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Art. 13.—THE COURSE OF THE WAR.

DURING the first half of July events on the western front continued to follow the unostentatious course on which they had entered when the enemy, foiled in his schemes for the overthrow of the French and Italian armies, abandoned the offensive. Superficially, the general situation exhibited no obvious change. Here and there minor enterprises, which need no detailed description, continued to give back to the Allies portions of the ground they had lost; while the Germans, resolved, to all appearance, on a purely passive defence, continued to accept these local reverses with unwonted humility.

But all the time causes were operating to effect a change in the tide of war, which was destined soon to carry the Allied armies forward on an ever-widening wave which has swept the enemy back to, and in places beyond, the low-water mark of last year's retreat. The American Army, which had already attained a high state of efficiency from the practical experience of war, was rapidly becoming formidable in numbers; and the units which, for training purposes, had originally been brigaded with British divisions, had been brought together, and organised in separate divisions and armies. The Allied forces, as a whole, were recovering the cohesion which had been sacrificed to the necessity of breaking-up formations to meet urgent calls for reinforcements in unexpected quarters. The centring of the supreme command in the hands of General Foch-now a Marshal of France-which was in itself a factor of strength, both facilitated the disentangling and re-grouping of the scattered units, and ensured the redistribution of the armies to the best advantage with a view to combined action, whether in attack or defence. The replacement of lost material was proceeding apace; and, in respect of moral, the Allied troops were rapidly recovering from the effects of their retreat, while the enemy suffered the discouragement incidental to failure.

As time went on, and the Germans remained inactive, it was generally supposed that they had finally relinquished the initiative; and it was somewhat a surprise when, on July 15, they opened a general attack on a front of fifty miles extending from Château Thierry to

the Main des Massiges, at the eastern limit of the old Champagne battle-field. Throwing numerous bridges over the Marne, eight divisions, under cover of smokeclouds, forced the river between Fossoy and Verneuil, and, in the first rush, gained the heights south of Dormans, which overlook the valley. Between the Marne and the Ardre the Allied line was forced back a distance of three or four miles; and east of Reims the first line of defence was captured, including the heights of Moronvillers, which had been the scene of fierce battles last year. The Germans, however, do not appear to have made any serious attempt to follow up their advantage; and they were unable to maintain their position on the heights south of the river against the French counter-attacks, which developed on July 16 and 17, while, on the remainder of the front, their advance was brought to a standstill.

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This spasmodic attack was evidently in the nature of a demonstration, the object of which is, however, a matter of conjecture. According to unofficial report, the Germans employed only thirty divisions on the fiftymile front; and did not engage their reserves. over, their heavy artillery, without which they could not hope to make any substantial progress, or even to maintain their footing south of the Marne, was left behind. The force which had crossed, being only lightly equipped, subsequently effected its retreat without serious accident -a result to which the covering fire of the heavy guns on the north bank doubtless contributed. An advance in force across the Marne would have been strategically unsound; for it would have accentuated the danger of the enemy's salient position between Soissons and Reims, by lengthening the lines of communication, which were liable to be cut by an Allied advance between the Aisne and the Marne, and by exposing the advanced force to the risk of defeat with the river in its rear.

That the Germans were fully aware of the disadvantages of the situation is proved by their persistent efforts, in the early part of June, to throw General Mangin's army back on the Soissons-Château Thierry front; and, if they had contemplated a serious offensive, they would probably again have been disposed rather to extend the occupied area north of the river than to incur

risks which, in the meantime, had been accentuated by the growth of the Allied Armies in numbers and efficiency. The positions as they existed were, indeed, hardly tenable as a line of defence; and the enemy no doubt realised that, in the end, withdrawal would be the only alternative to a successful offensive. It is possible that they had already decided to adopt the former course, rather than to wait until it should be imposed upon them; and that the widely-extended attack of July 15 was intended to disguise their design, and to facilitate the operation by inducing the French to disperse their reserves to strengthen threatened points. Or, alternatively, they may merely have intended to dislocate the plans of the Allied Generalissimo by breaking up the force which, as they were doubtless aware, he had concentrated south of the Aisne. In either case the result was ineffective; for the Allies, being forewarned of the attack, disposed of it with the troops already in the line, and proceeded to carry out their plans without delay or modification.

