Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-04-30
GERMANS AT BAY
IN WESTERN ARENA
End of Hard Winter Campaign Re-
veals Invaders on Defensive Along
Lines in France and Belgium-Re-
view of the Campaigns.
BY FRANK H. s1MoNDs

TN THE minds of all observers OF the
i great war May has been a date mark
ing more than a calendar division. Kitch-
ener had been quoted as asserting that
while he had no guess as to the date Of
the termination of the war, It would begin
with Mayday. But however apocryphal
this legend, the solid fact that the condi-
tions of weather, of soil, of roads would
then be favorable to active campaigning
established It as the time when the winter
campaign would end the summer operations
begin.
In any review Of this winter campaign
It is natural to divide the resume into two
parts, the campaign in the west and that
In the east Turning first to the campaign
In the west, the simplest and easiest method
Of estimating what It has meant is to return
for moment to the conditions existing
when it opened to the situation in France
and Belgium on the morning of the fall of
Antwerp and In the succeeding days.
Antwerp fell on October 0, when the Ger
man occupation began. In the next few
days German invasion flowed over Western
Belgium like a torrent released by the
breaking of dam. At the same moment
that a German force was approaching War
saw the bulletins of all combatant nations
reported the approach Of the Kaisers troops
of Boulogne, from which Napoleon had sur
veyed the British shores a century before.
Consider now what were the allied pre-
occupations at this moment From Switzer-
land to La Bassee the French army stood
solidly in the trenches it had taken up after
the German retreat to the Aisne. But In
the desperate fighting at the Marne, in AL
SAGE and in Lorraine French losses had been
enormous. Efforts to outhank the Germans
from the Disc to the Lys had been beaten
down by superior German numbers. The
process of reorganization of French armies
had begun, but had as yet made little real
progress. Equipment was still lacking to
the soldiers ammunition was as yet in
sufficient for immediate needs.
The "Thin Red Line"
AS for the British, a thin red line" was
Just taking root in the salient about Ypres.
After two months less than 10000 British
troops were in the field. On this little army,
presently reinforced by the remnant of the
Belgian army retreating from Antwerp, the
great storm was just breaking in Flanders.
For a whole month the world was each day
to wait with excited interest to learn
whether the jerry construction thrown
across Flanders from the Lys to the sea
could bear the terrific burden that was
being imposed upon it.
It's failure would not in all probability
have meant the advance of new German
armies to Paris, but it would have meant
complete conquest, not alone of Belgium,
but of Northern France. 1t would have
meant the capture of the Channel ports it
would have meant fortifying German posi-
ton in the west almost impregnably.
In sum, as the winter phase opened Ger
man armies were on the offensive In the
west, as they were also advancing upon
Warsaw in the east. Success or failure for
their second great offensive hung in the
balance for at least month. The extreme
limit of allied effort consisted in rushing
new formations, as they could be assem-
bled, into the storm beaten gap between
Armentieres and Nieuport, where, under the
eye Of the Kaiser himself, German military
power was writing an imperishabIe page in
the history of devotion and courage.
Now, to measure the distance between
October and April. It is but necessary to
revert to the April situation in the same
fields. In that later time French offensives
were being carried on in Alsace, about St.
Mihiel, in Champagne. English forces were
attacking north and south OF Armentieres
For months the German energy had been
concentrated in the heavy effort to meet
fresh allied troops with numbers not equal
but adequate to parry dangerous thrusts
from Alsace to Flanders. Everywhere on
this broad front, too, ground was being lost,
not much, not of decisive value, but actually
the German line had been recoiling slightly
for a continued period of time. Neuve
Chapelle, Les Eparges. Hartmannsweiler-
kopf, Hill 60, all marked recession under
pressure.
What German Reports Show
Read the German oficial statements for
October and April, and the transformation
is instantly evident In October each bulle-
tin reports new advances, towns taken, dis
tricts occupied, the arrival at the sea, the
approach to Warsaw. Until April 20 there
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