This evening I ran all down the coast almost to Dieppe, and made the interesting discovery that all the coast towns, which only a few days before had been declared "open," and ordered to surrender all arms to their civic authorities, are again in military occupation. To follow the new development, I made, in the late evening, for Amiens, in violent wind and cold rain.
Amiens, Saturday.
For the present the news remains the same—the continuation of a battle for positions, savagely contested; the Germans fighting for time, time for the full use of their reinforcements and for the escape of their left wing in the Argonne region. The Allies are fighting to break the line on the east and to hold it, or turn it, on the west. Time, too, with its possible happenings in this quarter, is also in their favour.
We only hear of what is happening along the south front of the German army. About its south-west aspect there is a great silence.
The Amiens and northern German troops have fallen back upon a strong series of positions, which make an acute angle with those of their south front along the Aisne. Following the line of the Oise north, from the junction with the Aisne, they hold the line of highlands on either bank north to Noyon, thence west of the river to St. Quentin; they cover the railway lines by Chauny, La Fere, etc., with Laon, as centre. Thence north to Cambrai.
It will be seen that their communications are exposed to attack from the west. The distances are too great for continuous protection in force. I have been able to-day myself to reach the railway line in two places, between Bapaume and Peronne, without interruption.
The country is more or less covered by cavalry and motor detachments, whose action is necessarily local. These are in turn hunted, marked down, or reported by the French and English motor-cars fitted with machine-guns. The game is exciting, and is succeeding in its object of condensing the German dispersed bodies. But there are signs of a more serious pressure from the Germans beginning, that may eventually remove the centre of interest from the battle going on farther south.
The long-continued battle on the Aisne is in the nature of artillery duels, fencing for positions, followed by infantry attacks and counter-attacks on either side. So far we have had the advantage on the west, but at great cost. The counter-attacks by the Germans on our troops in the course of the nights have been repulsed with loss.
In the long business of wearing down we have the advantage, both in convenience of supply-service and in freshness and number of troops. But for a decisive issue, in view of the strength of the German position, we may have to hope for the entry of some new factor upon the scene.