Before proceeding to sketch the operations which followed, it may be convenient to the reader to indicate their various phases; premising that any such division is, of course, artificial, the offensives of the different armies being episodes in one great preconcerted operation. The first phase opened between the Aisne and the Marne, where General Mangin's 10th Army, with American and British troops, began the attack on July 18; the battle subsequently extending to General Dégoutte's front south of the Marne, and involving also the eastern flank of the German salient, where General Berthelot's 5th Army was supplemented by American, British, and Italian troops. In the second phase, which began on Aug. 8, the 1st French Army (Debeney), and the 4th British Army (Rawlinson), advanced on the front Braches-Morlancourt. Four days later the offensive front was extended to the Oise by General Humbert's 3rd Army; and on Aug. 17 General Mangin co-operated by setting his left wing in movement between the Oise and the Aisne. The third phase, which was opened by General Byng's 3rd Army, was introduced, on Aug. 21, by an attack on a front of

about ten miles north of Beaumont sur Ancre; but, on the following day, the offensive spread southwards to the Somme, thus joining up with General Rawlinson's operations; while, to the north, there was a gradual extension of the battle-area to a point beyond the Scarpe, involving General Horne's 1st Army. By the end of August the battle was continuous from Lens to Reims, a front of one hundred and twenty miles.

The Allied attack on July 18 took the enemy completely by surprise; for, although the move was not unexpected, there was no preliminary bombardment to indicate that it was imminent. A strong force of British tanks contributed largely to the success of the first day's operations. Progress was most marked on the left wing, between Amblény and St Pierre Aigle, where General Mangin had made use of the period of stagnation, by a series of well-planned but unobtrusive local operations, to get clear of the forest and broken country, and so to prepare for taking the offensive. By nightfall the French were in possession of the heights which overlook Soissons on the south-west and stretch southwards to the east of Chaudun. The right wing, which was involved in the difficult country bordering the forest of Villers Cotterets, made less progress; but on the second day it fought its way against stubborn resistance, and came into line with the remainder of the army not far from the SoissonsChâteau Thierry main road, parts of which were under the fire of the Allied guns. On the Ourcq-Marne front good progress was made on the 18th; and in the evening the German force south of the Marne, realising the danger of the situation, began to fall back towards the river, which it recrossed during the night of the 19th, closely pressed by General Dégoutte. Strong opposition was encountered between the Marne and Reims, where General Berthelot took the offensive on July 19; and throughout the operations the enemy took full advantage of the defensive possibilities of the wooded and hilly country on this flank of the salient to hold back the advance during their withdrawal from the Marne.

On July 21 the Allies entered Château Thierry; and on the following day the capture of Epieds, eight miles to the north-east, both threatened the flank of the hostile forces which, by furious counter-attacks, were

endeavouring to stem the advance of the Allied troops between the Marne and the Ourcq, and made the Germans anxious for the safety of the road from Jaulgonne to Fère en Tardenois, which was one of their main lines of retreat from the Marne. In face of this menace, which was the more disturbing because General Dégoutte, having crossed the Marne, was pressing forward at all points, the Germans were forced to turn their attention to the region of Epieds, where they counter-attacked in force on July 24, and seized the village, which, however, was recovered by the Americans before nightfall. The fighting was also exceptionally severe on this day north of Dormans, where the main road to Fismes crosses the Marne, and in the direction of Reims, where British and Italian troops gained possession of Vrigny.

In the meantime General Mangin's advance north of the Ourcq had been retarded by the enemy's stubborn resistance; but in the evening of July 25 French troops entered Oulchy le Château and Villemontoire, the capture of which places had an important effect on the operations by securing the flanks of an easterly advance along the intervening high ground against the heights north and north-east of Grand Rozoy, which formed the main bulwark of the enemy's defence between the Ourcq and the Crise. On July 27 the Germans began to fall back on a wide front before the armies of Generals Dégoutte and Berthelot, covered on their right by stiff rearguard fighting on the Ourcq, the brunt of which was borne by the Americans; and, by the close of the day, the Allied forces arrived within three miles of that enemy's principal line of resistance in the area enclosed by the Ardre, the Vesle, and the Ourcq, which was situated on the so-called 'Tardenois plateau,' stretching from Fère en Tardenois to Ville en Tardenois. The last three days of July were signalised by fierce fighting for the possession of the plateau, in which a desperate struggle round Sergy, between an American division and two German divisions (one of the Prussian Guard), was a striking incident. The village, after changing hands repeatedly, remained in the possession of our Allies.

While these events were proceeding on his right, General Mangin was engaged in making his dispositions

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