the war for Great Britain in the year ending March 31, 1919, at
$12,750,000,000, of which $9,305,000,000 is allocated to navy, army, air
service, munition and ordnance factories, $205,000,000 to pensions,
$750,000 to National War Aims Committee; services not specified,
(presumed to include shipping,) $500,000,000; Treasury loans,
$1,750,000,000; Board of Trade, $265,000,000; wheat supplies,
$230,000,000, of which $200,000,000 is the estimated loss on the sale of
the 18-cent loaf of bread. Subsidies toward the sale of potatoes are
estimated at $25,000,000; purchases of wool and other raw materials are
put at $40,000,000, payment to railways at $175,000,000, and $25,000,000
for timber.
HATRED BETWEEN ITALIANS AND AUSTRIANS
THE implacable hatred which has developed between Italians and Austrians
is illustrated by the following Italian _communiqué_, issued in Rome on
Feb. 11, in reply to the Austrian Supreme Command's denial that the
Austro-Germans were first to bombard cities from airplanes. It points
out that the Austro-Germans first bombarded Udine, Treviso, Padua,
Verona, Venice, Ravenna, &c., massacring defenseless and innocent
populations and ruining valuable art treasures, and adds:
The Italians went to Trieste not to bombard citizens and private
houses, but the hydroplane stations in which are sheltered the
assassins of Venice, and the two vessels of the Monarch type which
were kept by the Imperial and Royal Navy behind the dyke, in the
hope that the Italian elements of the city would help to protect
them and afterward enable them to set out on some heroic enterprise
against the defenseless localities on the Adriatic Coast.
Immediately the hydroplanes, yielding to the indignation of the
whole world, ceased bombarding Venice, and immediately the two
vessels of the Monarch type were removed from Trieste, our aerial
raids ceased, since an understanding was proposed.
We wage war against the enemy's armed forces, and not against women,
children, monuments, and hospitals. In spite of the most solemn
denial issued by the Austrians of the acts which, after the first
bombardments of Padua, Treviso, and Vicenza at the end of December
and the beginning of January, they declared to be a question of
reprisals for bombardments, carried out by Franco-British aviators
on
German towns, the Germans, in substance, gave to be understood what
the Austrians hypocritically wished to hide, that is, that the
pretext of reprisals enabled them to persevere with their nameless
atrocities, which had been imposed upon them by some of their
leaders having yielded to the impulses of a criminal mentality. Thus
it happened that the Austrian Catholic command, bowing to the orders
of the German Lutheran pastors, bombarded Catholic churches in the
Italian cities. And so we see the Austro-Hungarian Government--so
solicitous for peace and love between nations--sowing hatred which
nothing can quench.
THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH
Perhaps some light may be shed on the internal divisions which make the
solution of the Irish question so nearly impossible by a realization of
the fact that the population of Ireland consists of an unassimilated
congeries of races, every element of which except one represents foreign
invasion and conquest.
The earliest race, short, round-headed, dark, appears to be akin to the
Ligurian race of the Mediterranean; this race hunted the huge Irish elks
with flint arrows and axes, and may claim to be the real indigenous
stock, still surviving in the west. The second race, tall, dark,
long-headed, was akin to the Iberians (Basques) of Spain, who also
invaded Western France, and who probably built the cromlechs and stone
circles, since these are also found in Iberian Spain and Western France,
as at Carnac in Brittany. The third race, tall, golden-haired,
blue-eyed, came from the Baltic, bringing amber beads, and building
chambered pyramids, such as are also found in Denmark. The fourth race
to arrive included the Gaels, tall, round-headed, with red hair and gray
eyes; they came from Central Europe, probably by way of France.
Each new arrival was followed by wars of conquest, the Gaels finally
making themselves predominant, but not exterminating the older
races, examples of whom may still be found, with unchanged race
characteristics. In 1169 Norman French and Welsh came, as mercenaries in
the army of the King of Leinster. The Burkes are descended from the
Normans, the Fitzgeralds from the Welsh.
Battles in Picardy and Flanders
Military Review of All Fronts from April 17 to May 18, 1918.
In order to obtain a view of the situation of the German offensive on
April 17, which forms a background for the events to be related in this
review, it is necessary to point out a few controlling facts and
conditions--some long obvious, some recently revealed.
Ludendorff's major plan, based on the assumed shortness of vision on the
part of the Allies, to separate the British from the French and, by
isolating the former in the north and driving the latter toward their
bases in the south, thereby reach the mouth of the Somme, had failed. It
had failed, just as did the plan of Napoleon at Charleroi in 1815 to
separate the English from the Prussians. It failed because the military
genius of the British General Carey and the French General Fayolle on
two separate occasions had closed up gaps in the line of the Allies, and
because the vast masses of German troops were incapable, on account of
their demoralization, of making the fractures permanent.
It is now evident that the demoralization of General Gough's 5th Army,
which began on March 23, not only threatened his junction with Byng's 3d
Army, by forming an eight-mile gap between the two--into which, as has
already been related, Carey moved his hastily gathered nondescript
detachment--but as the 5th Army retreated another gap, gradually
lengthening to nearly thirty miles, was opened between its right wing
and the 6th French Army. Here General Fayolle, who had just appeared on
the field from Italy, did with organized divisions what Carey had done
with his scratch volunteers further north.
From statements made before the Reichstag Main Committee, but more
especially from letters and diaries found on captured German officers,
it appears that both Carey and Fayolle stopped an armed mob, utterly
incapable of taking advantage of the situation it had created as a
disciplined force. Regiments thrown together, officers separated from
their commands, detachments without control, all due to the impetuous
rush forward, could not recover in time to prevent Carey and Fayolle
from completing their work.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING 8-MILE GAP, MARCH 23, WHICH WAS FILLED BY
CAREY'S "SCRATCH DIVISION," WHO HELD THE BREACH FOR SIX DAYS]
But Ludendorff's major plan, having failed in the first month of his
offensive, could not be repeated in the second. Since April 30 there has
been no French, British, Belgian, Portuguese, or American front in
Flanders or Picardy--only the front of the Allies, with the troops of
their several nations used wherever needed by the supreme commander,
Foch.
During the first month of the offensive two angles had been developed by
Ludendorff: The first, the great one, in the south, from a base of sixty
miles with a forty-mile perpendicular and its vertex near the Somme; the
second in the north, from a base of twenty miles with a fifteen-mile
perpendicular and its vertex on the edge of the Forest of Nieppe.
Between these two angles the original front of Lens, from Bailleul north
to Givenchy, still held, fifteen miles in length. There had been
voluntary or forced changes made by the Allies east of Ypres and east of
Arras.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF CRITICAL SITUATION, MARCH 24, 1918, WHERE
GENERAL FAYOLLE SAVED THE DAY BY THROWING HIS DIVISIONS INTO THE
THIRTY-MILE GAP LEFT BY RETIREMENT OF BRITISH 5TH ARMY]
The corollary in Flanders, unless it could be demonstrated, would be
as great a failure as the main proposition in Picardy. And the still
possible successful issue of the latter depended absolutely, as we shall
see, on a complete demonstration of the former. Both have been so far
handicapped by the augmenting mobility of the Allies, their growing
numbers, their centralized command, and their successful insistence to
control the air.
Such was the situation in Flanders and Picardy which confronted
Ludendorff at the dawn of the second month of the German offensive. The
whole problem to be solved was just as apparent to the Allies as it was
to him--to gain the barriers which threatened his angles of penetration,
in order again to utilize his preponderant forces of men and guns on a
broad front. To attempt to extend the vertices without broadening the
sides would mean to court danger, even destruction, at their weakest
points.
His frontal attacks upon Ypres and Arras, respectively from the
Passchendaele Ridge and against the Vimy Ridge, having failed, it became
necessary to attempt to flank the Allies by the occupation of their
defensive ridges. This explains his successful assaults upon Mont
Kemmel, 325 feet high, and his desire to envelop Mont Rouge, 423 feet
high, and his persistent attacks along the La Bassée Canal against the
heights of Béthune, 141 feet, all preceded by diversions between the
Somme and Avre, with concentrations at Villers-Bretonneux, Hangard, and
elsewhere.
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF OPPOSING FORCES IN
PICARDY AND FLANDERS. THE BLACK ARROW LINE ON THE RIGHT SHOULD NOT BE
MISTAKEN FOR THE OLD BATTLELINE, WHICH IS NOT INDICATED AT ALL. GENERAL
SIXT VON ARNIM'S FORCE, EAST OF YPRES, WAS INADVERTENTLY OMITTED]
On April 18 the French made a feint on both banks of the Avre River
south of Hangard, drove in a mile, and picked up some prisoners;
simultaneously the Germans, with a force of 137,000, made a heavy
assault upon the allied front lying across the La Bassée Canal, with a
diversion on the Lys River near St. Venant. Before the day was done
they had switched their attack to the Kemmel sector. In all three places
the Germans suffered repulse, with the loss of a few hundred prisoners.
Four days later the British advanced their lines on the Lys, just as the
French had on the Avre. Then on the 24th came the great enemy diversion
at Villers-Bretonneux, nine miles southeast of Amiens. Here the Germans
used tanks for the first time. The village, lost to the British on the
first day, was recovered on the second, when just to the south the
French and American troops were hotly contesting with the Germans the
possession of Hangard. The sharp salient at this place made it difficult
for the Allies to hold, while its retention, except as a site from which
losses could be inflicted on the Germans, was unnecessary. Consequently
it was evacuated, after the attacking detachment of the Prussian Guards
had been annihilated.
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE MONTH'S HEAVIEST FIGHTING IN FLANDERS,
ESPECIALLY ABOUT MOUNT KEMMEL]
BATTLE FOR MONT KEMMEL
Meanwhile the Germans had been preparing for a decisive assault against
Mont Kemmel with ever-augmenting artillery fire and with the
concentration of vast numbers of troops on the sidings of the railroad
between the villages of Messines and Wytschaete. These troops numbered
nine divisions, or about 120,000 men. From the 24th till the 27th they
incessantly swung around Mont Kemmel in massed front and flank attacks,
until the French and British were forced to give up the height, together
with the village of the same name and the village of Dranoutre, retiring
on La Clytte and Scherpenberg.
The occupation of Mont Kemmel, however, did not, as Ludendorff had
anticipated, force the British out of the Ypres salient, for their
voluntary retirement from part of the Passchendaele Ridge on April 17-19
had strengthened the salient, which could hold as long as the line of
hills west of Kemmel held--Mont Rouge, Mont Diviagne, Mont des Cats, &c.
The Berlin publicity bureau advertised the fact that a direct thrust at
Ypres had brought the Germans to within three miles of the town--an
achievement of no particular military value--while it quite ignored the
capture of Mont Kemmel, for the simple reason that its value was now
discovered to repose in their ability to carry their occupation
throughout the entire range.
[Illustration: REGION OF HANGARD AND VILLERS-BRETONNEUX, WHERE GERMANS
USED TANKS FOR THE FIRST TIME]
This they have since been vainly, except for local advances, trying to
do, often employing great forces of men in mass for two or three days at
a time--striving vainly to broaden the salient in three places: between
Dickebusch and Voormezeele, due south from Ypres; by an envelopment of
Mont Rouge to the southwest; on the south by an advance in the direction
of Béthune.
VON ARNIM'S EFFORTS
In the northern part of the salient the attacks reached their climax on
Monday, April 29, when General Sixt von Arnim's army was hurled in wave
after wave between Voormezeele and Scherpenberg and on the latter and
Mont Rouge, only to end in a repulse, which, on account of the number of
men believed to have been lost by the enemy, may be considered a
disastrous defeat. All this time a heavy bombardment had been going on
in the Béthune region in preparation for an infantry attack there; yet
on account of the defeat further north, it could not be delivered.
Henceforth, until May 16, von Arnim was obviously placed on the
defensive, whereas the Allies were locally on the offensive, either
recovering lost strategic points or consolidating their lines. On May 5,
between Locre and Dranoutre, the Franco-British forces advanced on a
1,000-yard front to the depth of 500 yards. On the 8th the Germans made
a half-hearted attack on the sector south of Dickebusch Lake and
entered British trenches, only to be repulsed with heavy loss. A similar
attack the next day between La Clytte and Voormezeele not only met with
a similar repulse, but was followed up by a strong British counterattack
which won considerable ground. On the 12th the French captured Hill 44
on the north flank of Kemmel, between La Clytte and Vierstraat.
On May 13 renewed enemy artillery activity on the lines back of Béthune
seemed to presage that an infantry attack was intended there. Nothing of
this nature ensued, however. On the 15th the Germans made a sudden
attack against Hill 44 but were hurled back by the French. On the
16th-17th they maintained a concentrated fire north of Kemmel.
GERMAN ATTACKS ON THE LYS
All these operations on the German northern salient, which is gradually
coming to be called the Lys salient, have shown no indication of being
intended to pave the way for a renewal of the general offensive in
Flanders. Their success might, and probably would, have forced the
evacuation of Ypres and affected the Picardy salient with its vertex
near Amiens, forcing the evacuation of Arras. But, as we have seen, the
operations on the Lys salient, meeting with an overwhelming obstruction
on April 29, did not achieve these results. Throughout the next three
weeks the manoeuvres of the enemy in Picardy afforded excellent
opportunities for counterattacks on the part of the Allies, whose object
here has been to punish the enemy as much as possible and to consolidate
every strategic position on a broad front in anticipation of a renewal
of Germany's original scheme to isolate the allied armies north of the
Somme by a dash to the mouth of that river via Amiens.
In these circumstances, the enemy on April 30 launched heavy attacks on
the French lines in the region of Hangard and Noyon. These fell down,
and on May 2 the French made distinct gains in Hangard Wood and near
Mailly-Raineval. The next day the French advanced their lines between
Hailles and Castel, south of the Avre, and captured Hill 82. On the 6th
the British advanced their lines between the Somme and the Ancre,
southwest of Morlancourt, and in the neighborhood of Locon and the Lawe
River, taking prisoners in both places. On the 11th skirmishes southwest
of Mailly-Raineval, between Hangard and Montdidier, developed into a
pitched battle, in which the French at first lost ground and then
recovered it. On May 14 the Germans, after an intense local bombardment,
delivered a spirited attack on a mile front of the British southwest of
Morlancourt, gaining a footing in their first trenches. Instantly some
Australian troops counterattacked and completely re-established the
British positions. On the 16th and 17th the enemy showed impressive and
portentous artillery activity along the Avre and at Rollott, on the
Abbéville road, south of Montdidier, similar in character to that
observed north of Kemmel, on the Lys salient.
There are now believed to be over half a million American rifles on the
western front, either at definite places or available as reserves. On
April 20 a battalion of Germans made a raid on our eight-mile sector
south of the Woeuvre, and succeeded in reaching the front-line trenches
and taking the village of Seicheprey. Our losses were between 200 and
300; 300 German dead were counted. A detachment of our army, principally
artillery, holds a sector of five miles with the French infantry east of
Montdidier, on the Picardy front, protecting the Beauvais-Amiens road.
Here their fire is principally employed in breaking up German
concentrations and transport in and around Montdidier.
THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID
The German submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend on the Belgian coast
have been repeatedly bombed from the sea and shelled by British monitors
with indifferent results. With the adding of super-U-boats to the German
submarine fleet and the increased transatlantic traffic of the Allies
the necessity for effectually sealing these bases has long been
apparent. Theoretically the nature of the entrance to the harbors of
both places, resembling the neck of a bottle, about 250 feet wide, made
such a task easy by the sinking of block ships. Practically it was most
difficult, on account of both sea obstructions and the shore batteries.
On the night of April 22-23 British naval forces, commanded by Vice
Admiral Keyes, with the co-operation of French destroyers, and hidden by
a newly devised smoke-screen, invented and here employed by
Wing-Commander Brock, attempted to seal up the harbors. At Zeebrugge the
enterprise was entirely successful. The Intrepid and Iphigenia were sunk
well within and across the narrow channel, the Thetis at the entrance.
All three were loaded with cement, which became solid concrete after
contact with the water and can be removed only by submarine blasting. A
detachment of troops was also landed on the mole from the Vindictive and
engaged the crews of the German machine gun batteries stationed there.
An old submarine was placed under the bridge of the mole and detonated.
A German destroyer and some small craft were sunk. Before the blockships
were placed a torpedo had been driven against the lock gates which lead
from the channel into the inner harbors. The expedition retired with the
loss of fifty officers and 538 men, of whom sixteen officers and 144 men
had been killed.
