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Show BRITISH SUES IUJED HE From Flanders to the Somme English Forces Are Alert for Any Movement, WIDE OFFENSIVE IN NORTH IS EXPECTED! Prince Rupprecht Needs All Men Now at His Com--fiand and Cannot Spare Any Reinforcements. mul are ready rven now in make another (li-sj ei a to bid for it.. They have hpen working hard since t lie i r previous efforts came to a dead halt. A fter tho heavy losses of hu wire-Is of thousands of men under t'neir i-omiiiund, they have been put to the utmost strain in building lihl rnil-w rnil-w ays over tho old hat tlef; fids, making and repairing roads, dipsinp new pun pit's and communicating trenches, and weaving a network of telephone wires, so that on a given morning all the material of war shall he at hand for t'neir assaulting troops, and every men ns of communication communica-tion shall he ready for them. It all takes a longer time than they hoped to irive to the job, because thev knew that every week enabled us to di stronger lines against thorn and reorganize reorgan-ize and strengthen our defensive power. Their program of speed lias been slowed down by the epidemic- of influence which hit them badly several weeks ago and spread with such virulence that many of their hattalions a re inca pablo of hard work and hundreds of men went sick in many divisions. Influenza Disappearing. It seems to he burning itself out now, this fever, which makes men fall off their horses and sink at the knees quite suddenly sud-denly with a high temperature that keeps them away for six days or so, but even now there are large numbers of cases, i limiting the output of work in preparation ; for the attack. Other things have d- 1 layed and weakened them. British air- ! planes yesterday, as every dav for months ! past, flew low over their lines and back J areas, bombing r,nd machine gunning their working parties, causing heavy casualties casual-ties and doing destructive work over their railways, airdromes, camps and dumps, and British guns used every opportunity to rain high explosive shells on their batteries bat-teries and trenches, and roads and railheads, rail-heads, causing more casualties and destroying de-stroying the work newly done so it has to I be begun again. More delay, irritating 1 to the German generals, who know the value of time; more delay and greater demoralization de-moralization of the troops holding the linP By PHILIP GIBBS. (New York Times-Chicago Tribune'Cable Correspondent. ) WAR CORRESPONDENTS' HEADQUARTERS. HEAD-QUARTERS. July 20. While the battle in Champagne is being fought by the French and American troops the British armies from Flanders to the Somme remain on the alert. The morning's news of Foch's dramatic counter blow between Solssons and Chateau Thierry, with its menace of turning the enemy's right flank, will have a great effect on our men. It is what we have been hoping for. It is in the tradition of the Foch school of strategy, which he has had to deny himself so long because of the enemy's superiority in numbers at the beginning of the offensive, offen-sive, but now at last the balance of numbers num-bers on the western front has begun to tip in our favor and Foch is able to use his reserves with greater freedom and aurety of striking power. The enormous patience of the French general, whose motto is "attack," was put to the severest strain after March 21. when for many weeks he had to husband his forces and remain on the defensive, but the hour of waiting has passed, and, after checking the enemy's enormous enor-mous efforts on each side of Rheims, he seized the psychological moment to strike him on the right wing of the German Ger-man salient between the Aisne and the Marne. Crown Prince Deeply Engaged. Our future depends intimately on the progress of that French counter stroke and on the necessity of the German crown prince for more men to replace all those dead and bleeding soldiers who lie on the kIoX" and in the valleys east and west iiheims. He is deeply engaged now, as jie was at Verdun, and cannot call off the battle which he began after months of preparation. Opposite the British front, In some old chateau of the French behind the German lines far beyond the zone of But Rupprecht and hi.s, generals, ready to begin this offensive against the British, have now another anxiety which may spoil all their plans. Their elaborate preparations are useless if they have not enough men to throw in at the moment arranged If this great attack east and west of Rheims had gone well, he would still have enough men, and more than enough, to strike with immense strength such as he is bound to have considering the defensive preparations we made. -But what if orders come to send divisions to the help of the crown prince, now seriously seri-ously jeopardized by the French counterblow. counter-blow. Attack Is Expected. The whole