The Cordova daily times., 1918-03-20
BATTLES WAGED
 BEHIND LINES
 BY ENEMY SPIES

Germany continues to carry on the war, not because she believes she can obtain a military decision at the front, but because she hopes to win a victory against the morale of the civil population behind the front. Her chance of a military decision slipped out of her hands long ago. In 1914, when she set a rear guard of resery- ists at her back door on the Russian front, and hurled the flower of her army against France, Germany be- lieved she had a firm grip upon that world victory which was to be the fruition of forty years of preparation;
 but Joffre pried the Prussian fingers i loose at the Marne, and at Verdun and the Somme the French and British tore the coveted victory entirely from her grasp. From those days to these the German general staff have known that their dream of a military victory has passed into the realm of things that might have been.
 The impossibility of q German vic tOry-Gorman threats of a great spring offensive notwithstanding comes clear if we look at q few sim
 pie facts. Thus. when the allies hurled the German army back at the
 Marne, France had 100000 men in
 the fighting line and England scant
 100000 Such forces as they had were outnumbered in the ratio of five to three; and they were outranged in artillery and outnumbered and out watched in all the things that go to make up military equipment.
 q Since the Marne. the French army at the front has grown from 100000 to 3,000,000 and the British army from
 100000 to 2,5OO,O0O. In 1914, the United States was a spectator of the
 conflict; but by the time the great German offensive (should it ever
 come off) is in full swing we shall have several hundred thousand men
 at the front. In 1914, Germany had Q
 potential army of 9,5OO,O00 men-to-
 day, one-half of that number has been
 killed, captured, permanently crip- pied or is dead from natural causes. with the result that, on the western front, the numerical superiority has
 passed from Germany to the allies , who can oppose over 6,0OO,O00 men to
 a maximum of 4,50O,O00 German , troops. In the matter of artillery there is an equal preponderance on the al lied side. Last, and by no means least important, is the fact that what is left } of the German army contains a far larger proportion than the allied armies of men who, by reason of age Gthu 9OuIiis dIS III Su1lcu u stand the terrific strain of modern warfare. Nor should we in this com parison forget that while in the Ger man army there has been a noticeable decline in morale, due to the pinch of 5 want and the sickness of heart which come from endless promises that are unfulfilled, the morale of the allied armies, who are we'll fed, steadily in. creasing in strength, and cheered by some eighteen months of all but un, broken victories from the Swiss bor. 5 der to the North sea, in uniformly good. But if Germany despairs of great military decision in the field, why does she continue, to fight? She must be we'll aware that the prolongation of the brutal war which she is waging deepens the resentment against her,
 and will make more hard the terms to
 which she must subscribe when she is
 forced to admit that she has lost the
 war.
 The answer to this question is to
 be found in the notable successes
 which Germany has won in that field
 of conflict back ot the front, where
 she is far more skilled antagonist
 than she has ever been in the sphere
 of military operations. We refer of course, to that worldwide war-secret,
 subtle, deadly and enormously effec- tive, which she is ceaselessly waging among the civilian populations back or the military fighting lines of the