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Show CI Hill HO HIS LINE? French Officer Sums Up the Situation as It Exists on Western Front. Pivot of German Defense Is Massif of St. Gobain, j ' Claimed Impregnable. j j By WALTER DUBANTY. ; (New York Times-Chicago Tribune Cable. Copyright. WITH THK KRKXC1I AliMIKS. Sept. S, noon. "Generally speaking, the enemy is back of the Hnxientnjrg line. Now we shall see whether he can hold it." was the summing up of the situation on the French biitUd'ront given me by nn o(Ucer today. The pivot of the Gerniun syim con-fronting con-fronting the 1-Ycnch is the massif of St. Gobain, whoic lmportaice is coini-arable with Camhr.ti far - "BrlListi derations. Hundreds of hm he batteries are installed in the forl and screened in the ravines around I.aon. On Ue southwest of The town it H covered by the massif of Mo-nam Mo-nam p too U, behind whoe erc5t, 60 fcoL high, are huge underjrrou nd cavils and shcltors big enough to hold an1 entire regiment. Thc nkx-k of forest wrst of Lan is crajnii;Mi with a vast store of munitions and material, and division? can conrcntrate meo.n In l:s re.'ep?e3. New Factors in Fight. Not wttlKujt rea.-n h:ts the eneny always al-ways boasted St. Gobain's impregnability. . but toJ.iy there are foar new factors whore romblne! effect may wall shatter the mightiest of dcfenfs. The first is Lhe French ability to maneuver, whoso success suc-cess was proved as a Last the hardly less powerful position of the Thicscourt massif. mas-sif. When last spring Germany chanced the struggle to a war of maneuver, her propagandists claimed that previous training train-ing in such operations would give her annlcs superiority, but the enemy forgot to take into account the fact that the French army h.id maneuver training no less thorough than her own. The depletion de-pletion of all armies that Pas been the consequence of four years' slaughter has rendered it Impossible to hold even organized or-ganized land fortitications with sufficient density of troops throughout to prevent maneuver at one point or another. Assault Has Advantage. The assailant thus has enormous advantages, ad-vantages, as the Germans found in Lhe attack at-tack on 'the Chemin-des-Lamcs. Now it is turned against them, and, flushed by victory, the French pursue the tactics of Infiltration with irresistible skill and dash. The second factor is the unprecedented dryness of the season, which facilitates the turning movement against the massif along the Oiso corridor to a degree impossible im-possible before. The bocbe Is trying to remedy matters by artificial floods, but the parched earth soaks up the water rapidly and ground la now feasible for Infantry that was an impassable morass this time last year. Greatly Increased Power. The third factor is the enormously increased in-creased power and number of the allied engines of offense, whether they be ranks or guns to prepare the way for the infantry, in-fantry, or gigantic cannon to smash whole blocks of defense at one shot. It may not be generally known that already last year the great underground fortress that was Douaumont really succumbed to a single shell from an IS-lnch gun which pierced over 100 feet of earth and concrete, con-crete, and, exploding in the fort's vitals, utterly paralyzed the resistance. Now the French liave howitzers of 21 -inch caliber, whose shell is over two yards high and can wreck a dozen batteries in a sll-tercd sll-tercd ravine or annihilate a regiment bidden bid-den In a cavern they deemed impenetrable. impenetra-ble. The fourth factor is the roost important of all, being the progressive demoralization demoraliza-tion of the German army. When an officer offi-cer can say, "I have surrendered because I believe it my duty as a good German to tight no longer, since our cause is lost and the continuance of the struggle only lengthens the agony and increases suffering," suf-fering," there is some tiling very rotten In the state of Germany. |