The Italian populace, also, was clamoring for war. In Rome demonstrations against Germany had become frequent and violent. It appeared to be only a question of time until Italy also would hurl her millions of trained fighting men into the field in support of the Allies.
From Ostend the great battle line extended due south to Noyen, where it branched off to the southeast. South of Noyen French soil had been almost cleared of the Germans. Alsace had in turn been invaded by the French, who had penetrated to within twelve miles of Strasbourg. The French troops also had progressed to within eight miles of Metz, in Lorraine.
The forward move by the southern army of France had been sudden, and the Germans had been forced to give way under the desperation and courage of the French troops.
Once before, in the earlier days of the war, the French had reached Metz and Strasbourg, but had been hurled back by overwhelming numbers of the enemy and forced to retreat well into France. Then the German line in Alsace and Lorraine had been weakened to hurl denser masses of Germans upon the British and Belgians in the north.
The French had not been slow to take advantage of this weakening of the southern army of the Kaiser, and, immediately bringing great pressure to bear, had cleared French territory of the invader in the south.
But the French commander did not stop with this. Alsace and Lorraine, French soil until after the Franco-Prussian war, when it had been awarded to Prussia as the spoils of war, must be recaptured. The French pressed on and the Germans gave way before them.
Meantime, in the Soissons region the French also had been making progress; but the Kaiser, evidently becoming alarmed by the great pressure being exercised by the French in Alsace-Lorraine—in order to relieve the pressure—immediately made a show of strength near Soissons, seeking thereby to cause the French to withdraw troops from Alsace-Lorraine to reënforce the army of the Soissons to stem the new German advance there.
Taken somewhat unawares by the suddenness of the German assault upon their lines near Soissons, the French were forced to give back. They braced immediately, however, and the succeeding day regained the ground lost in the first German assault.
Then the Germans made another show of strength at Verdun, southeast of Soissons. General Joffre immediately hurled a new force to the support of the French army at that point.
Meanwhile, as the result of the German assaults upon Soissons and
Verdun, in an effort to lessen the pressure being brought to bear by the
French in Alsace-Lorraine, there had been a lull in the fighting in the
latter regions.