Norwich bulletin., 1918-05-04

the Front, Sees End of War in 1919
 With America the Deciding Factor.
 That Germany Host the war; when her Uboat sank the Lusitania and that peace will come next year when the full military might of America, combined with that of the Allies, is hurled against her, though the fighting may still be in France and Flanders is the belief of the Allied military leaders as expressed by W. Beach Thomas. who is in this country fresh from the British Headquarters in France In Current Opinion for May | this spokesman of the Allied High Command goes further and says that the present great drive is Germany's acknowledgemen that she must win now or never, and that German defeat will come in 1919 with the armies not far from the cliff of trenches that l join the floods by Newport to the l neighborhood of the Swiss mountains | where the French are clinging to one small reach of German territory" He writes:
 Oscillations there will be, victories l and defeats there will be at this and that spot in the line; and one day there will be symptomatic defeat and | victory from which any observer | whether he is seer or no, will be able to deduce with some certainty the | progressive decline of one side or the 1 other. It is inconceivable to the mind | of any leaders among the Allies that i this progressive decline-this spot on the fair fruit of the alliance-can
 appear among them while America,
 with her 100 million people and re- sources that defy arithmetic, is heart n ho defeats but not progressive defeats 1 Those are reserved for the Central Flowers. When the first of this sort
 comes, peace will be in sight Ger
 many will not wait-neither her popu-
 lation nor her army authorities will
 permit it-till she tumbles back in
 successive failures upon her own
 frontiers, and the targets for the | growing hordes of airmen come nearer
 and nearer, and the boom of the Lib
 erty engine at last plays foreign music over German cities"
 Further:
 American influence on the war will
 be irresistible; her ships, her men, her wealth, her will When TirpitZ rose
 victor from the interview with Beth mann -Hollweg and the U-boats sank the Lusitania with pair of torpedoes
 Germany lost the war, whatever may be the date of the proclamation ot
 peace. The cardinal reason of the new German offensive, up to and over the
 old battle ground of the Somme, is
 the conviction in Germany that 1918 is Americas year, and that if Ger many is to force any sort of victory she must force it in 1918, before Am erica is ready. And not late in 1918 "The German public has just begun to understand that the U-boats which
 drove America into the war, are fail ing, have failed, to compel decision In the everlasting see-saw between the arts of offense and defense, the de- fense, which was inferior, has begun to rise to level. The people of the Central Powers lost one ground oi confidence after another but this was
 the most solid. Early in the war some English residents in London were ser. 9 iously warned by close friends in Ger. many to leave England instantly as i k would be made untenable by Zeppe H l lins. Nearly all the general popula s tion in Germany believed this, as they will believe anything they are tolt 2 from above.' But one fetish afte B another has proved false god; anC E ! now both the public and the Higl Command have been driven back t, H the old faith that the army and onl,
 
 E buckler To act as shield alone wa not enough. so they prepared with lit E tie concealment-indeed with mucI advertisement of Kaiser and Hinden burgs-to amasS the biggest onslaugh ever conceived by the mind of maj or matched in his factories. It was n secret to us.
 q spoke with one of the mos thoughtful and successful of our gene rals at the end of January, as he re turned to France from Italy. Th Hun, he said. Ifs going to attack U |. good and proper. It will be the vast
 est thing in drives ever imagined. Bu
 the more he attacks, the better fo
 us The German is a great learner
 much more remarkable, even in milf
 tary affairs, as a learner than as al f originator He learned and amasse | for this attack almost all the forms c n frightfufness' used against him dur Il ing the war. He copied our trenc
 mortars-much- the best then invente
 land our trench artillery. He doubl
 ed their number. He copied our dead !. ly device of throwing gas in cylin , ders from mortars. On the advice c 1 General Won Arnin, who commando
 against the British in the Somme bat
 tie q have seen the Generals mem
 orandum), he equipped his infantr
 with hand carried flame thrower. 2 which are chiefly useful for inspirin
 terror He built little armored car for carrying forward amInounition, (
 which absurdly exaggerated account
 were published in Germany for publi
 consumption. He made light, yer
 mobile guns much on the America
 model He built vast undergroun tunnels and caverns capable of con
 lcealing division of men at tim,
 and concealed in them first his storH s frnnras filarle his reaA1.yes. He hr-niIe1