New Britain herald., 1918-05-10

ihS, nave Tailed, to compel a decision.
 In the everlasting see-saw between
 the arts of offense and defense, the
 defense, which was inferior has begun
 to rise to a level. The people of the
 Central Powers lost one ground of con-
 1dence after another, but this was the
 most solid. Early in the war some
 English residents in London were
 warned by close friends in Germany to
 leave England instantly as it would
 be made untenable by Zeppelins.
 Nearly all the general population in
 Germany believed this. as they will
 believe anything they are told from
 above.' But one fetish after another
 has proved a false god; and now both
 the public and the High Command
 have been driven back to the old faith
 that the army and only the army is
 their shield and their buckler. To act
 as a shield alone was not enough, so they prepared with little concealment indeed, with much advertisement of
 Kaisers and Hindenburgs-to amass the biggest onslaught ever conceived by the mind of man or matched in his factories. It was no secret to us. q spoke with one of the most thoughtful and successful of our gen erals at the end of January, as he re- turned to France from Italy. The ! Hun,' he said, is going to attack us good and proper. It will be the vast est thing in drives ever imagined. But ] the more he attacks, the better for us. l The German is a great learner; much | more remarkable, even in military affairs, as learner than as an origin | ator He learned and amassed for this 1 attack almost all the forms of fright l fulness' used against him during the 1 war. He copied our trench mortars- much the best then invented-and our | trench artillery. He doubled their number He copied our deadly device 1 for throwing gas in cylinders from | mortars. On the advice of General 1 von Armin, who commanded against | the British in the Somme battle q 1 have seen the generals memorandum) 1 he equipped his infantry with hand carried e-throwers, which are chiefly useful for inspiring terror. He built little armored cars for carrying forward ammunition, of which ab surdly exaggerated accounts were
 published in Germany for public con- sum ption. He made light, very mo-
 bile guns much on the American model. He built vast underground 1 tunnels and caverns capable of con- cealing a division of men at a time, and concealed in them first his storm tIOOpS, L1lSH HIS I0SSIFSS. LlS D4OuSllC
 Up not only field guns and howitzers (especially the standardized 5.9's),
 but almost enough long-range guns of
 a semi-naval type (they were planned and manufactured in Austria) to drop a, curtain of fire on lines of communi- cation ten miles back. More than this the German had prepared the whole ground of advance year before, a 1 thing never before done in the history l of war.
 l British doctors as well as intelli- gence officers examine most of the 1 prisoners. The doctors find that a | great number of the younger classes l of 1918 and 1919 are as much as two 1 years behind the development proper l to their age. They have been under l fed in uncomfortable homes. The in- l telligence officers find in regard to 1 their spirit much the same that the 1 doctors find in regard to their bodies. 1 The young recruits are not among the 1 best and cheeriest soldiers almost 1 without exception are the young 1 Frenchmen. On the contrary, they l are continually courtnlartialed for l complaints and rebelliousness. They l come from homes where the women l folk have for two years talked of lit 1 tie but of the struggle to get food, of death and wounds and the hopes of l peace. The warrior; the Berserker, l spirit is no longer theirs"
 ! On the other hand:
 During breakfast at Amiens, at the
 very height of the Somme battle in
 1916, I was inveigled into discussion
 on the morale of soldiers by my inn
 mediate neighbor, MT. Lloyd George. 1 Military men, I said, united in say l ing that there is no courage like the l first courage.'' 'Aha," he answered, 1 with the quickness to develop an idea l that is his leading characteristic, 1 that is yet another reason why we 1 must win.' His point is much strong | CT today than when it was made. One | of the many inestimable gifts that 1 America will bring the Allies Is a con- stant supply of this first courage and l it will perhaps include new courage l in the domain of general strategy as 1 well as on the stricken field.
 About this same time, too, I had | long discussion with one of the bet l ter-educated German soldiers, man 1 of high morale and education. He l said: We are in the position of men 1 who have put all their money into a | company and are wondering what is | happening to it, but consider that at l present the only chance of saving it 1 is to leave things in the hands of the directors. That cannot go on forever l and it will be very bad for the direc tors if they lose our money.' A few days later I found British officers de- lending German artillery prisoners from a physical attack by their own
 infantry, who were furious at the lack of artillery support during the battle. Ut follows that if this period of the coming summer is bridged, as it will be, thenceforward the scale should swing quite quickly in the Allies fla