The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1914-12-22
HOW GERMANS
USE OBSTACLES
To HALT ALLIES
THEY ARE STRONGLY FORTIFIED
ON LINE OF WESTERN BATTLE
FRONT-1RiTlSH MILITARY RE-
PORT DESCRIBES FIGHTING.

London, Dec. 21-The great diff.
culties under which military opera
tions in France and Belgium are be-
ing conducted, are described in a
narrative of recent developments writ
ten by an official observer attached
to the British headquarters and made
public Sunday by the official infor-
nation bureau. The recital brings
the story OF war as covered in these
eyewitness reports up to December H.
"The opposition now being encoun-
tered, resembles to some extent that
met by us in October, when we first
reached the Franco Belgian frontier
and before the Germans brought up
their full force and assumed the Of
fensive," says the report. at has one
great difference, in that the enemy is
in much greater force and his position
is much stronger and better organized
than two months ago.
AT that time an advance on the
eastern end of the line implied a
movement across very difficult coun-
try, as it does still, and for us it means
an attack on skillfully but hastily for
titled strong points, or villages, held
to 4 large extent by cavalry and Jae-
gers. With the large proportion of ma
chine guns that we have in front of
us today, 1t is no longer a succession
OF isolated points. There are still
such points, and some are the same,
but they are stroger and form part of
practically continuous defensive
zone
Maze Of Trenches and Obstacles.
This zone really amounts to a maze
of trenches and obstacles. Every
known form of obstacle is used En-
tanglements-to select the most COM
mon form-vary from loose coils of
wire to securely staked networks of
from eighteen inches to nearly six feet
in height and of different widths.
These measures of defense are such
as are to be expected from troops
which are well trained and have ample
resources and time; and there are of
course ways in which they can be
overcome But where these methods |
are applied, the rate of advance is !
necessarily slow.
when it is reported in laconic |
terms, that ground has been gained at
certain point, geographically the
gain may amount to only few yards. |
On the other hand, the progress i'm
piled may be important, for trench,
a cluster OF trenches, the edge of a |
wood, building, a village or a knoll |
may have been reached, which will
facilitate further operations.
Siege approaches help the attacker
TO advance under cover and minimize
the losses, but they cannot obviate q
surprise reception when once the enc
my's works are gained. The only GER
tain method of preventing this is by
prolonged bombardment with high
explosive shells until trenches mines
and machine guns are reduced to scrap
heaps, or to mine under them and
blow them into the air"
Story of German Prisoner.
Concerning recent heavy artillery
duels the observer says that the Brit
ish artillery on December II landed
several shells on what appeared to be
the German headquarters. The narra-
tive continues:
From a prisoner captured on De
cember ii, it has been ascertained
that both the Twenty-third regiment
and the Jaegers suffered enormous
losses on November 4. The same man
described November as a terrible
day, saying that he had never before
seen such mud as that in which the
Germans were operating and that the
troops were suffering from water In
the trenches. The shelling on the 18th
OF this month, he states, exceeded any
thing which he had experienced pre-
viously
we have reason to believe, from
the evidence obtained from prisoners
that many of the Landwehr are hearth.
~ sick OF the war and resent the harsh