In his dispatch dated June 5 Mr. Perris noted that a marked pause had fallen on the battlefield. His comment was this:
The pause in the enemy's adventure is a sign of weakness on his part and of advantage to us. Germany is fighting against time. The superiority she gained from the east is passing. The power of surprise has been her greatest asset. After that everything depends for her on speed in the exploitation of her success, and every delay is loss.
The next thing to remark is the great skill with which General Foch has pursued what may be called his provisional Fabian strategy. With surprise and superior reserves in the hands of the enemy, he had to face a situation of extreme difficulty. To weaken other parts of the front prematurely in order to defend the Aisne would have invited a fresh blow in those other parts.
Two needs rose supreme—that of economizing men so as to hasten the day when the Allies should have the superiority of forces necessary to victory, and that of barring the road of the enemy toward every vital objective. These objects have been attained, and if it should turn out that the third act of the offensive is finished, this will mean that, with all the unquestionable ability and daring of the German General Staff, Foch has beaten them for the third time in the two and a half months of their maximum power.
In any case, nothing of first-class importance has been lost. The allied front has not been broken. The roads to Paris, toward which the offensive was turned on the third day, are blocked. The ruins of Rheims are nearly indefensible, but the road to Châlons is barred. The plateaus between the Oise and the Aisne and between the Aisne and the Ourcq stand like bastions of a vast fortress. Château-Thierry is lost, and the eastern railway and the high road are locally interrupted, but the Marne and the Paris road beside it are covered.
Finally, the enemy has engaged fifty divisions of his reserves in this battle, and many of them have suffered very heavily.
AT CHATEAU-THIERRY
The attempt of part of the German 36th Division to cross the Marne at Jaulgonne was frustrated brilliantly by the Americans and French. It appears that a few men succeeded in getting across the river Thursday night [May 30] at this point, eight miles east of Château-Thierry, where the Marne makes a loop by the north.
They took shelter in the cutting and tunnel of the Paris-Châlons railway, which runs along the south bank, and though they lost seriously and their pontoons were destroyed, they got reinforcements over to the strength of a battalion.
An attack to clear them out was, therefore, organized, and this took place Sunday night, [June 2.] By that time the Germans had put twenty-two light bridges across the stream, of which four had been smashed by the French artillery, and had established a bridgehead with six machine guns and a hundred men in the railway station on the south bank opposite Jaulgonne.