New-York tribune., 1918-07-28

AA CA4O COCUIul1 CklS Il TCUCQ dTuly was
passing through period of reorganza-
tion and renaissance. It's defeat in Nav
had shaken it to the very foundation
For few brief weeks it's morale was
lower than at any time since the war
began. To Petain, who succeeded Nj
velle, was assigned the grim task of re-
storing confidence and discipline, while
behind the army the nation, under Gle
menceau, cleaned its high places of those
who had conspired against victory and
held secret conference with the foe A
few minor successes above the Aisne and
about Verdun served to prove that the
task was being accomplished, but for the
balance of the campaign of 1917 the
French army was limited to the defen-
sive, or to operations which were but
local offensives.
The first months Of the fourth wear
of war saw Italy winning considerable
successes along the Isonzo, where for
two years Italian soldiers had been
struggling to break through the gigantic
Thermopyla between the Julian Alps
and the Adriatic, by which ran the road
to Trieste and the Austrian capital far
beyond, the road Napoleon had taken
more than a century before in his brill
liant campaign of 1887. BY October tho
gate seemed forced. Austrian recoil
was general north and south, and Allied
capitals, looking southwark, saw in Ital-
ian success at least consolation for their
own failures.
But in November Italy suffered her
first great reverse of the war. Her
population and her army, like those of
the French nation, had been corrupted
by enemy propaganda and by defeatist
and pacifist efforts. The taint of Boil
shevism was already beginning to do it's
work in Italy as it had in Russia. Sud-
denly, along the Upper Isonzo front, out
Of the mountains about Caporetto, a
German army appeared and struck an
Italian army holding the flank of Ca
dorna's main forces to the southwark,
and holding it carelessly and with little
thought Of danger.
In a few short hours this Italian army
was destroyed in exactly the fashion
Radko Dimitrieff's army had been de-
Stroyed at the Dunajec, and with conse-
quences to other armies equally griev-
Gus.
Thanks to an Italian rally and to the
rush of British and French troops to
their stricken ally, Venice was saved,
and the retreat ended at the Piave and
not at the Adige; but Italy had suffered
one of the great defeats of history and
was henceforth condemned for long
months to the defensive. She had, in
fact, been on the edge of ruin; her es-
cape had been by slight margin, and
at the moment the question of her future
capacity to fight, brilliantly answered at
the Piave the other day, was to give
her allies grave concern.
Thus the calendar year and the cam
paign of 1917 ended amid the most
gloomy of all possible circumstances.
British successes in the early months had
been dinmed by the failure, the bloody
failure, in Flanders The French army
had not merely seen it's hopes come to
nothing at the Aisne, but had for the
first time, been shaken in its confidence
and was only beginning to give signs of
renewed constancy and efficiency. The
Italian army had suffered one of the
great disasters Of the war. The minor
efforts in the Balkans had been without
even the smallest material benefit.
German strategy for the campaign Of
1918 has already been fairly clearly re-
vealed upon the battlefield. The Ger
man had some forty-odd divisions more
than his opponents, exclusive of the
Americans. He had an interior posi-
ton, unified command and a homo
geneous army. He had devised a new
system of attack, which included the
element of surprise and the use of gas to
paralyze the rearward communications
of his foes; he had new small and
mobile gun, which made rapid support
of swiftly moving infantry waves possi-
bic, and he had generals who were
trained in Eastern warfare and not
hypnotized by the long period of posi-
tional warfare in the West
Using all Of his advantages the Ger
man seems to have decided upon the
following course: At the outset of the
campaign he planned to throw an enor-
nous force, host as great as he had
employed at the Marne, against fifty