Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-03-29
Looking Backward One Year
New York Times,

On March FL, 1918, Ludendorff flung 1000
| 600 men against the British armies before Cam
| brai and ST. Quentin. All winter we had been
| looking forward to this possibility, but without
much belief in it; the advantage to the Germans
| OF letting the other side throw its men against
intrenched lines seemed so obvious, and the
chance OF success in any attack Of their own SO
slight that many people in Washington refused
| to believe that this was the great attack even
after it had begun. We did not know then the
uneasness in the central powers which might
have made a long continued defensive war un-
safe for the rulers OF Germany; we did not know
so well as did the commanders at the front that
lines could be broken by the tank and that the
Germans had developed new offensive tactic
that promised great results; above all we did not
know the temperament OF Ludendorf. And
when the papers of that Thursday afternoon
told OF the beginning of the attack we all sup
posed that it would be repulsed with terrible
loss, leaving things much as they were before.
But Thursdays fighting resulted in German
gains; on Friday they gained more, it was evil
dent that they had really broken the line; by
Sunday morning we had to face defeat already
serious, threatening to become disastrous. On
Sunday, too, we read of the all but incredible
long-range gun that had begun to lombard
Paris. The British armies were in retreat, the
French reserves were apparently doing little to
stop the Germans; worst of all, OUT own armies
were still this side of the Atlantic. And so it
went on from day to day. the Germans ever
further west. Nothing like the gloom of those
days had ever been experienced by any OF US
Frenchmen had to 60 back to 1870 for parallel;
and nobody in England had ever known any
thing like it. The Black Week of 1899 had de-
pressed Englishmen over few unimportant in
juries to national prestige; but if Ludendorf
won this battle it might mean the downfall of
the British empire.
On the other side there was exultation. Amid
the roar OF the first days guns the kaiser de-
clared: The prize of victory must and will not
fail US; no soft peace, but one which corresponds
still boasting that I'VE shall win everything" In
the Reichstag speakers were declaring that there,
must be no more moderation" such as was
shown to beaten Russia; humping indennities,
huge annexations must punish the western
powers for their will not to be defeated For
whole week the Germans saw the world in their
hands; Frenchmen looked ruin in the face;
Englshmen wondered If the course of history
had not turned against them, and Americans
knew the humiliation of being unable to help
our friends when their life and ours was at
stake. It was worse than the Marine. for then
the British armies were not yet enrolled, the
Russian armies were still far away; America
and Italy were not yet in the war This time
the world had summoned all its forces against
world might be lost The memory Of those
days still hurts, and will hurt so long as those
who lived through them are alive.
Yet in the last days of that first week the
tide was beginning to slacken; French pressure
had narrowed the expanse of the offensive in
the south, the British were not broken in the
north. The first really good news came at the
BEGINNING of the second week. when on March
% great German assault on the British
buttress at Arras was stopped in its tracks. On
both flanks the Germans were held; their often
sive was narrowing day by day, pushing down
in point toward Amiens, finally stopped in
front of the city. There were other hard blows
in Flanders in April on the Aisne in May, to-
ward Compegne in June; sometimes the dan
ger was almost as great as in March; but the
blackness of the first days of the Ludendorff
offensive we never knew again. There was a
general conviction, based on no very scientific
reasoning, perhaps, but justified by the event,
that if they failed in the first great rush they
could never win.
We know now how close they were to vic
tory year ago; and it is thing we may all
remember while talking about who won the war.
The war could not have been won without our
army on the Marine and in the Argonne, but if
the French and British troops had not stopped
the attack in March our army might never have
had chance to help win the war. The imperial
person who year ago would have no soft peace
has just celebrated the saving of his thousandth
log at An1erongen; he might be spending his
time very differently but for the steadfastness
and courage of the men who fought before
Arras and Amiens