At Ostend, the entrance to whose harbor is protected by no mole, the
block ships Sirius and Brilliant were not effectively placed. Against
this port the experiment was, therefore, repeated on the night of May
9-10. The Vindictive, with a cargo of concrete, was planted and sunk at
the entrance to the channel, but not entirely blocking it.
ITALIAN RAID AT POLA
Another naval exploit of the month worthy of record was the sinking in
the Austrian Harbor of Pola of a dreadnought of the Viribus Unitis class
(20,000 tons) by Italian naval forces, in the morning of May 15. The
achievement was similar to that performed by the President of the
Anaconda Copper Company, who has been appointed Director of Aircraft
Production for the United States Army] Italians on the night of Dec.
9-10, when a destroyer sawed her way through the steel net protecting
the Harbor of Trieste and torpedoed the predreadnoughts Wien and
Monarch, (5,000 tons each,) sinking the former. The Harbor of Pola,
however, is much more difficult to penetrate. It is three miles deep and
entered by a two-mile channel, at certain places less than half a mile
wide, and protected along its entire course by strong defenses. A mole
covers its mouth, making the channel here less than 1,000 yards wide.
Forts Cristo and Musil guard the entrance.
[Illustration: CHARLES M. SCHWAB
Head of the Bethlehem Steel Works, who has been appointed Director
General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation to carry out the Government's
shipbuilding program
(© _Harris & Ewing_)]
[Illustration: JOHN D. RYAN
TEUTONIZING THE BLACK SEA]
Save for the reports which have come to hand denoting the steady
progress of the British forces in Palestine and Mesopotamia, little of
importance has occurred in the Near East. Still the Teutonizing of the
Black Sea goes steadily on. On May 2 it was announced that a German
force had occupied the great Russian fortress of Sebastopol, famous for
its protracted siege by the British and French in 1855, and until then
considered impregnable. On May 12 part of the Russian Black Sea fleet
was taken possession of by the Germans at that place, while the
remainder escaped to Novorossysk. Among the captured vessels only the
battleship Volga and the protected cruiser Pamiat Merkuria were in
serviceable condition. At Odessa a new dreadnought and two protected
cruisers had already been seized by the Germans as they lay in their
slips.
In Macedonia the huge allied forces under the French General,
Guillaumat, are still waiting on events. The Greek Army is still in
process of reconstruction under the Venizelos Administration. The month,
however, has not been barren of engagements on this battleline. On April
28 the Serbians beat back attempts of the Bulgars to capture fortified
positions in the Vetrenik region; the French and British did the same in
regard to German attacks aimed at points west of Makovo and south of
Lake Doiran. So it has been all the month, the monotony only varied on
April 27, when there was intense artillery fire by the allied guns in
the neighborhood of Monastir, on the Cerna, and, in the Vetrenik region,
a Serbian assault annihilated a Bulgar section.
[Illustration: MAP OF PALESTINE AND MESOPOTAMIA, WHERE TWO BRITISH
ARMIES ARE AIMING AT BAGDAD RAILWAY]
IN THE NEAR EAST
There has been no serious attempt on the part of the Turks during the
month to oppose the expansion of General Allenby's front beyond
Jerusalem or the triumphant march of General Marshall up the Euphrates
and the Tigris--on the latter river now sixty miles below Mosul,
Marshall's obvious objective. The objective of Allenby is Aleppo, where
there is said to be a single division of German troops in addition to
the Turks, who have been forced north from Jerusalem. Allenby and
Marshall are advancing along parallel lines with a desert space of about
400 miles between. The Turks and their ally still have possession of the
caravan trail and the partly built and entirely surveyed Bagdad Railway,
which intersect the prospective parallel paths of Allenby and Marshall,
whose lines of communication already reach hundreds of miles to the
rear. But while Allenby has a lateral sea communication with Syrian
ports, no such advantage is enjoyed by Marshall, who must get all his
supplies from the head of the Persian Gulf, 450 miles to the south.
Whatever be the force at the disposition of the enemy, it is evident
that he will continue to possess a predominating tactical and strategic
advantage until he has been decisively defeated at both Aleppo and Mosul
or a junction has been established between Allenby and Marshall, or
both.
[Illustration: SCENE OF LATEST ITALIAN FIGHTING IN THE ALPS]
The former's line, which is a sixty-mile front, extending from Arsuf el
Haram on the Mediterranean east to the Jordan, took Es-Salt with
thirty-three German and 317 Turkish prisoners on May 1--twenty miles
north of Jerusalem--which was first occupied by Allenby early in
December.
Marshall's advance has been much more rapid. In the week of May 1 his
cavalry, in pursuit of the fleeing Turks, advanced twenty miles and
captured 1,000 prisoners. On May 7 he was 80 miles from Mosul; on May 10
he was within 60 miles. Allenby is 300 miles from Aleppo and 110 miles
from Damascus.
ON THE ITALIAN FRONT
Without any large movements of troops taking place, several things have
occurred since April 18 to invite attention to the Italian front, and
much speculation by military men has been indulged in as to whether the
resumption of the Teutonic offensive would be from the Piave or south
from the Astico-Piave line lying across the Sette Comuni and the Brenta,
or from the west of the Adige and the Lago di Garda, in an attempt to
reach Brescia and the metallurgic centre of Italy.
And most of the things in question which have occurred have served to
restore and augment the confidence of the Italians in their position. A
new 2d Army has taken the place of the old, annihilated in the
Capporetto campaign. All the lost guns have been replaced and new
heavies added. Revolution is, at any moment, expected to break out in
Austria-Hungary, while the Congress of Jugoslavs in Rome on April 9-11
has secured the adhesion to the Allies of the subjects of the Hapsburgs
and enabled the Italian Government to make use of them as a fighting
force. There are now believed to be no German divisions on the Italian
front, where the entire enemy strength, not measurably increased since
the snows have disappeared in the north, consists of 800
Austro-Hungarian battalions, or less than 1,000,000 men.
But what has promoted most satisfaction in the Italian Government and
people was the decree issued by the Interallied Supreme Council of War
at Abbéville on May 3, giving General Foch authority to include the
Italian front under his supreme command, that front thereby becoming the
right wing of the allied battle line in Europe--now "one army, one
front, and one supreme command."
That is the way Bonaparte fought his victorious battles in the days of
the First Republic, alternately on the Rhine and the Adige. Moreau could
not win without Bonaparte, nor Bonaparte without Moreau, while Carnot,
in the centre, was the vehicle of transit.
Before the snows made manoeuvres impossible the Italians had closed two
gates which threatened the plains of Veneto from the north--one at the
junction of the front with the Piave, one at the angle of the Frenzela
Torrent and the Brenta River.
Gunfire had been steadily augmenting on the front when, on May 10, they
closed another, and on May 15 still another. The first of these was the
capture of Monte Corno, which commanded the part up the Vallarsa, the
second was a partial recovery of Monte Asolone, between the Brenta and
the Piave, sufficient to cover the path up the Val San Lorenzo. Both
mountains are really plateaus of about two square miles area each, whose
irregular summits the enemy had strongly fortified in order to clear the
valleys below. In both places subsequent Austrian counterattacks were
broken up.
Meanwhile, Italian aircraft dominate from above. On May 14 the enemy
lost eleven airplanes with no losses to the Italians and the British,
who were assisting them.
Premier Lloyd George on German Autocracy
Premier Lloyd George wrote the following preface for a volume containing
extracts from speeches he delivered during the war:
I have never believed that the war would be a short war, or that in
some mysterious way, by negotiation or compromise, we would free
Europe from the malignant military autocracy which is endeavoring to
trample it into submission and moral death. I have always believed
that the machine which has established its despotic control over the
minds and the bodies of its victims and then organized and driven
them to slaughter in order to extend that control over the rest of
the world, would only be destroyed if the free peoples proved
themselves strong and steadfast enough to defeat its attempt in
arms. The events of the last few weeks must have made it plain to
every thinking man that there is no longer room for compromise
between the ideals for which we and our enemies stood. Democracy and
autocracy have come to death grips. One or the other will fasten its
hold on mankind. It is a clear realization of this issue which will
be our strength in the trials to come. I have no doubt that freedom
will triumph. But whether it will triumph soon or late, after a
final supreme effort in the next few months or a long-drawn agony,
depends on the vigor and self-sacrifice with which the children of
liberty, and especially those behind the lines, dedicate themselves
to the struggle. There is no time for ease or delay or debate. The
call is imperative. The choice is clear. It is for each free citizen
to do his part.
The Greatest Battle of the War
Second Month of the Desperate Fighting in Flanders and Picardy
By Philip Gibbs
_Special Correspondent With the British Armies_ [Copyrighted in United
States of America]
_The May issue of Current History Magazine contained Philip Gibbs's
story of the great German offensive up to April 18, 1918. At that time
the Germans were seeking to break the British lines in front of Ypres,
as part of their drive for Amiens and the British Channel ports,
generally known as the battle of Picardy. The pages here presented are a
continuation of his eyewitness narrative of the most sanguinary battle
in history._
April 18.--The arrival of French troops on our northern front is the
most important act that has happened during the last three or four days,
and it was with deep satisfaction that we met these troops on the roads
and knew that at last our poor, tired men would get support and help
against their overwhelming odds.
Beside the khaki army of the British has grown very quickly an army in
blue, the cornflower blue of the French poilus. They are splendid men,
hard and solid fellows, who have been war-worn and weather-worn during
these three and a half years past, and look the great fighting men who
have gone many times into battle and know all that war can teach them in
endurance and cunning and quick attack.
As they came marching up the roads to the front they were like a
streaming river of blue--blue helmets and coats and blue carts and blue
lorries, all blending into one tone through these April mists as they
went winding over the countryside and through French market towns, where
their own people waved to them, and then through the villages on the
edge of the Flanders battlefields, where they waited to go into action
under shell-broken walls or under hedges above which British shellfire
traveled, or in fields where they made their bivouacs, and fragrant
steams arose to one's nostrils as cuistots lifted the lids of stewpans
and hungry men gathered around after a long march.
The attack this morning from Robecq, below St. Venant, down to Givenchy,
is a serious effort to gain La Bassée Canal and form a strong defensive
flank for the enemy while he proceeds with his battles further north and
also to get more elbow room from the salient in which he is narrowly
wedged below Merville.
For this purpose he brought up several more divisions, including the
239th, which was in the Somme fighting of March, but not heavily
engaged. This one attacked the British at Robecq and was repulsed with
heavy losses. It was at a place called La Bacquerolles Farm, near
Robecq, where after heavy shelling last night the enemy rushed one of
the outposts at 10 o'clock. In order to facilitate the attack this
morning of German divisions north and south at 4 o'clock the German guns
began a heavy bombardment of the British lines as far down as Givenchy
and maintained it for five hours, using large numbers of gas shells, on
account of the east wind, which was in their favor.
His guns shelled the bridges across the canal in the hope of preventing
the British supports going up. Then his troops came forward in waves on
a wide front. They were in immense numbers as usual, with many mixed
battalions. One of the British units today took prisoners from ten
different regiments. There were some ten German divisions facing four
British ones north of Béthune, and all along the line the troops were
much outnumbered; nevertheless, the enemy was repulsed at all but a few
points of attack and beaten back bloodily.
THE GHASTLY LOSSES
In this battle one regiment of the 42d German Division has lost over 50
per cent. of its strength, and other losses are on a similar scale.
These ghastly casualties have been piling up along this line between
Merville and Béthune since the 13th of this month, when the Germans made
a series of small attacks as a prelude to today's battle, owing, it
seems, to battalion officers taking the initiative without orders from
the High Command, in order to push forward and break the British lines
if they could find weakness there.
On the 13th and 14th some of the South Country troops were attacked by
strong forces repeatedly, and on the second day for five hours at a
stretch the enemy endeavored to come across from houses and inclosures
west of Merville toward St. Venant. For those five hours the South
Country lads fired with rifles, Lewis guns, and machine guns into solid
bodies of Germans, and their field guns tore gaps in the enemy's
formations and broke up their assemblies before the attacks could
proceed. One advance in five waves was mown down before it could make
any progress, and others were dealt with in the same way.
_Mr. Gibbs describes the German repulse between Robecq and Givenchy as a
"black day for the enemy," and continues:_
April 19.--At the end of the day all the enemy's efforts ended in bloody
failure, in spite of the daring and courage of his troops, who
sacrificed themselves under the British fire, but were only able to gain
a few bits of trench work and one or two outposts below the fortified
works at Givenchy, which are quite useless to them for immediate or
future use.
It was a big attack, for which they had prepared in a formidable way.
After the shock of their repulse by the Lancashire men of the 55th
Division they increased their strength of heavy artillery by three times
bringing up large numbers of howitzers, including eleven-inch monsters.
They were massed in divisions in front of us and determined to smash
through in the wake of a tremendous bombardment.
BRITISH UNDER FIRE
For five hours, as I said, this storm went on with high explosives and
gas, and the devoted British had to suffer this infernal thing, the
worst ordeal human beings may be called upon to bear, this standing to
while all the earth upheaved and the air was thick with shell splinters.
But when the bombardment had passed and the German infantry came forward
the British received them with blasts of machine-gun fire, incessant
volleys of rifle fire, and a trench mortar bombardment that burst with
the deadliest effect among the attacking troops.
This trench mortar barrage of the British was one of the most awful
means of slaughter yesterday, especially when the enemy tried to cross
La Bassée Canal further north, and in that sector the infantry and
gunner officers say more Germans were killed yesterday along the canal
bank than on any other day since the fighting in this neighborhood. One
battery of trench mortars did most deadly execution until their pits
were surrounded, and only two of their crews were able to escape.
The machine gunners fought out in the open after some of their positions
had been wiped out by gunfire, caught the enemy waves at fifty yards'
range, and mowed them down; but the enemy was not checked for a long
time, despite his losses, and when one body fell another came up to fill
its place and press on into any gap that had been made by their
artillery or their own machine-gun sections.
There was one such momentary gap between a body of the Black Watch, who
had been weakened by shellfire, and some of their comrades further
north, and into this the enemy tried to force a way. Other Scottish
troops were in reserve, and when it became clear that a portion of the
line was endangered by this turning movement they came forward with grim
intent, and by a fierce counterattack swept through the gap and flung
back the enemy, so that the position was restored.
Further north some Gloucesters were fighting the enemy both ways, as
once before in history, when they fought back to back, thereby winning
the honor of wearing their cap badge back and front, which they do to
this day. The Germans had worked behind them as well as in front of
them, and they were in a tight corner, but did not yield, and finally,
after hard fighting, cleared the ground about them.
Meanwhile further south some Lancashire troops on the canal lost some
parts of their front line under an intense bombardment, but still fought
on in the open, repulsing every effort to drive them back and smashing
the enemy out of their positions, so that only remnants of the German
outposts clung on until late last night, up to which time there was
savage strife on both sides.
FIGHTING FOR THE CANAL
Extraordinary scenes took place on the canal bank when the enemy tried
to cross. In the twilight of early dawn a party came out of a wood and
tried to get across the water, but was seen by the British machine
gunners and shot down.
Then another body of men advanced and carried with them a floating
bridge, but when those who were not hit reached the water's edge they
found the bridge as fixed did not reach to the other side. Some of them
walked on it, expecting perhaps to jump the gap, but were shot off, and
other men on the bank also were caught under British fire.
A Corporal went down to the canal edge and flung hand grenades at the
Germans still struggling to fix the bridge, and then a Lieutenant and a
few men rushed down and pulled the bridge on to their side of the bank.
Later this young officer saw one of the British pontoons drifting down
and swam to it and made it fast beyond the enemy's reach, but in a
position so that some of his men ran across and caught the enemy under
their fire on his side of the canal.
At 7 o'clock yesterday morning, while a handkerchief was hoisted by the
enemy, three hundred of them made signs of surrender. Some of them
changed their minds at the last moment and ran away, but 150 gave
themselves up, and some of them swam the canal in order to reach our
side for this purpose. They were shivering in their wet clothes and in
the northeast wind, which lashed over the battle lines yesterday, and
they were very miserable men.
THE BELGIAN VICTORY
_Mr. Gibbs declares that had the Germans been able to pass Givenchy or
cross the canal north of Béthune on the 18th and 19th the result would
have proved disastrous. He gives credit for the repulse to the British
and French combined lines. He thus describes the achievement of the
Belgians on April 17_:
The Germans on the 17th pressed the attack in force against the
Belgians. Besides three regiments of the 1st Landwehr Division usually
holding this sector, between the Ypres-Staden railway and Kippe, they
brought up from Dixmude--poor Dixmude, into whose flaming ruins I went
when it was first bombarded in October, 1914--two regiments of the 6th
Bavarian Division, and from the coast the 5th Matrosen Regiment of the
2d Naval Division, with a regiment of the 58th Saxons. It was a heavy
force, and they hoped to surprise and annihilate the Belgian resistance
by their weight and quickness of attack.
