The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-10-20


 to be seen was whether the allied armies. when this superiority of numbers should be theirs once more, would be able to do what the enemy had tried while he had the advantage and failed to do. NEVER BROKE WALL
 | He had never quite broken the siege
 wall in his great sorties, not even on
 March 9. Would the allied armies in the west prove more capable and sue ceed in effecting the break in his works | That was the problem of this late sum- mer and autumn. It has been solved.
 The breach was made Tuesday, October Is, by the British armies with the Amer | ican contingents between Cambrai and St Quentin, and rather nearer the for l mer than the latter town The effort took two days. It was completely sue cessful by the evening of the second day. Wednesdayanand by Thursday the 1 magnitude of the event appeared.
 The whole German line was compelled to a general retreat, which extended from the sector in front of Douai right down to the Argonne. Where that retreat is to end neither we nor the enemy can tell. He cannot retire indefinitely for this reason: At very few miles behind his present positions-12 miles behind his front posts-is Solesmes. and 20 miles from his advanced posts on his left front in front of Dun-sur- Mouse runs his great lateral railway communication system linking Metz and Lille by way of Sedan Mizieres and Valenciennes. If he were to retire beyond that line. or, rather beyond the line which fully covers it from fire, he would have his armies sep arated into two groups, with the left hand or southern group dependent upon Lorraine and the right hand or northern group dependent on Belgium. His ceu- ter, in front of the Ardennes, would be deprived of supplies, for the Ardennes country is such that no considerable sup plies can come across 1t.
 WOULD BE EASY PREY
 But if the German armies were thus divided in two they would be easy prey for an attack which had behind it a whole network of good communications, which could move men from left to right and from right to left at will in numbers far greater and increasingly greater than those of the defense, and which would have the power of striking either half of an isloated portion of the defense at will. concentrating upon whichever fac tion was the most vulnerable
 While we watch this situation with It's rapid development in our favor we should do we'll to appreciate it's immediate causes, for it is only thus that we can appreciate the possible future. The first great cause of the deplorable situation in which the German armies now find themselves is exhaustion, and on that exhaustion ultimately depends their poli- cy during the great offensive of the spring and early. summer. The enemy gambled upon obtaining a decision before Amer ican aid could become efficacious He lem NAr7f %a,. fro, July 15, and, what is more, even after he had lost clearly on July IS, he hesi- tated, probably from political reasons, to retire. He lost multitudes more in trying to stand on the two great salients of Amiens and the Marne and in trying to hold the forefeld, as he calls it, of the Hlndenburg line, and, above all in strenuously clinging to the great hill pivot of St Gobain. TOTAL 100000 CASUALTIES It is not always appreciated that his total casualties since the beginning of the year amount to approximately 2,OOO oOO men, and of this enormous total a good deal more than 100000 are what is called definite losses" that is, losses that never 1eturn--dead, mutilated and prisoners 1t was upon this situation of already far advanced exhaustion that the coun- ter offensive fell on July IS, when the attack was delivered by the French and Americans between Chateau Thierry and Soissons. There was not only an tmme- diate prospect of superior numbers on the allied side, but also the acute prob- lem ofs recruitment. The enemy had for recruiting the enormous gaps in his ef- fectives only two sources left, one the returns from the hospitals and the other the young class of 1920.
 Now, this young class of 1920 is poor standby. Let us explain it's weakness. The class of 1920 means boys who at- tain their 18th year in the course of the present year Not all of them, there- fore, are even IS years of age, and though on paper the full quota, excluding those who will have to be put back on ac- count of immaturity, is 450.0e0 men" yet in practice the amount one can draft into the combatant units is very much
 less The experience of all the other belligerents in this regard is most sig niicant
 Great Britain at one critical moment was sending out boys rather over 1872 years old. It was thought doubt ful expedient and was discontinued the moment the worst crisis was passed. No one thought of sending out boys younger than IS. The further total fit for service Is not large
 France has always refused to send any one into the field under 19. Her corresponding class of 1920 is nowhere near active service yet. There is an- other extremely important point in this connection. When your youngest classes are drafted in small amounts they are, so to speak. digested by the needs of the army. But when you send bad ma terial of. this kind in on great scale it works the other way round. It Is not they who are digested, but they who lower the value of the whole.
 NAPOLEON'S EXPERIENCE
 The classical instance is that of Ma poleon in 1814-15 Napoleon was also defeated by exhaustion in recruitment, and the poor material on which he had to fall back poured in in such numbers