Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-06

Continued from Page One
ploitation Of her success. and every
delay is loss.
General roch's Great Skill
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 pre-.
maturely 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 for vic.
tory and that Of barring the road of
the enemy toward every vital objecs
tive. These objects have been attained,
and II 1t should turn out that the third
act Of the offensive Is finished, this
will mean that. with all the unques.
tionable ability and daring of the Ger.
man general staff. Foch has beaten
them for the third time in the two
and half enonths Of their maximum
power.
In any case, nothing of firstclass
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
Chalons is barred. The plateaus be-
tween the Disc and the Aisne and be-
TWEEN the Aisne and the Ourcq stand
like bastions of vast fortress. Cha
teau.Thierry is lost and the eastern
railway and the high road are locally
interrupted but the Marne and the
Paris road beside 1t are covered.
Enemy's Reserves Suffer
Finally, the enemy has engaged fifty
divisions of his reserves in this battle,
and many of them have suffered very
heavily
1t is evident that the Emperor and
Hindenburg did not foregather on the
Chemin.des.D Danes to contemplate
such a result as this They will go on.
as criminals tend to go on. from bad to
worse. We shall have to live through
more days of anxiety and pain.
would not say word to encourage
idle optimism, but loking back over
this week and halfsof crisis, it seems
to me that behind the bravery of our
men, for which there are no adequate
words. we have a governing mind with
a true and firm grasp o; the only
strategy possible for the moment.
The next great blow may fall In the
same field or on the Disc. or on the
somme, or in Flanders. Before the
same heroism and the same govern
ance 1t will fail, as the three preced.
ing blows failed.
The frustrated attempt on the part of
the German Thirty-sixth division to
cross the Marne at Jaulgonne deserves
fuller reference than 1 made to II
yesterday. It appears that a few
men succeeded in getting across the
river Thursday night at this point,
eight miles east Of Chateau.Thierry
where the Marne makes a loop by the
north.
They took shelter in the cutting and
tunnel of the Paris Chalons Railway,
which runs along the south bank, and
though they lost seriously and their
pontoons were destroyed, they got re-
endorsements over to the strength of
| battalion.
| An. attack to clear them out was,
therefore, organized and this took
place Sunday night. BY that time
the Germans had put twenty-five light
bridges across the stream. Of which
four had been smashed by the French
artillery. and had established a bridge.
head with six machine guns and a
hundred men in the railway station on
the south bank opposite Jaulgonne.
This post was frontally attacked by
a section Of dismounted cavalry who
however were held up by machine
gun fire until American machine guns
came into action. Two sections OF
French infantry simultaneously fell
upon the bridgehead and the Germans
broke before them.
The prisoners. Of whom there are q
hundred. declare that their officers
abandoned them at the beginning OF
the attack. A few men escaped by
swimming and thirty or forty others
gained the northern bank by the
pontoon boats. The rest Of the bat
talon was wiped out.
The German losses in the action al
!, the bridge Of Chateau -Thierry were
severe. 1t is estimated that a thou.
sand bodies lay by and near the bridge
and the American machine gunners
fired tens of thousands of cartridges
RO4D tn pARIS