Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1917-12-04
AMERICAN SECTOR
IS CLOSE TO METZ
PERsHING's BOYS GETTING THE
PRELIMINARY TRIALS NEAR
! THE GERMAN BORDER.
HARDLY A "QUIET" REGION
Artillery Fighting Is Almost continu-
GUS Fhere-Sammies, 1t Is Hoped,
Will Take Part in Actual Restora-
ton OF AIsace-Lorraine,
BY EDWARD 3. CLARK.

BY EDWARD 3. CLARK.
Washington.-An amiable censor
ship has allowed the American people
TO know the section of the French
front in which their troops are en-
gagged in the preliminary trials of war
fare. "A quiet sector is the way in
which the first dispatches described
that section of the line from which
the SammieS made their first foray
into No Mans Land.
This quiet sector" really is about
as noisy one as can be found from
FLANDERS 10 the Vosgcs mountains, but
the uproar for two years has been that
OF artillery, with few RATINGS of rifles
and machine guns to 'staccato'' the
performance. Washington believes to-
day that the part of the front in
France where the Americans now are
hghung and where dullness has
reigned soon will be a scene of violent
battle action.
From one high point of vantage near
the sector where the American troops
are camping and trenching they can
look on Metz. They are close to Ger
many and some unfortunate few of
them already are in Germany The
belief is strong in Washington that
an extraordinary effort will be made
by the Americans shortly to take a
trench on their own account and to
double the score against the Germans.
When the first unanswered word
came that the Americans were at a
quiet point of the line everybody at all
familiar with the battle conditions in
France knew that our boys were close
to the MOselle river near the city of
Nancy, and not far from Pont-a-Mous-
son, the city of a thousand lombard
ments.
Scene of Continuous sombardment.
The MOselle river runs northward
through Pont-a-Mousson and thence
on fifteen miles to Metz, the capital
of German Lorraine. In this general
sector are the woods of ChampenOux
and the wood of the Priest" In
these two little segments of the front
TO which Notwithstanding that the mill
airy word quiet" is applied, the fight
ing has been almost continuous since
August, 1914, and in many cases it has
been hand-tO-hand.
In the Wood of the Priest (BOis lie
Pretre), the French and the German
trenches are so close together that
good throwing arm can send a light
bomb from the one into the other. The
wood has been peaceful on one day
ana an inferno the next. The Ameri-
cans getting into this place are as
sured of action.
Military strategists for three years
have been studying the possibilities
of the case" in the valley of the Mo-
selle, a valley in which today the dis
patches more than intimate many of
the American troops are now under
fire. For a long time the French have
had the heaviest kind of guns en-
placed in this sector. An order given
from a place of high command would
result any minute in a hurting of
prOiectiles weighing q ton into the
city of Metz.
This city of German Lorraine. once
the property of France and which is
certain once more to be the property
of France, is guarded by IA huge for
tifications which probably cannot be
taken by frontal assault The eyes of
the French, however, are fixed on
Metz. They do not want to destroy
1T, but they want to take it, and if some
of the strategists are right, one day it
will be taken intact unless the Ger
mans destroy it themselves.
Our Best Strategist sheIved.
Why is the war department al
lowing the ablest American strate-
giSt to remain in the semiObscur-
ity of Princeton university in this
day when the need of a man and a
plan Is a matter of world concern?
Army officers of high rank must
have been asking themselves this ques-
ton ever since the war broke out and
it is known definitely that civilians
with some knowledge of military mat
tiers have been curious concerning the
reasons for the seeming isolation of
this tried student of warfare.
Maj Herbert Rowland Sargent,
United States army retired, is today
teaching the student body at Prince
ton, while, according TO expressed
thought on the matter in Washington
he ought to be either in the War col
lege as an advisory chief or in the
field as Il major general.
The war department does not dis
close its secrets and it may be of
course that Sargent has not been over
looked in the search for men who
may have within them the qualities of
great planning.
Today the acknowledged need of
the allied Services is a grand strategy
scheme Of 'coaleSced campaigning"
Sargent'S ability along strategic lines
is known. Therefore it is possible
that in the seclusion of the students
closet at Princeton he is acting his
part in tie war, but if so the country
knows nothing about 1t, and in fact
suspicion in the case seems to be that
this retired major and the possibilities
in his case have been neglected
Bones Near Edge.