The Belgians were waiting for them, standing, too, in those swampy
fields which they have held against the enemy for three and a half
years, always shelled, always paying daily a toll of life and limb, not
getting much glory or recognition because of the great battles
elsewhere, but patient and enduring as when I knew them on the Yser in
the first dreadful Winter of the war, and their little regular army
fought to a finish.
Even before the battle the German marines, Saxon troops, and Landwehr
suffered misery and lost many men. They lay out in the flat, wet fields
two nights previously, and were very cold, and scared by the Belgian
gunfire which burst among them. They had no great artillery behind them,
and the Saxons and German sailors now prisoners of the Belgians curse
bitterly because they were expected to get through easily in spite of
this.
Germans Cut Off
The enemy's intention was to take Bixschoote and advance across the Yser
Canal, driving south to Poperinghe. What they did by their massed
attacks was to penetrate to a point near Hoekske, southeast of Merckem,
the main weight of their pressure being directed along the Bixschoote
road. The Belgians delivered a quick counterattack, with wonderful
enthusiasm among officers and men. They had perfect knowledge of the
country, and used this fully by striking up from a place called Luyghem
in such a way that the enemy was driven toward the swamp, where any who
went in sank up to his neck in the ice-cold water.
The Germans were cut off from their own lines and trapped. Seven hundred
of them surrendered, men of all the regiments I have mentioned, and they
seemed to think themselves lucky at getting off so cheaply, though they
quailed when they were brought back through the towns behind the lines,
and the Belgian women, remembering many things, raised a cry as these
men passed. It was not a pleasant sound. I heard it once in France when
a German officer passed through with an escort. It was a cry which made
my blood run cold. But there is gladness among the Belgian troops, for
they had long waited for their chance of striking, and made good.
Heroism of the Doctors
As heroic a story as anything in all this history of the last four weeks
is that of the medical officers, nurses, orderlies, and ambulance men
belonging to these casualty clearing stations, who were not far behind
the fighting lines when the battle began on March 21.
And then in a few hours they were on the very edge of the enemy's
advancing tide, so that they were almost caught by it and had to make
brave efforts to rescue the wounded, save their equipment, and get away
to a place where for a little while again they could go on with their
noble work until the red edge of war swept up with its fire again and
they had to retreat still further.
I used to pass very often the outer ring of those casualty clearing
stations on the right of the British line beyond Bapaume, in the Cambrai
salient, and away toward St. Quentin.
They were almost caught on that day of March 21 when the infernal
bombardment was flung over a wide belt of the British lines, and the
enemy stormed the defenses and the British fought back in heroic
rearguard actions. It became a question of only a few hours, sometimes
of the last quarter of an hour, when these brave medical officers with
the nurses and orderlies could get away.
It is always the rule of patients first, and at Ham there were 1,200
wounded, and many others in other places. The railways were choked with
military transport or destroyed by shellfire. On the roads refugees were
mixed up with the transport and guns and troops. It was a frightful
problem, but the medical staffs did not lose their nerve, and set about
the business of removal with fine skill and discipline.
Caring for the Wounded
What wounded could walk were gathered together and sent on to the roads
to make their way back as far as their strength would carry them. The
badly wounded were packed into all the available ambulances and sent
away. The equipment had sometimes to be put on any train, regardless of
its destination. It was gathered in afterward from whatever place it
went to.
A casualty clearing station of 1,000 beds needs 100 lorries to move it,
but nine lorries take a full kit for 200 beds, and always nine lorries
moved off first after the wounded to take up a new station further back
and carry on. The medical officers looked after the surgical instruments
and trundled them along the roads on wheeled stretchers. One officer
went twenty-five miles this way and another seventeen miles. The
sisters, after the wounded had left, were put on any vehicle going back
from the battleline.
During these days I saw them squeezed between drivers and men on motor
lorries, sitting among the Tommies in transport wagons, one at least on
a gun limber, and others perched on top of forage, still merry and
bright in spite of all the tragedy about them, because that is their
training and their faith.
In this retreat one poor sister was killed and another wounded. Many of
them, with the medical officers, lost their kits. At Achiet le Grand, on
March 21, a shell killed eight orderlies and blew out the back of the
operating theatre, and at another village on a second night, three
ambulances were smashed up by bombs. Two drivers, with some of their
patients, were killed, but all the wounded were brought away from the
outer ring of casualty clearing stations safely, and then from the
second ring through Roye and Marincourt, Dernacourt, and Aveluy.
At Roye there was no time to spare, owing to the enemy's rapid advance,
and seventy patients remained with a medical officer and twelve
orderlies until they could be rescued, if there was any possible
chance. There seemed at first no chance, but on the way back to
Villers-Bretonneux the medical officer in command of the first convoy
met some motor ambulances and begged the drivers to go into Roye and
rescue those who had been left behind. They went bravely and brought
away all the wounded and the staff, and had no time to spare, because
the last ambulance came under the German rifle fire.
It is a strange and wonderful thing that the patients do not seem to be
harmed in any way by this excitement and fatigue, and one of the chiefs
who made a tour of inspection of all his clearing stations at this time
tells us he found all the wounded in good condition and apparently no
worse for their experience.
Fall of Villers-Bretonneux
_ On April 24 the Germans attacked the important village of
Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens; it is on a hill above the Somme, and
was used as a corps headquarters and administrative office by the
British. The attack was in great force, including tanks, the first time
they had been used by the Germans._
_The initial assault was a success and the Germans took the village and
advanced nearly a mile beyond--but let Mr. Gibbs tell the rest:_
During the night they were driven out by Australian troops, who, by a
most skillful and daring piece of generalship, were sent forward in the
darkness without preliminary artillery preparation, and, relying
absolutely on the weapons they carried to regain this important portion,
which gave the enemy full observation of the British positions on both
sides of the Somme Valley beyond Amiens.
The splendid courage of the Australian troops, the cunning of their
machine gunners, and the fine leadership of their officers achieved
success, and, in conjunction with English battalions, they spent the
night clearing out the enemy from the village, where he made a desperate
resistance, and brought back altogether something like 700 or 800
prisoners.
It was a complete reversal of fortune for the enemy, and in this
twenty-four hours of fighting he has lost great numbers of men, whose
bodies lie in heaps between Villers-Bretonneux and Warfusee and all
about the ruins and fields in that neighborhood.
First German Tanks
The attack on Villers-Bretonneux was made by four divisions. They were
the 4th Guards, the 77th, quite new to this phase of the war, the 228th,
and the 243d. They were in the full strength of divisions, twelve
regiments in each, and a great weight of men on such a narrow front
against one British division, whose men had already been under frightful
fire and had been living in clouds of poison gas with masks on.
An officer of the Middlesex was in a bit of a trench when the first
German tank attacked his men on the east side of the village, and it
went right over him as he lay crouched, and traveled on, accompanied by
bodies of troops.
The Middlesex and West Yorks put up a great fight but had to give ground
to superior numbers. The East Lancashires, who were the garrison of
Villers-Bretonneux, were also attacked with great odds, and after a
brave resistance fell back with the general line, which took up a
position toward the end of this first phase of the battle west of
Villers-Bretonneux and in the edge of Bois Abbé to the left of it. Into
this wood in the course of the day a German patrol of one officer and
forty men made their way and stayed there out of touch with their own
men, and were taken prisoners last night.
The Night Battle
The attack by the Australians was made after 10 o'clock at night. It was
difficult to attack suddenly like this. There was no artillery
preparation. There should have been a moon, but by bad luck it was
veiled in a thick, wet mist.
It was decided by the Australian General that his men should go straight
into the attack with bayonet and machine gun, not waiting for artillery
protection which would tell the enemy what was coming.
The plan of attack was to push forward in two bodies and to encircle
Villers-Bretonneux, while some Northamptons and others were in the
centre with the order to fight through the village from the north. This
manoeuvre was carried out owing to the magnificent courage of each
Australian soldier and the gallantry of the officers.
The Germans fought desperately when they found themselves in danger of
being trapped. They had nests of machine guns along the railway
embankment below the village, and these fired fiercely, sweeping the
attackers who tried to advance upon them.
Those who worked around north and east of the village also came under a
burst of machine-gun fire from weapons hidden among the ruins and
trenches, but they rounded up the enemy and fought him from one bit of
ruin to another in streets which used to be filled with civilian life
only a few weeks ago and crowded with staff officers and staff cars, but
now were littered with dead bodies and raked by bullets.
The Australians captured two light field guns, which the enemy had
brought up in the morning, according to his present habit of advancing
guns behind his third wave of men, and several minenwerfer and many
machine guns.
Great Piles of Dead
During the night they and the English troops seized over 500 men as
prisoners and sent them back, and several hundred seem to have been
routed out. Today, [the 25th,] judging from these I saw myself, the
living were not so many as the dead.
It was fierce fighting in Villers-Bretonneux and around it last night
and this morning the enemy fought until put out by bayonet, rifle
bullet, or machine gun. The Australian officers say that they have never
seen such piles of dead, not even outside of Bullecourt or Lagnicourt
last year, as those who lie about this village of frightful strife.
The German tanks, which were first seen in this battle, though heavier
than the British, with bigger guns, have now beaten a retreat, leaving
one of their type in No Man's Land. The tank has a high turret and thick
armor plates, and is steered and worked on a different system from the
British. One of them was "killed" by a tank of the old British class,
and then the British put in some of the newer, faster, and smaller
types, which can steer almost as easily as a motor car, as I know,
because I have traveled in one at great pace over rough ground.
These set out to attack bodies of German infantry of the 77th Division
forming up near Cachy. It was a terrible encounter, and when they
returned this morning their flanks were red with blood. They slew
Germans not by dozens nor by scores, but by platoons and companies. They
got right among the masses of men and swept them with fire, and those
they did not kill with their guns they crushed beneath them, manoeuvring
about and trampling them down as they fell. It seems to have been as
bloody a slaughter as anything in this war.
Battle for Kemmel Hill
_The furious battle for the possession of Kemmel Hill, an eminence of
strategic importance in the Ypres region, occurred April 25, 26, and 27,
and was as sanguinary as any in Flanders. Although the Germans won the
hill, their victory involved such colossal sacrifices that this deadly
thrust ended their serious offensive for the time. Mr. Gibbs's
description of this battle in part follows:_
After several attempts against Kemmel had been frustrated the enemy all
went out, April 25, to capture this position. Four divisions at least,
including the Alpine Corps, the 11th Bavarians, and the 5th, 6th, and
107th, were moved against Kemmel in the early morning fog after a
tremendous bombardment of the Franco-British positions. It was a
bombardment that begun before the first glimmer of dawn, like one of
those which the British used to arrange in the days of their great
Flanders battles last year. It came down swamping Kemmel Hill so that it
was like a volcano, and stretched away on to the British lines on the
left of the French by Maedelstede Farm and Grand Bois down to
Vierstraat.
Then the German infantry attacked in depth, battalion behind battalion,
division behind division, and their mountain troops of Alpine Corps and
Jägers and Bavarians came on first in the assault of Kemmel Hill, which
was not much more than a hillock, though it looms large in Flanders, and
in this war. The French had suffered a terrible ordeal of fire, and the
main thrust of the German strength was against them.
Foe Strikes in Two Directions
The enemy struck in two directions to encircle the hill and village of
Kemmel, one arrowhead striking to Dranoutre and the other at the point
of junction between the French and British northward.
In each case they were favored by fog and the effect of their gunfire.
They were able to drive in a wedge which they pushed forward until they
had caused gaps. The French on Kemmel Hill became isolated and there was
a gulf between the British and the French and between the French left
and right.
On the hill the French garrison fought with splendid heroism. These men,
when quite surrounded, would not yield, but served their machine guns
and rifles for many hours, determined to hold their positions at all
costs, and to the death. Small parties of them on the west of the hill
held out until midday or beyond, according to the reports of the airmen,
who flew low over them, but by 9 o'clock this morning, owing to the gaps
made by the enemy, the French main line was compelled to draw back from
Kemmel.
They inflicted severe losses on the enemy as they fell back and thwarted
his efforts to break their line on the new defensive positions.
Meanwhile a body of Scottish troops were seriously involved. Some of
their officers whom I saw today tell me the fog was so thick, as on
March 21, that after a terrific bombardment the first thing known at
some points a little way behind the line was when the Germans were all
around them.
Germans Under Von Arnim
The German army of assault upon Kemmel and the surrounding country was
under command of General Sixt von Arnim, who was the leading opponent of
the Allies in the long struggle of the first Somme battles, and whose
clear and ruthless intelligence was revealed in the famous document
summing up the first phase of that fighting, when he frankly confessed
to many failures of organization and supply, but with acute criticism
which was not that of a weak or indecisive man.
Under his command as corps commanders were Generals Seiger and von
Eberhardt, and they had picked troops, including the Alpine Corps and
strong Bavarian and Prussian divisions specially trained for assault in
such country as that of Kemmel. Their plan of attack to strike at the
points of junction between the French and British east of Kemmel, and
also at the French troops south of it, near Dranoutre, proved for the
time successful, and by driving in wedges they were able to make the
Allies fall back on the flanks and encircle Kemmel Hill after furious
and heroic fighting by the French and British troops.
The British now were in weak numbers compared with the strength brought
against them. Their withdrawal to the new lines of defense by Vierstraat
and the furious attacks across the Ypres-Comines Canal gave the enemy
some ground in the region of St. Eloi and the bluff and the spoil bank
of the canal itself. It is villainous ground there, foul with wreckage
of the old fighting.
British troops and Canadian troops were put to the supreme test of
courage to take and hold these places. The glorious old 3d Division,
commanded in those days of 1915 and 1916 by General Haldane, fought from
St. Eloi to the bluff, month in and month out, and lost many gallant
officers and men there after acts of courage which belong to history.
German storm troops made three violent attacks on Locre, which were
flung back by the French, with heavy casualties among the enemy, and it
was only at the fourth attempt with fresh reserves that they were able
to enter the ruins of the village, from which the French then fell back
in order to reorganize for a counterattack. This they launched today at
an early hour, and now Locre is in their hands after close fighting, in
which they slew numbers of the enemy.
After their success on April 25, when they captured Kemmel, the Germans
have made little progress, and, though there was fierce fighting all day
yesterday, they failed to gain their objectives, and were raked by fire
hour after hour, so that large numbers of their dead lie on the field of
battle. At 4 in the afternoon they engaged in fresh assaults upon the
positions near Ridge Wood, to which the line had fallen back, but
English and Scottish troops repulsed them and scattered their waves. It
was a bad day for them because of their great losses. The British have
broken the fighting quality of some of the enemy's most renowned
regiments.
The Country Devastated
All the roads and camps around Ypres are under a heavy, harassing fire
once more, Ypres itself being savagely bombarded by high-explosive and
gas shells, so that after some months of respite those poor ruins are
again under that black spell which makes them the most sinister place in
the world. Suicide Corner has come into its own again, and the old
unhealthy plague spots up by the canal are under fire.
The enemy's guns are reaching out to fields and villages hitherto
untouched by fire, and these harassing shots, intended, perhaps, to
catch traffic on the roads or soldiers' camps, often serve the enemy no
more than by the death of innocent women and children. A day or two ago
a monstrous shell fell just outside a little Flemish cottage tucked away
in an angle of a road which I often pass. It scooped out a deep pit in
the garden without even scarring the cottage walls, but two children
were playing in the garden and were laid dead beside a flower bed.
Yesterday a small boy I know went grubbing about this plot of earth and
brought back a great chunk of shell bigger than his head. Those are the
games children play in this merry century of ours. They are astoundingly
indifferent to the perils about them, and sleep o' nights to the thunder
of gunfire not very far away, or slip their heads under the bedclothes
when bombs fall near.
But older folk find this gradual creeping up of the war a nervous strain
and a mental agony which keeps them on the rack. It is pitiful to watch
their doubts and perplexities and their clinging on to their homes and
property. Shells smash outlying cottages to dust with their people
inside them, but still the people in the village itself stay on, hoping
against hope that the Germans' guns have reached their furthest range.
"I shall not go till the first shell falls in the middle of the square,"
said a girl.
Another woman said:
"If I go I lose all I have in life, so I will risk another day."
They take extraordinary risks, and our officers and men find some of
them on the very battlefields and in farmyards where they unlimber their
guns.
Heavy German Losses
The enemy's losses in this continual fighting have been severe. We have
been able to get actual figures of some of their casualties, which are
typical of the more general effect of the British fire. Of one company
of the 7th German Division which fought at St. Eloi on Friday only 40
men remained out of its full strength of 120.
