If the Germans did not keep going on the main line of their attack north and south of the Somme after the middle of April, it was because they could not do so; and the partial success of their ex-temporized campaign in Flanders should not disguise from us this significant fact.
It would be useless at this period of the war, when all Germany demands a decision and nothing less, if the new offensive did not lead to the capture at least of some place of symbolic importance, such as Rheims, Verdun, or Nancy. But that would require a force so large as to cripple the major effort in the northwest. All the military virtue of the German strategy is against such a dispersal of effort.
CHEMIN DES DAMES LOST
May 28—The opening of the attack and the first day's results are thus described by Mr. Perris:
Hindenburg has scored another spectacular success. At dawn yesterday, after three hours' bombardment, composed largely of gas shells, a new German mass attack was thrown upon a twenty-five-mile front, extending from the Ailette near Vauxaillon to the Aisne-Marne Canal near Brimont.
It was four or five times as numerous as the defenders, and in other regards correspondingly stronger. In these circumstances, an attempt to retain the line of the Chemin des Dames would have meant that the French troops would have been massacred before reserves could reach them, and there was nothing for it but to fall back steadily and in good order, using successive lines of trenches and deep folds of ground to punish the enemy for every forward step he made.
As I anticipated in my last message, the method of the first phase of the German offensive was again employed with some improvements. This method rests upon two main elements—the prodigal expenditure of the large reserves obtained by the collapse of Russia and Rumania, and the skillful use of the great advantage of what are called interior lines of communication to throw a mass attack suddenly upon the chosen sector, and so to gain the further advantage of surprise.
The front now chosen was held till a day or two ago by parts of two armies belonging to the group of which the Prussian Crown Prince is the titular chief. General von Boehm's army, extending from the Oise at Noyon to east of Craonne, numbered nine divisions. In the sector of General Fritz von Below, extending across the Rheims front to Suippe, near Auberive, there were eight divisions. The whole twenty-five miles attacked yesterday had therefore been held till the eve of battle by only seven or eight divisions. The exact number of divisions engaged yesterday is not yet known, but it seems to have been about twenty-five, or over a quarter of a million combatants.
There is here a curious difference and likeness as compared with the first phase of the offensive on March 21. To the seventeen divisions already holding the sector of attack there were added another seventeen. This time the same number has been added where there were only eight. Two months ago the front of attack was about forty miles long. This time a rather denser force was employed, perhaps because the Aisne height constituted a formidable position, and it was intended to carry it at a single rush.