New-York tribune., 1918-07-28
America Has Come at Last and Long
and Bitter Period Is Having
Glorious Ending
By FRANK III. SIMONDS
Author of ''The World War; ''They Shall Not Pass,

In word, we went back suddenly to
the conditions of the opening days of
the war. By the end of last year Ger
many was free to strike for Paris again.
Before the campaign of 1918 was we'll
opened the peace of Brest-Litovsk and
of Bucharest had eliminated Russia and
Rumania, abolished the Eastern front.
given to the Germans the mastery of
the Baltic and Black seas, placed the
kalser's generals in control of the CO.
lossal Russian carcass and removed from
the Eastern flank of completed Mttel-
europa the immediate and apparently
even an eventual menace of Slavdom.
The Teuton seemed to have won his
age-long battle with the Slavs; his way
to the Pacific lay open while he still
commanded the Constantinople bridge to
the nearer East.
When the campaign of 1917 was over
the German could calculate and did CAL
culate that he had, with hands free and
resources concentrated upon the West
ern front, another chance to win the
war in the largest possible sense, to
dispose of France and Britain before
America was ready, and then to negoti-
ate favorable peace with the Ameri-
can foe.
The story of the campaign of 1917,
after August /, is briefly told. For our
allies it is history replete with mis-
fortune. In August and September the
brilliant but foredoomed Brusiloff Of
fenslve in Galicia faded into the shame
full and indescribable flight of Russian
troops from the field of victory into the
darkness Of decentralization and disin-
tegration. There was a moment when
it seemed as if Lemberg was again in
danger; we read the old names of towns
and rivers, the scenes of victories BY
the Russians in 1914; but in few brief
hours the Russian offensive in Gallcla
succumbed to the internal diseases Of
the Russian nation. After August, ir.
point of fact, Russia was gone.
Meantime, in the west the British Of
fensivc in Flanders pursued its unlucky
road to complete failure. 1t had beer
the conception of Haig and Robertson,
striking north from Ypres and out of the
famous old salient, to break the Ger
man line, cut off the troops on the
Belgian seacoast or compel their retreat,
free Ostend and Zeebrugge, abolish The
submarine bases on this coast and, press
ing eastward, throw the Germans behind
the Scheldt and compel their later re-
tirement out Of France from the Lys
to the Meuse.
Costly British
Failure
In this effort Plumer had made h
brilliant beginning in June at Messines.
But in July and August Cough, later
to disappear as a result of the Picardy de-
feat of the present year, had so handled
affairs that second operation had ended
in costly failure, and when Plumer re-
sumed the direction of operations the
weather was already changing and the
golden moment had passed. In point Of
fact, the campaign Of the British was
were Fastening westward from Russia.
Yet, doggedly and grimly. the BRITISH
generals held their men to their task and
the toll of casualties for the British in
Flanders rivalled if it did not pass that
of the Somme the previous year, while
great hopes, excited by brief but brill
liant success before Cambria, gave way
to new disappointment when one more
opportunity was sacrificed.
On the map there was proof of Ger
man retreat. The Ypres salient disap-
peared, the British troops seized the
whole Of the Passchendaele Ridge and
critics talked of the advance from this
vantage ground in the next year to
Ghent and to Lille, little dreaming that
a few days of battle would then suffice
to compel the surrender of these hills,
won by so much sacrifice and effort, and
that Ypres itself was again to be in
peril, in peril as deadly as that of Octo-
Der, 1914.