The 4th Ersatz Division lost most heavily, and a prisoner of the 279th
Pioneer Company, which relieved the 360th Regiment of that division,
says the average company strength was fifteen men.
The entire regimental staff was killed by a direct hit of a British
shell on their headquarters dugout near Cantieux. The same thing
happened to the battalion headquarters of the 223d Regiment, which is
now in a state of low morale, having been fearfully cut up.
The 1st Guards Reserve Regiment of the 1st Guards Division, which was
much weakened in the fighting on the Somme and afterward was sent to La
Bassée, lost thirty-six officers, including a regimental commander and
one battalion commander. These losses are affecting inevitably the
outlook of the German troops on the prospects of their continued
offensive.
Prisoners from divisions which suffered most confess they have no
further enthusiasm for fighting, and that their regiments can only be
made to attack by stern discipline and the knowledge that they must
fight on or be shot for desertion.
On the other hand, the best German troops, especially those now
attacking in Flanders, like the Alpine Corps and 11th Bavarian Division,
are elated and full of warlike spirit.
Even their prisoners profess to believe they are winning the war and
will have a German peace before the year is out.
Desperate Fighting for Ypres
_The Germans vainly launched desperate attacks of unexampled fury
against the British and French lines in the Ypres region on April 29.
Mr. Gibbs in his cable dispatch of that date thus refers to these
assaults:_
It becomes clearer every hour that the enemy suffered a disastrous
defeat today. Attack after attack was smashed up by the British
artillery and infantry, and he has not made a foot of ground on the
British front.
The Border Regiment this morning repulsed four heavy assaults on the
Kemmel-La Clytte road, where there was extremely hard fighting, and
destroyed the enemy each time.
One of the enemy's main thrusts was between Scherpenberg and Mont Rouge,
where they made a wedge for a time and captured the crossroads, and it
was here that a gallant French counterattack swept them back.
The British had no more than a post or two in Voormezeele this morning,
and the enemy was there in greater strength, and sent his storm troops
through this place, but was never able to advance against the fire of
the British battalions.
His losses began yesterday, when his troops were seen massing on the
road between Zillebeke and Ypres in a dense fog, through which he
attempted to make a surprise attack. This was observed by low-flying
planes, and his assembly was shattered by gunfire. After a fierce
shelling all night, so tremendous along the whole northern front that
the countryside was shaken by its tumult, German troops again assembled
in the early morning mist, but were caught once more in the British
bombardment.
At 3 o'clock a tremendous barrage was flung down by the German gunners
from Ypres to Bailleul, and later they began the battle by launching
first an attack between Zillebeke Lake and Meteren. South of Ypres they
crossed the Yser Canal by Lock 8, near Voormezeele, which was their
direction of attack against the British, while they tried to drive up
past Locre against the French on the three hills.
The successful defense has made the day most bloody for many German
regiments.
Enemy's Attacks Futile
In order to turn them if frontal attacks failed against the French,
German storm troops--they are now called grosskampf, or great offensive
troops--were to break the British lines on the French left between Locre
and Voormezeele and on the French right near Merris and Meteren. That
obviously was the intention of the German High Command this morning,
judging from their direction of assault.
So far they have failed utterly. They failed to break or bend the
British wings on the French centre, and they failed to capture the
hills, or any one of them, defended by the French divisions.
They have attacked again and again since this morning's dawn, heavy
forces of German infantry being sent forward after their first waves
against Scherpenberg and Voormezeele, which lies to the east of
Dickebusch Lake, but these men have been slaughtered by the French and
British fire and made no important progress at any point.
For a time the situation seemed critical at one or two points, and it
was reported that the Germans had been storming the slopes of Mont Rouge
and Mont Noir, but one of the British airmen flew over these hills at
200 feet above their crests, and could see no German infantry near them.
Round about Voormezeele, North Country and other English battalions had
to sustain determined and furious efforts of Alpine and Bavarian troops
to drive through them by weight of numbers, after hours of intense
bombardment, but the men held their ground and inflicted severe
punishment upon the enemy.
All through the day the German losses have been heavy under field-gun
and machine-gun fire, and the British batteries, alongside the French
seventy-fives, swept down the enemy's advancing waves and his masses
assembled in support at short range.
There is no doubt that the French guarding the three hills have fought
with extreme valor and skill. For a brief period the Germans apparently
were able to draw near and take some of the ground near Locre, but an
immediate counterattack was organized by the French General, and the
line of French troops swung forward and swept the enemy back. Further
attacks by the Germans north of Ypres and on the Belgian front were
repulsed easily, and again the enemy lost many men.
French and British Valor
_On April 30 Mr. Gibbs confirmed the details of the disastrous German
defeats on the two preceding days and gave these further particulars:_
It was the valor of Frenchmen as well as Englishmen which yesterday
inflicted defeat upon many German divisions, and the Allies fought side
by side, and their batteries fired from the same fields and their
wounded came back along the same roads, and the khaki and blue lay out
upon the same brown earth.
I have already given an outline of yesterday's battle, how, after a
colossal bombardment, the German attack early in the morning from north
of Ypres to south of Voormezeele, where English battalions held the
lines, and from La Clytte past the three hills of Scherpenberg, Mont
Rouge, and Mont Noir, which French troops held to the north of Meteren,
where the English joined them; again, how the English Tommies held firm
against desperate assaults until late in the evening; how the enemy made
a great thrust against the French, driving in for a time between
Scherpenberg and Mont Noir until they were flung back by a French
counterattack.
In the night the French, who had now regained all the ground that had
been temporarily in the enemy's hands, made a general counterattack and
succeeded in advancing their line to a depth of about fifteen hundred
yards beyond the line of the three hills, which thereby was made more
secure against future assaults.
Deadly Machine-Gun Work
Meanwhile throughout the day the English battalions had been sustaining
heavy assaults, breaking the enemy against their front. The Leicesters,
especially, had fierce fighting about Voormezeele, where, as I told
yesterday, the enemy was in the centre of the village. German storm
troops advanced against our men here and along other parts of the line
with fixed bayonets, but in most places, except Voormezeele, where there
was close fighting, they were mowed down by Lewis-gun fire before they
could get near. Line after line of them came on, but lost heavily and
fell back.
Over the ground east of Dickebusch Lake some Yorkshire troops saw these
groups of field gray men advancing upon them, and the glint of their
bayonets, wet in the morning mist, and swept them with bullets from the
Lewis guns and rifles until heaps of bodies were lying out there on the
mud flats in the old Ypres salient. The most determined assaults were
concentrated upon the 25th Division, but it held firm and would not
budge, though the men had been under fearful fire in the night
bombardment, and their machine gunners kept their triggers pressed, and
bullets played upon the advancing Germans like a stream from a garden
hose.
The troops in the whole division yielded no yard of ground and they hold
that they killed as many Germans as any battalion in this battle. It was
a black day for Germany. More than ten German divisions, probably
thirteen, seem to have been engaged in this attempt to smash our lines
and encircle the three hills. They included some of the enemy's finest
divisions, so they lost quality as well as quantity in this futile
sacrifice of man-power--man-power which seems to mean nothing in flesh
and blood and heart and soul to men like Ludendorff, but is treated as a
material force like guns and ammunition and used as cannon fodder.
Brilliant French Fighters
_Referring to the French troops in this battle, Mr. Gibbs wrote:_
Today again I have been among the thousands of French soldiers. It is
splendid to see them because of their fine bearing. They are men in the
prime of life, not so young as some of the British and with a graver
look than one sees on British faces, when they have not yet reached the
zone of fire. They are men who have seen all that war means during these
years of agony and hope and boredom and death. They have no illusions.
They stare into the face of death unflinchingly and shrug their
shoulders at its worst menace and still have faith in victory.
So I read them, if any man may read the thoughts that lie behind those
bronzed faces with the dark eyes and upturned mustaches under the blue
painted helmets or the black Tam o' Shanters.
They are not gay or boisterous in their humor, and they do not sing like
the British as they march, but they seem to have been born to this war,
and its life is their life, and they are professionals.
The Tricolor passes along the roads of France and Flanders, and French
trumpets ring out across the flat fields below Scherpenberg, and all the
spirit of the French fighting men, who have proved themselves great
soldiers in this war, as for thousands of years of history, is mingled
with our own battalions. Together yesterday they gave the German Army a
hard knock.
The British Guards
_In his cable of May 1 Mr. Gibbs gave details of the extraordinary
heroism of the British Guards. He related incidents which had occurred
April 11 to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portuguese in
their efforts to widen the gap between Armentières and Merville by
gaining the crossings of the Lys._
The Grenadier, Irish, and Coldstream Guards were sent forward along the
Hazebrouck-Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the
men of the 15th Division and other units had fought themselves out in
continual rearguard and holding actions, so that some of those still in
the line could hardly walk or stand, and when it was utterly necessary
to keep the Germans in check until a body of Australian troops had time
to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy until those
Australians came and to fight at all costs for forty-eight hours against
the German tide of men and guns which was attempting to flow around the
other hard pressed men, and that is what the Guards did, fighting in
separate bodies with the enemy pressing in on both flanks.
Greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack, and gained
precious hours, vital hours, by the most noble self-sacrifice. A party
of Grenadiers were so closely surrounded that their officer sent back a
message saying:
"My men are standing back to back and shooting on all sides."
The Germans swung around them, circling them with machine guns and
rifles and pouring a fire into them until only eighteen men were left.
Those eighteen, standing among their wounded and their dead, did not
surrender. The army wanted forty-eight hours. They fixed bayonets and
went out against the enemy and drove through him. A wounded Corporal of
Grenadiers, who afterward got back to the British lines, lay in a ditch,
and the last he saw of his comrades was when fourteen men of them were
still fighting in a swarm of Germans.
Fought Back to Back
The Coldstream Guards were surrounded in the same way and fought in the
same way. The army had asked for forty-eight hours until the Australians
could come, and many of the Coldstreamers eked out the time with their
lives. The enemy filtered in on their flanks, came crawling around them
with machine guns, sniped them from short range and raked them from
ditches and upheaved earth.
The Coldstream Guards had to fall back, but they fought back in small
groups, facing all ways and making gaps in the enemy's ranks, not firing
wildly, but using every round of small-arms ammunition to keep a German
back and gain a little more time.
Forty-eight hours is a long time in a war like this. For two days and
nights the Irish Guards, who had come up to support the Grenadiers and
Coldstreamers, tried to make a defensive flank, but the enemy worked
past their right and attacked them on two sides. The Irish Guards were
gaining time. They knew that was all they could do, just drag out the
hours by buying each minute with their blood. One man fell and then
another; but minutes were gained, and quarters of hours and hours.
Small parties of them lowered their bayonets and went out among the gray
wolves swarming around them, and killed a number of them until they also
fell. First one party and then another of these Irish Guards made those
bayonet charges against men with machine guns and volleys of rifle fire.
They bought time at a high price, but they did not stint themselves nor
stop their bidding because of its costliness.
The brigade of Guards here and near Vieux Berquin held out for those
forty-eight hours, and some of them were fighting still when the
Australians arrived, according to the timetable.
Carnage Near Locre
_Mr. Gibbs, in a dispatch dated May 3, gave these vivid descriptions of
the fighting in the Locre-Dranoutre-Kemmel region:_
On April 24 the German bombardment was intensified and spread over a
deep area, destroying villages, tearing up roads, and making a black
vomit of the harrowed fields. Dranoutre, Locre, Westoutre, and other
small towns were violently bombarded. That night the French discovered
that the Germans were preparing an attack for the next morning, to be
preceded by a gas bombardment. The officers warned all their men, and
they stood on the alert with gas masks when at 3:30 in the morning
thousands of gas shells fell over them, mixed with high explosives of
all calibres up to the monster twelve-inch, which burst like volcanic
eruptions.
In the intensity of bombardment several officers who fought at Fleury
said: "This is the most frightful thing we have seen. Verdun was nothing
to it."
All the French troops jammed on gas masks, and on one day put them on
fifty times, only removing them when the wind, which was fairly strong,
blew away the poison fumes until other storms of shells came. For nearly
a week they wore them constantly, sleeping in them, officers giving
orders in them, and the men fighting and dying in them and charging with
the bayonet in them. It was worth the trouble and suffering, for this
French regiment between Locre and Dranoutre had only twelve gas
casualties.
That morning the German attack fell first on Kemmel Hill, which they
turned from the north, and two hours later, the bombardment continuing
all along the line, they developed a strong attack against Dranoutre in
the south in order to take Locre and turn the French right. Until
evening the troops on Kemmel Hill, with a small body of British, still
held out with great devotion in isolated positions, but by 8 o'clock
that morning Kemmel Hill was entirely cut off.
Other British Units in Danger
This was a severe menace to their comrades at Locre and southward,
because both their flanks were threatened. They did heroic things to
safeguard their right and left, which again and again the enemy tried to
pass. I have already told in a previous message how a gallant French
officer and a small company of men made a counterattack at Dranoutre and
held the post there against all odds.
Up by Locre the commandant of the left battalion found machine-gun fire
sweeping his left flank, and his men had to face left to defend their
line. Small parties of Germans with machine guns kept filtering down
from the north and established themselves on the railway in order to
rake the French with an enfilade fire.
One French company, led by devoted officers, counterattacked there five
times with the bayonet into the sweep of those bullets, and by this
sacrifice saved their flank. Another company advanced to hold the
hospice. There was desperate fighting day after day, so that its ruins,
if any bits of wall are left, will be as historic as the château at
Vermelles, or other famous houses of the battlefields.
French and Germans took it turn and turn about, and although the enemy
sent great numbers of men to garrison this place they never were able to
hold it long, because always some young French Lieutenant and a handful
of men stormed it again and routed the enemy. When it was taken last on
April 29, the day of the enemy's severe defeat, the French captured 100
prisoners in the cellars there, and they belonged to fourteen battalions
of four regiments of three divisions, showing the amazing way in which
the enemy's divisions have been flung into confusion by the French fire.
Under Constant Shellfire
On the morning of April 26 French companies made six attacks, and in the
afternoon two more, and though their losses were heavy, that evening
both the village and hospice of Locre stayed in their hands. That night,
their men being exhausted for a time after so many hours under fire,
they withdrew their line a little to the Locre-Bailleul road by the
Château of Locre and west of Dranoutre in order to reorganize a stronger
defense. The German bombardment slackened on the morning of April 28
owing to fog, and those few hours on that day and one other were the
only respite these French troops had from the incessant and infernal
gunfire when, owing to open warfare, "en rase campagne," as the French
call it, as in 1914, without a complete system of trenches or dugouts or
other artificial cover, they were much exposed.
"There were ten big shells a second," one of these officers told me,
"and that lasted, with only two short pauses, for six days all through
the battle, and other shells were uncountable."
The enemy had brought up light artillery and trench mortars almost to
his front lines in Dranoutre Wood and other places and attempted to take
the French in an enfilade fire from Kemmel, but by this time many French
guns were in position, reinforcing the British artillery, and on the
28th they opened up and killed great numbers of the enemy.
Allied aviators saw long columns of Germans on the roads by Neuve Eglise
and in Dranoutre Wood, and signaled to the guns to range on these human
targets. The guns answered. Masses of Germans were smashed by the fire
and panicstricken groups were seen running out of Dranoutre Wood.
Night of Horror for Germans
That night the Germans seemed to be relieving their troops, and again
the French and British guns flung shells into them, and for the enemy it
was a night of death and horror; but the next day, the 29th, the enemy
made reply by a prolonged bombardment, more intense even than before,
and then attacked with new troops all along the line. But the French
also had many fresh troops in line--not those I met yesterday--who at 2
o'clock in the morning went forward into attack and took back the
village. This defeated the enemy's plan of turning the French left.
All through that day the enemy's desperate efforts to break through
were shattered, and that night the French held exactly the same ground
as before and had caused enormous losses to the German divisions, at
least 40 per cent. of their strength, as it is reckoned on close
evidence.
That night even the German guns stopped their drumfire, as though Sixt
von Arnim's army was in mourning for its dead. It was a night of strange
and uncanny silence after the stupendous tumult, but for those French
regiments who had been holding the line for nearly a week it had been a
day of supreme ordeal.
Preparing for Another Advance
_There were no general engagements during the preceding five days nor up
to May 18, but incessant artillery fire was kept up and raids were
constantly made. On May 5 Mr. Gibbs described the difficulties
encountered by the Germans in preparing for a new advance:_
The enemy has many divisions, both up in the Flemish fields and on the
Somme, divisions in line and divisions in reserve--divisions crowded in
reserve--and there are few roads for them down which to march. There is
not much elbow room for such masses to assemble, and not much cover in
trenches or dugouts from high explosives or shrapnel. So we pound them
to death, many of them to death and many of them to stretcher cases, and
relief comes up, gets wildly mixed with the divisions coming down, and
at night there is mad confusion in the ranks of marching men and
transport columns, which gallop past dead horses and splintered wagons
and wrecks of transport columns, and among the regimental and divisional
staffs, trying to keep order in the German way when things are being
smashed into chaos, while the Red Cross convoys are over-loaded with
wounded and unable to cope with all the bodies that lie about.
This is what is happening behind the German lines--I have not overdrawn
the picture, believe me--and it is upsetting somewhat the plans of the
high German officers who are arranging things from afar through
telephones, down which they shout their orders.
"The Drums of Death"
_In his dispatch of May 9 the following was written to describe the
difficulties of the Germans in reorganizing their battered forces:_
From many points the British have complete observation of the enemy's
positions there, as he has of theirs from the other side of the way,
and, needless to say, they are making use of this direct view by
flinging over storms of shells whenever his transport is seen crawling
along the tracks of the old Somme battlefields or his troops are seen
massing among their shell craters.
The town of Albert itself, where once until recent history the golden
Virgin used to lean downward with her babe outstretched above the ruins,
is now a death trap for the German garrisons there and for any German
gunners who try to hide their batteries among the red brick houses. By
day and night their positions are pounded with high explosives and
soaked in asphyxiating gas.
I went within 2,000 yards of it yesterday, and saw the heaviest work of
the British upon it. It was a wonderful May day, as today is, and the
sun shone through a golden haze upon the town. As I looked into Albert
and saw the shells smashing through, and then away up the Albert-Bapaume
road, past the white rim of the great mine crater of La Boiselle to the
treeless slopes of Posières, and over all that ground of hills and
ditches to the high, wooded distant right, with its few dead stumps of
trees, it was hard to believe that all this was in the area of the
German Army, that the white, winding lines freshly marked upon this
bleak landscape were new German trenches, and that the enemy's outposts
were less than 2,000 yards from where I stood.
Fritz Having a "Thin Time"
Some siege gunners were lying on their stomachs and observing the
enemy's lines for some monsters I had seen on my way up, monsters that
raised their snouts slowly, like elephants' trunks, before bellowing out
with an earthquake roar, annihilating all one's senses for a second.
Some of the men passed the remark to me that "Albert isn't the town it
was" and that "Fritz must be having a thin time there." They also
expressed the opinion that the Albert-Bapaume road was not a pleasant
walk for Germans on a sunny afternoon.
I did not dispute these points with them, for they were beyond argument.
Big shells were smashing into Albert and its neighborhood from many
heavy batteries, raising volcanic explosions there, and shrapnel was
bursting over the tracks in white splashes.
_In describing the artillery fire which broke up a threatened assault on
May 5, Mr. Gibbs wrote:_
A new German division, the 52d Reserve, and the 56th German Division
prepared an assault on Ridge Wood. All these men were crowded into
narrow assembly grounds and did not have quiet hours before the moment
of attack. They had hours of carnage in the darkness. British and French
guns were answering back the German bombardment with their heaviest
fire. French howitzers, long-muzzled fellows, which during recent weeks
I had seen crawling through Flanders with the cornflowers, as the French
soldiers call themselves, crowded about them on the gun limbers and
transport wagons and muddy horses, and which had traveled long
kilometers, were now in action from their emplacements between the
ruined villages of the Flemish war zone, and with their little
brothers, the soixante-quinzes, their blood-thirsty little brothers,
were savage in their destruction and harassing fire.
I have seen the soixante-quinze at work and have heard the rafale des
tambours de la mort--the ruffle of the drums of death--as the sound of
their fire is described by all soldier writers of France. It was that
fire, that slashing and sweeping fire, which helped to break up any big
plan of attack against the French troops yesterday morning, and from
those assembly places a great part of the German infantry never moved
all day, but spent their time, it seems, in carrying back their wounded.
Tragic Desolation of Arras
_Mr. Gibbs on May 11 described a visit to Arras, as follows:_
Since the beginning of these great battles in bleak, cold weather Spring
has come, and almost Summer, changing all the aspect of the old
battlefields and of the woods behind craterland and of the cities under
fire.
I went into one of those cities the other day, Arras, which to me and to
many of us out here is a queerly enchanted place because of its beauty,
which survives even three years of bombardment, and because of the many
great memories which it holds in its old houses and streets and the
sense of romance which lurks in its courtyards and squares, reaching
back to ancient history before its death. For Arras is dead and but the
beautiful corpse of the city that was once very fair and noble.
During the recent weeks the enemy has flung many big explosive shells
into it, so that its ruins have become more ruined and many houses
hardly touched before have now been destroyed. It was sad to see this
change, the fresh mangling of stones that had already been scarred, the
heaps of masonry that lay piled about these streets that were utterly
deserted. I walked down many of them and saw no living soul, only a few
lean cats which prowled about, slinking close to the walls and crouching
when a German shell came over with a rending noise.
Bright sunlight shone down these streets, putting a lazy glamour upon
their broken frontages and flinging back shadows from high walls, except
where shell holes let in the light. The cathedral and the great Palace
of the Bishops were unroofed, with tall pillars broken off below the
vaulting and an avalanche of white masonry about them. They were
clear-cut and dazzling under the blue sky, and one was hushed by the
tragic grandeur of these ruins.
One of the British airplanes flew low over the city, and its engine sang
loudly with a vibrant humming, and now and again the crash of a gun or a
shell loosened some stones or plaster below its wings. Other birds were
singing. Spring birds, who are not out for war but sweethearting in the
gardens of Arras.
America's Sacrifice
By Harold Begbie
[By arrangement with The London Chronicle.]
One of the finest moral actions in this war has been done by America. It
is action on a gigantic scale, and yet of a directly personal character.
Insufficient publicity, I think, has been given to this action.
Is it realized by the people of this country that America has already
saved us from capitulating to the enemy? Either we should have been
forced into this surrender (with our armies unbroken and our munitions
of war unexhausted) or we should at this moment be struggling to live
and work and fight on one-third of our present rations.
America is sending to these islands almost two-thirds of our food
supplies. Sixty-five per cent. of the essential foodstuffs eaten by the
British citizen comes to him from the American Continent. This in itself
is something which calls for our lively gratitude. But there is a
quality in the action of America which should intensify our gratitude.
For these American supplies, essential to our health and safety,
represent in very large measure the personal and voluntary
self-sacrifice of the individual American citizen. They are not crumbs
from the table of Dives. They are not the commandeered supplies of an
autocratic Government. They represent, rather, the kindly, difficult,
and entirely willing self-sacrifice of a whole nation, the vast majority
of whom are working people.
There is only one altar for this act of sacrifice--it is the table of
the American working classes. And the rite is performed by men, women,
and children, at every meal of the day, day after day, week after week.
This act of self-sacrifice, let us remember, is made in the midst of
plenty. Well might the American housewife ask why she should deprive her
children of food, why she should institute wheatless and meatless days,
when all about her there is a visible superabundance of these things.
Questions such as this are natural enough on the other side of the
Atlantic, and on the other side of the American continent, 5,000 miles
away from the battlefields of France.
But the citizens of America do not ask such questions. With a
cheerfulness and a courage which are as vigorous as their industry, and
with a moral earnestness which is by far the greatest demonstration
America has yet given to the world of American character, these people
so far away from us on the other side of the Atlantic have willingly and
with no coercion by the State denied themselves for the sake of the
Entente. They are going short, they are going hungry, for our sakes.
They are practicing an intimate self-sacrifice in order that we may hold
our own till their sons come to fight at our side. All over America the
individual American citizen is making this self-sacrifice, and making it
without a murmur. He is feeding, by his personal self-sacrifice, not
only these islands, but France, Italy, and many of the neutrals.
This great demonstration of character has had no other impetus than the
simple declaration of the facts by Herbert Hoover, the man who fed
Belgium. Hoover has told his countrymen how things stand. That is all.
The Winter of 1918, he declared to them, will prove to mankind whether
or not the American Nation "is capable of individual self-sacrifice to
save the world." His propaganda has never descended to unworthy levels.
He has appealed always to the conscience of his countrymen. He has
spoken of "a personal obligation upon every one of us toward some
individual abroad who will suffer privation to the extent of our own
individual negligence."
America has answered this appeal in a manner which marks her out as one
of the greatest moral forces in the world. It should be known out there,
in the farmhouses and cottages of the American Continent, that the
people of this country are mindful of America's self-sacrifice, and are
grateful.
GENERAL STAFF OFFICERS WITH PERSHING
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. Benjamin Alvord,
_Adjutant_
(© _Harris & Ewing_)]
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. Andre W. Brewster,
_Inspector_
(© _Harris & Ewing_)]
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. Edgar Russell,
_Signal Officer_
(_Underwood from Buck_)]
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. Harry L. Rogers,
_Quartermaster_
(© _Harris & Ewing_)]
PROMINENT IN WAR ACTIVITIES
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. B. D. Foulois,
_Aviation Officer on Pershing's Staff_
_(Press Illustrating Service)_]
[Illustration:
Dr. F. P. Keppel,
_Recently appointed Assistant Secretary
of War_
_(© Harris & Ewing)_]
[Illustration:
W. C. Potter,
_Chief of Equipment Division of
Signal Corps_
_(© Harris & Ewing)_]
[Illustration:
Brig. Gen. C. B. Wheeler,
Ordnance Officer on Pershing's Staff
_(© Harris & Ewing)_]
American Soldiers in Battle
How They Repelled an Attack at Seicheprey and Fought in Picardy
[MONTH ENDED MAY 20, 1918]
Seicheprey, in the Toul sector, was the scene on April 20, 1918, of the
most determined attack launched against the American forces in France up
to that time. A German regiment, reinforced by storm troops, a total of
1,500, was hurled against the American positions on a one-mile front
west of Remières Forest, northwest of Toul, after a severe bombardment
of gas and high explosive shells. The Germans succeeded in penetrating
the front-line trenches and taking the village of Seicheprey, but after
furious hand-to-hand fighting the American troops recaptured the village
and most of the ground lost in the early fighting.
Next morning, after a brief bombardment, the Americans attacked and
drove the enemy out of the old outposts, which they had gained, and thus
broke down an offensive which, it was believed, was intended as the
beginning of a German plan to separate the Americans and the French. The
French lines also were attacked, but the Germans were repulsed and the
lines re-established.
The losses were the heaviest sustained by Americans since they began
active warfare in France. In a dispatch to the War Department General
Pershing indicated that the losses among his men were between 200 and
300. According to the German official statement 183 Americans were taken
prisoner, so that the American casualties apparently came mostly under
the heading of captured. Official reports of the German losses,
according to a prisoner captured later, gave 600 killed, wounded, and
missing.
IN THE PICARDY BATTLE
"Franco-American positions south of the Somme and on the Avre" were
officially mentioned for the first time in the French War Office report
of April 24, indicating that forces of the United States were there on
the battlefront resisting the great German offensive. The report stated
that an intense bombardment of the positions all along this front was
followed by an attack directed against Hangard-en-Santerre, the region
of Hailles, and Senecat Wood. The Germans were repulsed almost
everywhere.
Formal announcement that American troops sent to reinforce the allied
armies had taken part in the fighting was made by the War Department in
its weekly review of the situation issued on April 29. "Our own forces,"
the statement read, "have taken part in the battle. American units are
in the area east of Amiens. During the engagements which have raged in
this area they have acquitted themselves well."
UNDER INTENSE FIRE
Another heavy attack was launched by the Germans against the Americans
in the vicinity of Villers-Bretonneux on April 30. It was repulsed with
heavy losses for the enemy. The German bombardment opened at 5 o'clock
in the afternoon and was directed especially against the Americans, who
were supported on the north and south by the French. The fire was
intense, and at the end of two hours the German commander sent forward
three battalions of infantry. There was hand-to-hand fighting all along
the line, as a result of which the enemy was thrust back, his dead and
wounded lying on the ground in all directions. The French troops were
full of praise for the manner in which the Americans conducted
themselves under trying circumstances, especially in view of the fact
that they are fighting at one of the most difficult points on the
battlefront. The American losses were rather severe.
The gallantry of the 300 American engineers who were caught in the
opening of the German offensive on March 21 was the subject of a
dispatch from General Pershing made public by the War Department on
April 19. The engineers were among the forces hastily gathered by Major
Gen. Sanderson Carey, the British commander, who stopped the gap in the
line when General Gough's army was driven back. [See diagram on Page
389.] During the period of thirteen days covered by General Pershing's
report, the engineers were almost continuously in action. They were in
the very thick of the hardest days of the great German drive in Picardy.
General Pershing embodied in his report a communication from General
Rawlinson, commander of the British 5th Army, in which the latter
declared that "it has been largely due to your assistance that the enemy
is checked." The report covered the fighting period from March 21 to
April 3. The former date marked the beginning of the Ludendorff
offensive along the whole front from La Fère to Croisilles. It showed
that while under shellfire the American engineers destroyed material
dumps at Chaulnes, that they fell back with the British forces to
Moreuil, where the commands laid out trench work, and were then assigned
to a sector of the defensive line at Demuin, and to a position near
Warfusee-Abancourt.
During the period of thirteen days covered by the report the American
engineers had two officers killed and three wounded, while twenty men
were killed, fifty-two wounded, and forty-five reported missing.
STORY OF CAREY EPISODE
A correspondent of The Associated Press at the front gave this account
of the part played by Americans in the historic episode under General
Carey:
A disastrous-looking gap appeared In the 5th Army south of Hamel in
the later stages of the opening battle. The Germans had crossed the
Somme at Hamel and had a clear path for a sweep southwestward.
No troops were available to throw into the opening. A certain
Brigadier General was commissioned by Major Gen. Gough, commander
of the 5th Army, to gather up every man he could find and to "hold
the gap at any cost." The General called upon the American and
Canadian engineers, cooks, chauffeurs, road workmen, anybody he
could find; gave them guns, pistols, any available weapon, and
rushed them into the gap in trucks, on horseback, or on mule-drawn
limbers.
A large number of machine guns from a machine-gun school near by
were confiscated. Only a few men, however, knew how to operate the
weapons, and they had to be worked by amateurs with one "instructor"
for every ten or twelve guns. The Americans did especially well in
handling this arm.
For two days the detachment held the mile and a half gap. At the end
of the second day the commander, having gone forty-eight hours
without sleep, collapsed. The situation of the detachment looked
desperate.
While all were wondering what would happen next, a dusty automobile
came bounding along the road from the north. It contained Brig. Gen.
Carey, who had been home on leave and who was trying to find his
headquarters.
The General was commandeered by the detachment and he was found to
be just the commander needed. He is an old South African soldier of
the daredevil type. He is famous among his men for the scrapes and
escapades of his school-boy life as well as for his daring exploits
in South Africa.
Carey took the detachment in hand and led it in a series of attacks
and counterattacks which left no time for sleeping and little for
eating. He gave neither his men nor the enemy a rest, attacking
first on the north, then in the centre, then on the south--harassing
the enemy unceasingly with the idea of convincing the Germans that a
large force opposed them.
Whenever the Germans tried to feel him out with an attack at one
point, Carey parried with a thrust somewhere else, even if it took
his last available man, and threw the Germans on the defensive.
The spirit of Carey's troops was wonderful. The work they did was
almost super-natural. It would have been impossible with any body of
men not physical giants, but the Americans and Canadians gloried in
it. They crammed every hour of the day full of fighting. It was a
constantly changing battle, kaleidoscopic, free-for-all,
catch-as-catch-can. The Germans gained ground. Carey and his men
were back at them, hungry for more punishment. At the end of the
sixth day, dog-tired and battle-worn, but still full of fight, the
detachment was relieved by a fresh battalion which had come up from
the rear.
STAFF CHANGES
Major Gen. James W. McAndrew, it was announced on May 3, was appointed
Chief of Staff of the American expeditionary force in succession to
Brig. Gen. James G. Harbord, who was assigned to a command in the field.
Other changes on General Pershing's staff included the appointment of
Lieut. Col. Robert C. Davis as Adjutant General, and Colonel Merritte W.
Ireland as Surgeon General.
The General Staff of the American expeditionary forces in France, as the
result of several changes in personnel, consisted on May 14, 1918, of
the following:
Commander: General John J. Pershing
Aid de Camp: Colonel James L. Collins
Aid de Camp: Colonel Carl Boyd
Aid de Camp: Colonel M. C. Shallenberger
Chief of Staff: Major Gen. J. W. McAndrew
Adjutant: Lieut. Col. Robert C. Davis
Inspector: Brig. Gen. Andre W. Brewster
Judge Advocate: Brig. Gen. Walter A. Bethel
Quartermaster: Brig. Gen. Harry L. Rogers
Surgeon: Colonel Merritte W. Ireland
Engineer: Brig. Gen. Harry Taylor
Ordnance Officer: Brig. Gen. C. B. Wheeler
Signal Officer: Brig. Gen. Edgar Russell
Aviation Officer: Brig. Gen. B. D. Foulois
President Wilson on May 4 pardoned two soldiers of the American
expeditionary force who had been condemned to death by a military
court-martial in France for sleeping on sentry duty and commuted to
nominal prison terms the death sentences imposed on two others for
disobeying orders.
HEALTH OF THE SOLDIERS
Major Hugh H. Young, director of the work of dealing with communicable
blood diseases in our army in France, made this striking statement on
May 12 regarding the freedom of the American expeditionary force from
such diseases:
In making plans for this department of medical work in France it
had been calculated by the medical authorities in Washington to
have ten 1,000-bed hospitals, in which a million men could receive
treatment, but with 500,000 Americans in France there is not one of
the five allotted Americans in any of the hospitals now running,
and only 500 cases of this type of disease needing hospital
treatment, instead of the expected 5,000.
In other words, instead of having 1 per cent. of our soldiers in
hospitals from social diseases, as had been expected, the actual
number is only one-tenth of 1 per cent. There is no reason to doubt
that this record will be maintained. The hospitals prepared for
this special treatment are to be used for other cases.
This means that the American Army is the cleanest in the world. The
results, according to Major Young, have been achieved by preventive
steps taken by the American medical directors, coupled with the
co-operation of the men.
Overseas Forces More Than Half a Million
Preparing for an Army of 3,000,000
The overseas fighting forces of the United States have been increasing
at a much more rapid rate than the public was aware of. Early in May the
number of our men in France was in excess of 500,000. A great increase
in the ultimate size of the army was further indicated when the War
Department asked the House Military Affairs Committee for a new
appropriation of $15,000,000,000.
Mr. Baker, Secretary of War, appeared before the committee on April 23
and, after describing the results of his inspection of the army in
France, said that the size of the army that the United States would send
abroad was entirely dependent upon the shipping situation. Troops were
already moving to France at an accelerated rate.
President Wilson, through Mr. Baker, presented the House Military
Affairs Committee on May 2 with proposals for increasing the army. The
President asked that all limits be removed on the number of men to be
drafted for service. Mr. Baker said that he declined to discuss the
numbers of the proposed army "for the double reason that any number
implies a limit, and the only possible limit is our ability to equip and
transport men, which is constantly on the increase."
The Administration's plans were submitted in detail on May 3, when the
committee began the preparation of the army appropriation bill carrying
$15,000,000,000 to finance the army during the fiscal year ending June
30, 1919. Mr. Baker again refused to go into the question of figures,
but it became known at the Capitol that the estimates he submitted were
based on a force of not fewer than 3,000,000 men and 160,000 officers in
the field by July 1, 1919. The plan contemplated having 130,000 officers
and 2,168,000 men, or a total of 2,298,000, in the field and in camps by
July 1, 1918, and approximately an additional million in the field
before June 30, 1919.
Mr. Baker said that all the army camps and cantonments were to be
materially enlarged, to take care of the training of the men to be
raised in the next twelve months. The General Staff had this question
under careful consideration, and the idea was to increase the size of
existing training camps rather than to establish new camps. These camps,
it was estimated, already had facilities for training close to a million
men at one time.
The Secretary of War also made it clear that the total of
$15,000,000,000 involved in the estimates as revised for the new army
bill did not cover the whole cost of the army for the next fiscal year.
The $15,000,000,000, he explained, was in addition to the large sums
that would be carried in the Fortifications Appropriation bill, which
covers the cost of heavy ordnance both in the United States and
overseas. Nor did it include the Military Academy bill. It was
emphasized that, although estimates were submitted on the basis of an
army of a certain size, Congress was being asked for blanket authority
for the President to raise all the men needed, and the approximate
figures of $15,000,000,000 could be increased by deficiency
appropriations.
It was brought out in the committee that the transportation service had
improved and that the War Department was able to send more men to France
each month. It was estimated that if transport facilities continued to
improve, close to 1,500,000 fighting men would be on the western front
by Dec. 31, 1918. The United States had now in camp and in the field,
it was explained to the committee, the following enlisted men and
officers:
Enlisted men 1,765,000
Officers 120,000
Total 1,885,000
Provost Marshal General Crowder announced on May 8 that 1,227,000
Americans had been called to the colors under the Selective Draft act,
thereby indicating approximately the strength of the national army.
Additional calls during May for men to be in camp by June 2 affected
something like 366,600 registrants under the draft law. These men were
largely intended to fill up the camps at home, replacing the seasoned
personnel from the divisions previously training there. With the
increase of the number of divisions in France, the flow of replacement
troops was increasing proportionately.
In regard to the number of men in France, Mr. Baker on May 8 made the
following important announcement:
In January I told the Senate committee that there was strong
likelihood that early in the present year 500,000 American troops
would be dispatched to France. I cannot either now or perhaps later
discuss the number of American troops in France, but I am glad to be
able to say that the forecast I made in January has been surpassed.
This was the first official utterance indicating even indirectly the
number of men sent abroad. The first force to go was never described
except as a division, although as a matter of fact it was constituted
into two divisions soon after its arrival in France.
An Associated Press dispatch dated May 17 announced that troops of the
new American Army had arrived within the zone of the British forces in
Northern France and were completing their training in the area occupied
by the armies which were blocking the path of the Germans to the Channel
ports. The British officers who were training the Americans stated that
the men from overseas were of the finest material. The newcomers were
warmly greeted by the British troops and were reported to be full of
enthusiasm.
American Troops in Central France
By Laurence Jerrold
_This friendly British view of our soldiers in France is from the pen of
a noted war correspondent of The London Morning Post_
I have recently visited the miniature America now installed in France,
and installed in the most French part of Central France. There is
nothing more French than these ancient towns with historic castles,
moats, dungeons, and torture chambers, these old villages, where farms
are sometimes still battlemented like small castles, and this
countryside where living is easy and pleasant. On to this heart of
France has descended a whole people from across the ocean, a people that
hails from New England and California, from Virginia and Illinois. The
American Army has taken over this heart of France, and is teaching it to
"go some". Townsfolk and villagers enjoy being taught. The arrival of
the American Army is a revelation to them.
I was surprised at first to find how fresh a novelty an allied army was
in this part of France. Then I remembered that these little towns and
villages have in the last few months for the first time seen allies of
France. The ports where the American troops land have seen many other
allies; they saw, indeed, in August, 1914, some of the first British
troops land, whose reception remains in the recollection of the
inhabitants as a scene of such fervor and loving enthusiasm as had never
been known before and probably will not be known again. In fact, to put
it brutally, French ports are blasé. But this Central France for the
first time welcomes allied troops. It is true they had seen some
Russians, but the least said of them now the better. Some of the
Russians are still there, hewing wood for three francs a day per head,
and behaving quite peaceably.
These old towns and villages look upon the American Army in their midst
as the greatest miracle they have ever known, and a greater one than
they ever could have dreamed of. One motors through scores of little
towns and villages where the American soldier, in his khaki, his soft
hat, (which I am told is soon to be abolished,) and his white gaiters,
swarms. The villagers put up bunting, calico signs, flags, and have
stocks of American "canned goods" to show in their shop windows. The
children, when bold, play with the American soldiers, and the children
that are more shy just venture to go up and touch an American soldier's
leg. Very old peasant ladies put on their Sunday black and go out
walking and in some mysterious way talking with American soldiers. The
village Mayor turns out and makes a speech utterly incomprehensible to
the American soldier, whenever a fresh contingent of the latter arrives.
The 1919 class, just called up, plays bugles and shouts "Good morning"
when an American car comes by.
Vice versa, this Central France is perhaps even more of a miracle to the
American troops than the American troops are to it. To watch the
American trooper from Arkansas or Chicago being shown over a castle
which is not only older than the United States, but was in its prime
under Louis XII., and dates back to a Roman fortress now beneath it, is
a wonderful sight. Here the American soldier shows himself a charming
child. There is nothing of the "Innocents Abroad" about him. I heard
scarcely anything (except about telephones and railways) of any American
brag of modernism in this ancient part of France. On the contrary, the
soldier is learning with open eyes, and trying to learn with open ears,
all these wonders of the past among which he has been suddenly put. The
officer, too, even the educated officer, is beautifully astonished at
all this past, which he had read about, but which, quite possibly, he
didn't really believe to exist. The American officers who speak
French--and there are some of them, coming chiefly from the Southern
States--are, of course, heroes in every town, and sought after in cafés
at recreation hours by every French officer and man. Those who do not
know French are learning it, and I remember a picturesque sight, that of
a very elderly, prim French governess in black, teaching French to
American subalterns in a Y.M.C.A. canteen.
A great French preacher the other day, in his sermon in a Paris church,
said that this coming to France of millions of English troops and future
millions of American troops may mean eventually one of the greatest
changes in Continental Europe the world has ever known. His words never
seemed to me so full of meaning as they did when I was among the
Americans in the heart of France. There, of course, the contrast is
infinitely greater than it can be in the France which our own troops are
occupying and defending. These young, fresh, hustling, keen Americans,
building up numerous works of all kinds to prepare for defending France,
have brought with them Chinese labor and negro labor; and Chinese and
negroes and German and Austrian prisoners all work in these American
camps under American officers' orders. Imagine what an experience, what
a miracle, indeed, this spectacle seems to the country-folk of this old
French soil, who have always lived very quietly, who never wanted to go
anywhere else, and who knew, indeed, that France had allies fighting and
working for her, but had never seen any of them until these Americans
came across three thousand miles of ocean.
Something of a miracle, also, is what our new allies are accomplishing.
They are doing everything on a huge scale. I saw aviation camps,
training camps, aviation schools, vast tracts where barracks were being
put up, railways built, telegraphs and telephones installed by Chinese
labor, negro labor, German prisoners' labor, under the direction of
American skilled workmen, who are in France by the thousand. There are
Y.M.C.A. canteens, Red Cross canteens, clubs for officers and for men,
theatres and cinemas for the army, and a prodigious amount of food--all
come from America. The hams alone I saw strung up in one canteen would
astonish the boches. American canned goods, meat, fruit, condensed milk,
meal, &c., have arrived in France in stupendous quantities. No body of
American troops land in France until what is required for their
sustenance several weeks ahead is already stored in France. Only the
smallest necessaries are bought on the spot, and troops passing through
England on their way to France are strictly forbidden, both officers and
men, to buy any article of food whatsoever in England. As for the
quality, the American has nothing to complain of, so far as I could see.
All pastry, cakes, sweets are henceforth prohibited throughout civilian
France, but the American troops rightly have all these things in plenty.
I saw marvelous cakes and tarts, which would create a run on any Paris
or London teashop, and the lady who manages one American Red Cross
canteen (by the way, she is an Englishwoman, and is looked up to by the
American military authorities as one of the best organizers they have
met) explained to me wonderful recipes they have for making jam with
honey and preserved fruit. The bread, of course, they make themselves,
and, as is right, it is pure white flour bread, such as no civilian
knows nowadays.
One motors through scores of villages and more, and every little old
French spot swarms with American Tommies billeted in cottages and
farmhouses. Many of them marched straight to their billets from their
landing port, and the experience is as wonderful for them, just spirited
over from the wilds of America, as it is for the villagers who welcome
these almost fabulous allies. But it is the engineering, building, and
machinery works the Americans are putting up which are the most
astonishing. Gangs of workers have come over in thousands. Many of these
young chaps are college men, Harvard or Princeton graduates. They dig
and toil as efficiently as any laborer, and perhaps with more zeal. One
American Major told me with glee how a party of these young workers
arrived straight from America at 3:30 P. M., and started digging at 5
A. M. next morning. "And they liked it; it tickled them to death." Many
of these drafts, in fact, were sick and tired of inaction in ports
before their departure from America, and they welcomed work in France as
if it were some great game.
Perhaps the biggest work of all the Americans are doing is a certain
aviation camp and school. In a few months it has neared completion, and
when it is finished it will, I believe, be the biggest of its kind in
the world. There pilots are trained, and trained in numbers which I may
not say, but which are comforting. The number of airplanes they use
merely for training, which also I must not state, is in itself
remarkable. "Training pilots is the one essential thing," I was told by
the C.O. These flying men--or boys--who have, of course, already been
broken in in America, do an additional course in France, and when they
leave the aviation camp I saw they are absolutely ready for air fighting
at the front. This is the finishing school. The aviators go through
eight distinct courses in this school. They are perfected in flying, in
observation, in bombing, in machine-gun firing. On even a cloudy and
windy day the air overhead buzzes with these young American fliers, all
getting into the pink of condition to do their stunts at the front. They
seemed to me as keen as our own flying men, and as well disciplined.
They live in the camp, and it requires moving heaven and earth for one
of them to get leave to go even to the nearest little quiet old town.
The impression is the same of the American bases in France as of the
American front in France. I found there and here one distinctive
characteristic, the total absence of bluff. I was never once told that
we were going to be shown how to win the war. I was never once told that
America is going to win the war. I never heard that American men and
machines are better than ours, but I did hear almost apologies from
American soldiers because they had not come into the war sooner. They
are, I believe, spending now more money than we are--indeed, the pay of
their officers is about double that of ours. I said something about the
cost. "Yes, but you see we must make up for lost time," was all the
American General said. And he told me about the splendid training work
that is being done now in the States by British and French officers who
have gone out there knowing what war is, and who teach American officers
and men from first-hand experience. This particular General hoped that
by this means in a very short time American troops arriving in France
may be sent much more quickly to the front than is now the case.
An impression of complete, businesslike determination is what one gets
when visiting the Americans in France. A discipline even stricter than
that which applies in British and French troops is enforced. In towns,
officers, for instance, are not allowed out after 9 P. M. Some towns
where subalterns discovered the wine of the country have instantly been
put "out of bounds." No officer, on any pretext whatsoever, is allowed
to go to Paris, except on official business. From the camps they are not
even allowed to go to the neighboring towns. They have, to put it quite
frankly, a reputation of wild Americanism to live down, and they
sometimes surprise the French by their seriousness. It is a striking
sight to see American officers and men flocking into tiny little French
Protestant churches on Sundays in this Catholic heart of France. The
congregation is a handful of old French Huguenots, and the ancient,
rigid French pasteur never in his life preached to so many, and
certainly never to soldiers from so far. They come from so far, and from
such various parts, these Americans, and for France, as well as for
themselves, it is a wonderful experience. I was told that the postal
censors who read the letters of the American expeditionary force are
required to know forty-seven languages. Of these languages the two least
used are Chinese and German.
American Shipbuilders Break All Records
Charles M. Schwab Speeds the Work
[MONTH ENDED MAY 15, 1918]
All shipbuilding records have been broken by American builders in the
last month. On May 14 it was announced that the first million tons of
ships had been completed and delivered to the United States Government
under the direction of the Shipping Board. The actual figures on May 11
showed the number of ships to be 159, aggregating 1,108,621 tons. More
than half of this tonnage was delivered since Jan. 1, 1918. Most of
these ships were requisitioned on the ways or in contract form when the
United States entered the war. This result had been anticipated in the
monthly records, which showed a steady increase in the tonnage launched:
Number of
Ships Aggregate
Month. Launched. Tonnage.
January 11 91,541
February 16 123,100
March 21 166,700
The rapidity with which ships are being produced was shown by the
breaking of the world's record on April 20 and in turn the breaking of
this record on May 5. On the former date the 8,800-ton steel steamship
West Lianga was launched at Seattle, Wash., fifty-five working days from
the date the keel was laid. This was then the world's record. But on May
5 at Camden, N. J., the steel freight steamship Tuckahoe, of 5,548 tons,
was launched twenty-seven days after the keel was laid.
Ten days after this extraordinary achievement the Tuckahoe was finished
and furnished and ready for sea--another record feat.
Charles M. Schwab, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bethlehem
Steel Corporation, was on April 16, 1918, appointed Director General of
the Emergency Fleet Corporation to speed up the Government's
shipbuilding program. He was invested with practically unlimited powers
over all construction work in shipyards producing vessels for the
Emergency Fleet Corporation. Charles Piez in consequence ceased to be
General Manager of the Corporation, remaining, however, as Vice
President to supervise administrative details of construction and
placing contracts.
Mr. Schwab, who was the fifth man to be put in charge of the
shipbuilding program, was not desirous of accepting the position when
first approached because he considered his work in producing steel of
first importance in the carrying out of the nation's war program. But
after a conference with President Wilson, Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of
the Shipping Board; Bainbridge Colby, another member of the board, and
Charles Piez, he decided to accept the new position.
Almost the first thing Mr. Schwab did was to move his headquarters to
Philadelphia as the centre of the steel-shipbuilding region, taking with
him all the division chiefs of the Fleet Corporation directly connected
with construction work and about 2,000 employes. The Shipping Board and
Mr. Piez retained their offices in Washington with 1,500 subordinates
and employes. As a further step toward decentralization it was arranged
to move the operating department, including agencies such as the
Interallied Ship Control Committee, headed by P. A. S. Franklin, to New
York City.
The original "cost-plus" contract under which the Submarine Boat
Corporation of Newark was to build 160 ships of 5,000 tons for the
Government was canceled by Mr. Schwab as an experiment to determine
whether shipyards operating under lump-sum contracts and accepting all
responsibility for providing materials could make greater speed in
construction than those operating with Government money, such as the Hog
Island yards. The result was to increase the cost of each of the 160
ships from $787,500 to $960,000.
A request for an appropriation of $2,223,835,000 for the 1919 program
was presented by Mr. Hurley and Mr. Schwab to the House Appropriations
Committee on May 8.
Of this total $1,386,100,000 was for construction of ships and
$652,000,000 for the purchasing and requisitioning of plants and
material in connection with the building program.
Third Liberty Loan Oversubscribed
Approximately 17,000,000 Buyers
When the Third Liberty Loan, raised to finance America's war needs,
closed on May 4, 1918, the subscriptions were well over $4,000,000,000,
a billion in excess of the amount called for. The total was announced on
May 17 as $4,170,019,650. Secretary McAdoo stated that he would allot
bonds in full on all subscriptions.
The loan was regarded as the most successful ever floated by any nation,
not so much because of the volume of sales, but because of the wide
distribution of the loan. Approximately 17,000,000 individuals
subscribed, that is, about one person in every six in the United States.
The number of buyers in the Third Loan exceeded those in the Second by
7,000,000 and those in the First by 12,500,000.
The campaign throughout the country was conducted with all the
thoroughness of a great political struggle, with the difference that
there were no contending parties and all forces were marshaled to make
the loan a success. Nor was the campaign merely a display of efficient
organization and vigorous propaganda. It had many features of dramatic
and picturesque interest, not only in the large cities, but in almost
every smaller centre of the nation. A noonday rally of 50,000 men and
women in Wall Street, New York, on the closing day, was typical. An
eyewitness described it thus:
The Police Department Band appeared and the band of the 15th Coast
Artillery from Fort Hamilton. Taking advantage of the occasion,
James Montgomery Flagg now appeared in his studio van on the
southern fringe of the Broad Street crowd. A girl with him played
something on the cornet. It was a good deal like a show on the
Midway at a Western county fair. But this was no faker--one of the
most famous artists in America, throwing in a signed sketch of
whoever bought Liberty bonds. Those near him began pushing and
crowding to take advantage of the offer.
And now, suddenly, a tremendous racket up the street toward
Broadway. Who comes?
Cheer on cheer, now. It is the "Anzacs." Twelve long, rangy fellows,
officers all, six or seven of them with the little brass "A" on the
shoulder, which signifies service at Gallipoli and in Flanders. They
are members of the contingent of 500 which arrived here yesterday on
its way to the battlefields of France. They run lightly up the
Sub-Treasury steps and take their stand in a group beside the
soldier band.
And now they all come--all the actors in the drama of the day.
Governor Whitman, bareheaded, solemn-faced; Rabbi Stephen Wise, with
his rugged face and his shock of blue-black hair; Mme.
Schumann-Heink, panting a little with excitement; Auguste Bouilliz,
baritone of the Royal Opera of Brussels, who later is to thrill them
all with his singing of the "Marseillaise"; Cecil Arden, in a
shining helmet and draped in the Union Jack, come to sing "God Save
the King," while the sunburned Australian officers stand like
statues at salute; Oscar Straus, and then--
"Yee-ee-ee-eee."
Oh, how they cheered! For the "Blue Devils" of France had poured out
of the door of the Sub-Treasury and, with the fitful sun shining
once more and gleaming on their bayonets, were running down the
steps in two lines, past the "Anzacs," past the soldier band, to
draw up in ranks at the bottom.
Lieutenant de Moal speaks. What does he say? Who knows? But he is
widely cheered, just the same, as he gives way to Governor Whitman.
"There are gatherings like this, though not so large, all over our
land today," cries the Governor. "In every town and city we
Americans are gathered together at this moment to demonstrate that
we are behind our army, behind our navy, behind our President."
The cheers that acclaimed his mention of the President drowned his
voice for several moments.
"Here are the Australians," he cries, pointing to the "Anzac"
officers. "They have brought us a message, but we are going to give
them a message, too."
As the Governor stepped back to cheers that rocked the street,
Lieutenant de Moal barked a sharp order, and the "Blue Devils"
shouldered their guns with fixed bayonets, the six trumpeters
ta-ra-ta-raed, and the soldiers of France moved off up the sidewalk
lane to the side door of the Stock Exchange, where all business was
suspended during the fifteen minutes of their visit on the floor.
Four of the "Anzacs" meanwhile were taken from their ranks on the
steps of the building up to the pedestal of the statue of
Washington, which was used as speaker's platform, and Captain Frank
McCallam made a brief address.
"We haven't many men left," he said simply. "And it is up to you
people to help us out to the best of your ability."
More cheers, and then Cecil Arden sang "God Save the King." The
American regular fired a blank volley over the heads of the crowd,
and the kids scrambled for the empty shells.
Following Wise and Straus, Bouilliz, the Belgian baritone, sang the
"Marseillaise," and then, after the soldier band had played "Where
Do We Go from Here, Boys?" Mme. Schumann-Heink advanced and sang the
national anthem, following it up with an appeal that was the climax
to the play.
Less exciting but more impressive was the parade on April 26, when
thousands of mothers who had sent their sons to the front marched in a
column of 35,000 men and women in the Liberty Day parade in New York
City. This day had been proclaimed as such by President Wilson for "the
people of the United States to assemble in their respective communities
and liberally pledge anew their financial support to sustain the
nation's cause, and to hold patriotic demonstrations in every city,
town, and hamlet throughout the land."
The challenge of the mothers was inscribed on one of the banners they
carried: "We give our sons--they give their lives--what do you give?"
Remarkable as was the appearance of these mothers with the little
service flags over their shoulders, many of them so old that they
marched with difficulty, the spectators who flanked the line of march
along Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Fifty-ninth Street found it
even more thrilling to note that so very many of them, whether they were
mothers or young wives, or just young girls proud of the brothers that
had gone forth to service--so very many of them carried service flags
with three and four and five and even six stars, and occasionally a
glint of the sun would even carry the eye to a gold star, which meant,
whenever it appeared, a veil of mourning for a wooden cross somewhere in
France.
Among the minor but ingenious forms of publicity was the Liberty Loan
ball which was rolled from Buffalo to New York, a distance of 470 miles,
and which ended its journey of three weeks on May 4 at the City Hall.
The ball was a large steel shell covered with canvas.
Every community that reached or exceeded its quota to the loan was
entitled to raise a flag of honor specially designed for the purpose. At
least 32,000 communities gained the honor and raised the flag.
To strengthen the financial basis of the nation's war industries and use
monetary resources to the best advantage the War Finance Corporation
bill was passed by Congress and approved by President Wilson on April 5,
1918. The two main purposes of the act are to provide credits for
industries and enterprises necessary or contributory to the prosecution
of the war and to supervise new issues of capital. The act creates the
War Finance Corporation, consisting of the Secretary and four additional
persons, with $500,000,000 capital stock, all subscribed by the United
States. Banks and trust companies financing war industries or
enterprises may receive advances from the corporation.
Former War Loans of the United States
A Historical Retrospect
_The United States Government asked for $2,000,000,000 on the First
Liberty Loan in the Spring of 1917, and $3,034,000,000 was subscribed by
over 4,000,000 subscribers. For the Second Loan, near the end of 1917,
$3,000,000,000 was sought, and $4,617,532,300 was subscribed by
9,420,000 subscribers._
_The Guaranty Trust Company of New York in a recent brochure reviewed
the history of the various war loans of the United States, beginning
with the Revolutionary loans, as follows:_
When the patriots at Lexington "fired the shot heard 'round the world,"
the thirteen Colonies found themselves suddenly in the midst of war, but
with practically no funds in their Treasuries. The Continental Congress
was without power to raise money by taxation, and had to depend upon
credit bills and requisitions drawn against the several Colonies. France
was the first foreign country to come to the aid of struggling America,
the King of France himself advancing us our first loan. All told,
France's loan was $6,352,500; Holland loaned us $1,304,000; and Spain
assisted us with $174,017. Our loan from France was repaid between 1791
and 1795 to the Revolutionary Government of France; the Holland loan
during the same period in five annual installments, and the Spanish loan
in 1792-3.
Our first domestic war loan of £6,000 was made in 1775, and the loan was
taken at par. A year and a half later found Congress laboring under
unusual difficulties. Boston and New York were held by the enemy, the
patriot forces were retreating, and the people were as little inclined
to submit to domestic taxation as they had formerly been to "taxation
without representation." To raise funds even a lottery was attempted. In
October, 1776, Congress authorized a second loan for $5,000,000. It was
not a pronounced success, only $3,787,000 being raised in twelve months.
In 1778 fourteen issues of paper money were authorized as the only way
to meet the expenses of the army. By the end of the year 1779 Congress
had issued $200,000,000 in paper money, while a like amount had been
issued by the several States. In 1781, as a result of this financing and
of the general situation, Continental bills of credit had fallen 99 per
cent.
Then came Robert Morris, that genius of finance, who found ways to raise
the money which assured the triumph of the American cause. By straining
his personal credit, which was higher than that of the Government, he
borrowed upon his own individual security on every hand. On one occasion
he borrowed from the commander of the French fleet, securing the latter
with his personal obligation. If Morris and other patriotic citizens had
not rendered such assistance to the Government, some of the most
important campaigns of the Revolutionary War would have been impossible.
Following came the Bank of Pennsylvania, which issued its notes--in
effect, loans--to provide rations and equipment for Washington's army at
Valley Forge. These notes were secured by bills of exchange drawn
against our envoys abroad, but it was never seriously intended that they
should be presented for payment. The bank was a tremendous success in
securing the money necessary to carry out its patriotic purposes, and
was practically the first bank of issue in this country.
With the actual establishment of the United States and the adoption of
the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton came forward with a funding scheme
by which the various debts owed to foreign countries, to private
creditors, and to the several States were combined. In 1791, on a specie
basis, our total debt was $75,000,000. The paper dollar was practically
valueless and the people were forced to give the Government adequate
powers to raise money and to impose taxes. Between that date and 1812
thirteen tariff bills were passed to raise money to meet public
expenditures and pay off the national debt.
THE WAR OF 1812.
For some time previous to the actual outbreak of the War of 1812
hostilities had been predicted. In a measure, this enabled Congress to
prepare for it. And although the war did not begin until June of 1812,
as early as March of that year a loan of $11,000,000, bearing 6 per
cent. at par, to be paid off within 12 years from the beginning of 1813,
was authorized. Of this, however, only $2,150,000 was issued, and all
was redeemed by 1817. The next year a loan of $16,000,000 was authorized
and subscribed. This was followed, in August, by a loan of $7,500,000
which sold at 88-1/4 per cent.
At the end of the war the total loans negotiated by the Government
aggregated $88,000,000. The nation's public debt, as a result of this
war, was increased to $127,334,933 in 1816. By 1835, either by
redemptions or maturity, it was all paid.
MEXICAN WAR LOANS
The Mexican War net debt incurred by the United States was approximately
$49,000,000 and was financed by loans in the form of Treasury notes and
Government stock. The Treasury notes, under the act of 1846, totaled
$7,687,800 and the stock $4,999,149. The latter paid 6 per cent.
interest. By act of 1847 Treasury notes to the amount of $26,122,100
were issued, bearing interest in the discretion of the Secretary of the
Treasury, reimbursable one and two years after date, and convertible
into United States stock at 6 per cent. They were redeemable after Dec.
31, 1867. Economic developments following this war led to a period of
extraordinary industrial prosperity which lasted for several years. A
change in the fiscal policy of the Government, with overexpansion of
industry, however, resulted in a panic in 1857 and a Treasury deficit in
1858. The debt contracted in consequence of the Mexican War was redeemed
in full by 1874.
The situation had not improved to any great extent when Lincoln took
office on March 4, 1861, and by mid-November of that year a panic was
in full swing. The outbreak of the civil war found the Treasury empty
and the financial machinery of the Government seriously disorganized.
Public credit was low, the public mind was disturbed, and raising money
was difficult. In 1862 the Legal Tender act was passed, authorizing an
issue of $150,000,000 of legal-tender notes, and an issue of bonds in
the amount of $500,000,000 was authorized.
This proved to be a most popular loan. The bonds were subject to
redemption after five years and were payable in twenty years. They bore
interest at 6 per cent., payable semi-annually, and were issued in
denominations of $50, $100, $500, and $1,000. Through one agent, Jay
Cooke, a genius at distribution, who employed 2,850 sub-agents and
advertised extensively, this loan was placed directly with the people at
par in currency. Altogether the aggregate of this loan was $514,771,600.
Later in that year Congress authorized a second issue of Treasury notes
in the amount of $150,000,000 at par, with interest at 6 per cent.; in
January, 1863, a third issue of $100,000,000 was authorized, which was
increased in March to $150,000,000, at 5 per cent. interest. These
issues were referred to as the "one and two year issues of 1863."
DEFICIT IN 1862
In December, 1862, Congress had to face a deficit of $277,000,000 and
unpaid requisitions amounting to $47,000,000. By the close of 1863
nearly $400,000,000 had been raised by bond sales. A further loan act,
passed March 3, 1864, provided for an issue of $200,000,000 of 5 per
cent. bonds known as "ten-fortys," but of this total only $73,337,000
was disposed of. Subsequently, on June 30, 1864, a great public loan of
$200,000,000 was authorized. This was an issue of Treasury notes,
payable at any time not exceeding three years, and bearing interest at
7-3/10 per cent. Notes amounting to $828,800,000 were sold. The
aggregate of Government loans during the civil war footed up a total of
$2,600,700,000; and on Sept. 1, 1865, the public debt closely
approached $3,000,000,000, less than one-half of which was funded.
Civil war loans, with one exception, which sold at 89-3/10, were all
placed at par in currency, subject to commissions ranging from an eighth
to one per cent. to distributing bankers. The average interest nominally
paid by the Government on its bonds during the war was slightly under 6
per cent. Owing to payment being made in currency, however, the rate
was, in reality, much higher. With the conclusion of the war, the
reduction of the public debt was undertaken, and it has continued with
but two interruptions to date.
Heavy tax receipts for several years after the close of the war
potentially enabled the Government to reduce its debt. Indeed, from 1866
to 1891, each year's ordinary receipts exceeded disbursements, and
enabled the Government to lighten its financial burdens. In 1866 the
decrease in the net debt was $120,395,408; in 1867, $127,884,952; in
1868, $27,297,798; in 1869, $48,081,540; in 1870, $101,601,917; in 1871,
$84,175,888; in 1872, $97,213,538, and in 1873, $44,318,470.
Through refunding operations--in addition to bonds and short-time
obligations redeemed with surplus revenues--the Government paid off, up
to 1879, $535,000,000 bonds bearing interest at from 5 to 6 per cent. In
this year the credit of the Government was on a 4 per cent. basis, and a
year later on a 3-1/4 per cent. basis, against a maximum basis of 15-1/2
per cent. in 1864.
Between 1881 and 1887 the Governzment paid off, either with surplus
revenues or by conversion, $618,000,000 of interest-bearing debt. In
1891 all bonds then redeemable were retired, and on July 1, 1893, the
public debt amounted to less than one-third of the maximum outstanding
in 1865. In 1900 the Government converted $445,900,000 bonds out of an
aggregate of $839,000,000 convertible under the refunding act passed by
Congress in that year. And further conversions in 1903, 1905, and 1907
brought the grand total up to $647,250,150--a result which earned for
the Government a net annual saving in interest account of $16,551,037.
SPANISH WAR LOANS
The United States is a debt-paying nation. Hence, America's credit,
despite occasional fluctuations, has steadily risen, and our national
debt has sold on a lower income basis than that of any other nation in
the world.
Following the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor, in 1898, Congress
authorized an issue of $200,000,000 3 per cent. ten-twenty-year bonds.
Of this aggregate $198,792,660 were sold by the Government at par. So
popular was this loan, it was oversubscribed seven times. During the
year 1898, following the allotment to the public, this issue sold at a
premium, the price going to 107-3/4, and, during the next year, to
110-3/4. After the war ended, the Government, in accordance with its
unvarying custom, began to pay off this debt; but, despite the Secretary
of the Treasury's offer to buy these bonds, he succeeded in purchasing
only about $20,000,000 of them.
[Illustration]
American Labor Mission in Europe
War Aims of Organized Workers Conveyed to English and French Labor
Unions
An American Labor Mission visited England and France in April, 1918, to
present the views of American workingmen regarding the war. The
delegation numbered eighteen, headed by James Wilson, President of the
Patternmakers' League of North America. In his first address at London,
April 28, before the British and Foreign Press Association, Mr. Wilson
said:
We recognize as a fundamental truth that there can be no democracy
with the triumph of the Imperial German Government. The principle of
democracy or the principle of Prussian military autocracy will
prevail as a result of the world war. There can be no middle course
nor compromise. The contest must be carried on to its finality.
The Central Powers have staked everything on the result of this
struggle. Their defeat means the destruction of a machine which has
been built with remarkable efficiency and embodies the very life of
the German race.
On the other hand, every free man instinctively appreciates that if
we are to maintain the standard of civilization as worked out by the
free men of the world, and if posterity is to be guaranteed
political and industrial freedom, the war must be won by the allied
countries. Peace now would be the fulfillment of the Prussian dream,
for they have within their grasp the very heart of Continental
Europe and resources which would make sure further conquest upon the
other nations of the world.
The American labor movement, in whose behalf my colleagues and
myself have been authorized to speak, declare most emphatically that
they will not agree to a peace conference with the enemies of
civilization, irrespective of what cloak they wear, until Prussian
militarism has withdrawn within its own boundaries, and then not
until the Germans have, through proper representatives, proved to
our satisfaction that they recognize the right of peoples and
civilized nations to determine for themselves what shall be their
standard.
Unless reconstruction shall soon come from the German workers within
that country, it is now plain that the opportunity to uproot the
agencies of force will only come when democracy has defeated
autocracy in the military field and wins the right to reconstruct
the relations between nations and men.
German freedom is ultimately the problem of the German people, but
the defeat of Prussian autocracy in the field will bring the
opportunity for German liberty at home.
BRITISH SEAMEN'S ATTITUDE
J. Havelock Wilson, President of the British Seamen's Union, conferred
with the American Mission at London, April 30, and informed it of the
decision of his union to transport no pacifists to any peace conference.
He made the following statement:
On Sept. 21, 1917, we formed what we called a Merchant Seamen's
League, and declared that if German terrorism on the sea continued
we would enforce a boycott against Germany for two years after the
war, and that for every new crime from that time on we would add one
month to the length of the boycott. The length of the boycott now
stands at five years seven months. We have reliable information that
this action is making a very profound impression on German
manufacturers and shippers.
The British seamen got their first intimation of German treachery
when the international transport strike was first proposed by German
delegates ostensibly to pledge support. But the British learned
later that the German delegates had in their pockets as they talked
contracts signed with employers.
After that we watched the German Social Democrats in the Socialists'
international. But we never could get the Germans to face the issue.
Always they had excuses and evasions. We never had confidence in
them. When war came we felt it our duty to take care of the men on
our ships who could no longer sail, and also to set a good example.
Here were Germans on our ships who had been in England so long that
they had forgotten their language. On Aug. 20, 1914--you see we
acted quickly--we bought an estate of thirty-nine acres and built
the model internment camp of Great Britain. We asked the Government
to give us charge of all interned German sailors, and, let it be
known to the credit of Great Britain, that was done. The Government
allowed us all 10s. per week per man for upkeep. The camp became a
great success. There were 1,000 German sailors interned in it.
Until May, 1915, all went well. On May 1 the interned men celebrated
May Day, their international revolutionary holiday. They had their
banners, "Workers of the World, Unite," "World Brotherhood," and so
on. We had planned a great fête to be held later and I had secured
the consent of several well-known persons to attend and help make it
a success. On May 7 the Lusitania was sunk. I called the Germans in
camp together and told them the terrible thing that had happened. I
told them they were not to blame, but that the celebration could not
be held. And they made no protest to me.
Now here were 1,000 Germans not under control of the Kaiser. Some of
them had been among us twenty or thirty years. As soon as I had got
out of the place they sang and cheered and rejoiced over the
Lusitania disaster. They kept this up for four hours. They made me
conclude that the camp must be handed over to the military as soon
as possible, and this was done. Six months after that came the
U-boat campaign, and, what made that worse, the fact that the
U-boats always turned their guns on open boats.
I have got hundreds of cases of boys whose arms and legs have been
blown off by U-boat guns while trying to get away from sinking ships
in open boats. I wrote the Secretary of the International Transport
Workers' Union protesting against these crimes. His reply attempted
to justify every crime. That showed us that not only was the Kaiser
responsible, but that the organized trade union movement of Germany
was also responsible.
On June 1, 1917, a Socialist congress was convened at Leeds. It was
advertised as the greatest conference ever held. We sent two men
there to tell our story. Our men found that small bodies of only a
handful of members had been delegated, who got the floor easily for
the pacifist cause. Our men could not secure anything like a fair
chance.
In this conference MacDonald, Fairchild, and Jowett were elected
delegates to Stockholm. We at once resolved that no delegates should
leave this country. And none did.
That is the history of the seamen's determination to bottle up such
British pacifists as may desire to go abroad spreading their
doctrine. Mingled with it is the grim, sad story of 12,000 members
of the Seamen's Union who have lost their lives on merchant ships
through Germany's criminal conduct on the seas.
And while there is here and there one in England who resembles a
leader of labor who is a pacifist, the determination of the British
seamen to go through with the war to the finish is scarcely more
than a reflection of the rank-and-file spirit that is to be found
throughout the whole of British labor.
NO PARLEYS WITH ENEMY LABOR
The American delegates met the representatives of labor in London and in
Paris. In England they found the sentiment almost unanimous in approval
of their decision to favor no conferences with German labor
representatives until a victory had been achieved. In France, however,
they encountered a group that favored contact with the German and
Austrian Socialists. On May 6 there was a conference in Paris between
the American labor delegates and the members of the Confederation
Générale de Travail, the great French revolutionary labor organization.
M. Jouhaux, General Secretary of the confederation, made the proposed
international conference practically the sole note of his speech.
France, he asserted, had no hatred for the German workers themselves,
and he pointed out that if the conference took place it could have only
one of two results. Either the workers in the enemy countries would
refuse to join in the efforts of the workers of the allied countries for
the liberation of the world's peoples, in which case the war must
continue, or they would accept the allied view of what was right and
would act with the allied peoples for the good of humanity.
The American reply was in these definite words:
"We don't hate the German workers any more than you do, but to give them
our hand now would be looked upon by them only as a sign of weakness."
After reminding the congress of the hypocritical professions of the
German Socialist Party before the war, the delegation declared itself in
entire agreement with Samuel Gompers that American labor men would
refuse to meet the German delegates under any circumstances so long as
Germany was ruled by an Imperialistic Government. This declaration left
Albert Thomas, former Cabinet officer and leader of the group,
practically without a word to say. M. Thomas urged the same arguments
as Jouhaux, but all the satisfaction the French labor men got was a
promise from James Wilson, President of the American delegation, to
report the matter to the American workers when he returned home.
Chairman Wilson reaffirmed at a luncheon given at the Foreign Office May
10 that American labor would not discuss the war with representatives of
German labor until victory was won, because German labor, which was
permitting the war, must do something itself in its own country toward
ending the conflict justly before it could debate with labor
representatives of the allied countries on what ought to be.
The luncheon was given by Stephen Pichon, Foreign Minister, on behalf of
the French Government. With the exception of Premier Clemenceau, all the
members of the Cabinet were present as well as other men notable in
French public life. Ambassador Sharp was also in attendance.
The mission visited the fighting front and returned to London May 11 to
hold mass meetings at English industrial centres. The members were
received by the King and dined by the London Chamber of Commerce May
15.
Progress of the War
Recording Campaigns on All Fronts and Collateral Events From April 18,
1918, Up to and Including May 17, 1918
UNITED STATES
The campaign for the Third Liberty Loan of $3,000,000,000 ended on May
4. The total subscription was $4,170,019,650, as announced by the
Treasury Department on May 17.
On April 20 President Wilson issued a proclamation extending to women
enemy aliens the restrictions imposed on men.
The Overman bill, giving the President power to consolidate and
co-ordinate executive bureaus and agencies as a war emergency measure,
was passed by the Senate on April 28 and by the House on May 14.
The War Trade Board announced on May 3 that a general commercial
agreement with Norway had been signed. On May 12 it announced that in
order to conserve materials and labor and to add tonnage to the fleet
carrying men and munitions to Europe, arrangements had been made to have
Great Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium pass upon the advisability of
releasing proposed exports before granting licenses to shippers. On May
14 an agreement was reached between the United States and the allied
nations providing that all imports to the United States should be
forbidden unless sanctioned by the War Trade Board.
A conference report on the Sedition bill, giving the Government broad
new powers to punish disloyal acts and utterances, was adopted by the
Senate on May 4, and by the House of Representatives on May 7, and sent
to the President for his signature.
As a result of charges of graft, inefficiency, and pro-German tendencies
directed against the military aircraft administration by Gutzon Borglum,
President Wilson, on May 15, asked Charles Evans Hughes to aid Attorney
General Gregory in making a thorough investigation. Mr. Hughes accepted
the invitation. The President also wrote a letter to Senator Martin
denouncing the Chamberlain resolution for an investigation of the
conduct of the war by the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate,
and on the same day the Senate Committee on Audit and Expenses, to which
the resolution had been referred, ordered a favorable report on it,
modifying it so as to provide for a limited inquiry.
SUBMARINE BLOCKADE
The American steamship Lake Moor was reported sunk on April 11.
Forty-four Americans were killed when the Old Dominion liner Tyler was
sunk off the French coast on May 2.
The British liner Oronsa was sunk on April 28. All on board except three
members of the crew were saved. The British sloop Cowslip was torpedoed
on April 25. Five officers and one man were missing.
The British Admiralty announced on April 24 the cessation of the weekly
return of shipping losses and the substitution of a monthly report.
In a statement made in the Chamber of Deputies on May 11, Georges
Leygues, the French Minister of Marine, declared that the total of
allied tonnage sunk by German submarines in five months was 1,648,622,
less than half the amount alleged by Germany to have been destroyed. He
announced that the number of submarines sunk by the Allies was greater
than Germany's output.
[Illustration: BARON STEPHAN BURIAN
Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister in succession to Czernin]
LEADERS IN THE IRISH CONTROVERSY
[Illustration: John Dillon, M. P.,
_Leader of the Nationalist Party_
(_Press Illustrating Service_)]
[Illustration: Joseph Devlin,
_Nationalist M. P. for West Belfast_
(_Press Illustrating Service_)]
[Illustration: Sir Edward Carson, M. P.,
_Leader of the Ulster Unionists_
(_Central News_)]
[Illustration: Sir Horace Plunkett,
_Chairman of the Irish Convention_
(_Bain News Service_)]
Twelve German submarines were officially reported captured or sunk in
British waters by American or British destroyers during the month of
April, and two others were known to have been destroyed.
Ten passengers were killed when the French steamship Atlantique was
torpedoed in the Mediterranean early in May. The ship managed to reach
port.
CAMPAIGN IN WESTERN EUROPE
April 18--French advance on both banks of the Avre River between Thanne
and Mailly-Raineval; Germans deliver terrific assaults upon the British
front from Givenchy to the neighborhood of St. Venant.
April 19--Italian troops reach France; British beat off assaults on Mont
Kemmel and recover ground west of Robecq; bombardment of Paris resumed.
April 20--Germans hurl force against American and French troops at
Seicheprey and get a grip on the town, but are driven out; Belgians give
ground temporarily near the Passchendaele Canal, but regain it; British
re-establish their positions in Givenchy-Festubert region.
April 21--British drive Germans from some of their advanced positions
near Robecq; Americans retake Seicheprey outposts.
April 23--British gain ground east of Robecq and in the neighborhood of
Meteren.
April 24--Germans take Villers-Bretonneux, but are repulsed at other
places south of the Somme; Franco-American positions at Hangard shelled.
April 25--British recover Villers-Bretonneux; French and British lose
ground in the Lys salient before terrific German assaults from
Wytschaete to Bailleul, aiming at Mont Kemmel; Germans take Hangard.
April 26--Germans take Mont Kemmel and the villages of Kemmel and
Dranoutre and push on to St. Eloi; French recover part of Hangard.
April 27--British and French troops recover some of the ground lost in
the Bailleul-Wytschaete sector; Germans repulsed at Voormezeele after
hard fight.
April 28--Germans take Voormezeele, but are driven out by counterattack;
Locre changes hands five times.
April 29--Germans make heavy attacks upon the entire Franco-British
front from Zillebeke Lake to Meteren; British hold their line intact;
French yield some ground around Scherpenberg and Mont Rouge, but later
regain it; Belgians repulse attacks north of Ypres; Americans take over
a sector of the French line at the tip of the Somme salient.
April 30--French recover ground on the slope of Scherpenberg and
advance their line astride the Dranoutre road; positions of the allied
forces push forward between La Clytte and Kemmel.
May 1--Americans repulse attacks in the Villers-Bretonneux region;
Béthune region bombarded.
May 3--French and British improve their positions along the Somme River
southward to below the Avre; French take Hill 82, near Castel, and the
wood near by.
May 4--Germans repulsed at Locon; French make progress near Locre, and
British advance near Meteren; Americans in the Lorraine sector raid
German positions south of Halloville and penetrate to third line; French
shell disables last of German guns that have been bombarding Paris.
May 5--Franco-British forces, in operation between Locre and Dranoutre,
advance their positions on a 1,000-yard front to an average depth of 500
yards; Germans foiled in attempt to occupy former American trenches in
the Bois Brûlé.
May 6--Germans launch heavy gas attacks against American troops on the
Picardy front.
May 8--Germans gain a foothold at several points midway between La
Clytte and Voormezeele, but are repulsed at other points along the line;
Australians advance 500 yards near Sailly and 300 yards west of
Morlancourt.
May 9--British re-establish their lines and drive Germans out of British
trenches between La Clytte and Voormezeele; Germans occupy British
advanced positions at Albert on a front of about 150 yards.
May 10--British restore their line at Albert; German artillery fire
active in the Vimy and Robecq sectors of the British front, and south of
Dickebusch.
May 11--Berlin reports heavy losses inflicted on American troops
southwest of Apremont; Germans gain small portion of territory southwest
of Mailly-Raineval, but are driven out by French; French gain ground in
Mareuil Wood.
May 12--French troops north of Kemmel capture Hill 44 and an adjoining
farm; Germans bombard Albert, Loos, and Ypres sectors, and lines
southeast of Amiens, but are repulsed by the French near
Orvillers-Sorel.
May 13--Americans blow up enemy ammunition dump and start fires in
Cantigny, with explosions; Germans resume firing north of Kemmel.
May 14--Hill 44, north of Kemmel, changes hands several times; French
advance in Hangard region; British carry out successful raid near
Robecq.
May 15--Germans repulsed by the British southwest of Morlancourt and by
the French north of Kemmel. May 16--Heavy gunfire in the Lys and Avre
areas.
May 17--Official announcement that American troops have taken their
place in the British war zone in Northern France; German gunfire
increases in the Lys and Hailles region.
ITALIAN CAMPAIGN.
May 3--Heavy fighting reported along the entire front between the
Adriatic and the Giudicaria Valley.
May 5--Increase in artillery fire, notably in the Lagarina and Astico
Valleys.
May 11--Italians penetrate advanced Austrian positions on Monte Carno.
May 12--Italians wipe out a Coll dell' Orso garrison.
May 14--Austrian attempts to renew attacks on Monte Carno and to
approach Italian lines at Dosso Casina and in the Balcino and Ornic
Valleys fail.
May 16--Italians enter Austrian lines at two points on Monte Asolone;
British make successful raid at Canove.
CAMPAIGN IN ASIA MINOR.
April 21--Armenians retake Van.
April 27--British in Mesopotamia advance north of Bagdad and Kifra.
April 28--British cavalry forces a passage o
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/41479