problem of Rupprecht and his generals and the history of the next few weeks rest on that development of I events. If Prince Rupprecht can keep his , armies together, the offensive will llame ! along the British front and all our men ! will be involved in a life-and-death strug-i strug-i gle. if his divisions are called away to I help in that other battle, these commanders command-ers of the German army in the north may have to be content with the mere holding actions or with inactivity. So in the , north of this western front the British and German armies are both hungering for news of what is happening in the 1 Champagne, knowing that upon the events there depends their own action in the j immediate future. It is even possible i that a French success between the Aisne and Marne will hasten the offensive against the British front, and that, instead in-stead of sending many men down south, Prince Rupprecht will strike with the object of keeping the allied troops away from that scene of action. Twenty-four hours more of history may decide which plan the German high command thinks best, but today, anyhow, any-how, they must be thinking hard. Filled with doubt and apprehension, they are playing all but the last cards. So far as offensive action and initiative may carry them, they must do whatever they do within the next two months or so, and after that they will forever be on the defensive, because their reserve power cannot maintain the same level as ours with the American legions behind us. The fate of the world will be decided before the leaves turn brown on this year's trees, and perhaps before the harvest har-vest is gathered in, I believe it will be decided in our favor. V our tire, mere is a group oi men wno Nv.st be reading reports from the crown prices' staff with extreme anxiety and nervous tension. Chief among them Is Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, commanding the group of armies against the British front, and with him are his army commanders and corps commanders. Against them Sixt von Arnim, who was our opponent in the first battles of the Somme, and Von Bernhardt Bern-hardt who, It is said, has the most passionate pas-sionate hatred of us, among all the German Ger-man generals. These men have been preparing another wide offensive against the British front. They are the men who have their eyes on the coast as the goal of their desires Enemy Still Strong. The enemy is still immensely strong. One's mind is staggered by the number of men he has crowded onto this western west-ern front, but he is using them up apace ! and we know he is not replacing them at anything like the rate of loss. He is immensely strong on our front, but so are we. We know that we had time to repair the losses of March and April and to prepare the close scheme of defense with positions which can only be taken by an enormous sacrifice of life. I saw some of those defenses yesterday, as on other days, in places which in the old lines used to be far behind our lines. The enemy knows they are there, for he has photographed them from aeroplanes, but the knowledge will not do him any good. Yesterday he tried hard with his air service to survey our back areas, and time after time his aeroplanes attempted to cross our anti-aircraft barrage in daylight day-light for reconnaissance of our roads and rails. Beyond much doubt he wanted want-ed to know whether there was much movement behind our lines. Fight Back Airplanes. Our airplanes, as well as our anti-aircraft batteries, fought him back, and in he Albert sector our heavy guns were pouring shells into his positions: also that there was a great tumult under the glare of the sun, which streamed down upon our men working in their fields, through which the new trenches show where the chalk is turned up. Our kite balloons kept watch over the enemy lines, snow-white, snow-white, also. In the blue of (he sky until storm clouds gathered, strangely colored, and lightning flashed from them before the downpour of rain. The night before there was a violent thunderstorm, followed by an hour or two of almost tropical rain, and with such loud and rattling peals of thunder that it seemed as though another battle had begun, be-gun, but between the rains the sun shines warm again with a moist, sultry heat the heat that sets the soldier's throat on lire when he lies out wounded on the battlefield, and makes the agony of war more terrible in sunshine than under the gray skies of winter. On the south side of the Somme, the Australians, who never rest for long in the same line, made another advance southeast of Villers-Rretonneux, where they captured one officer and thirty-three men and brought back two lie kl guns and two machine guns, after walking forward 600 vards on a 2000-yard front. The enemy" en-emy" retaliated by heavy gunfire from nmni- hni(rrii-s. but his infant rv did not counter-attack. Some of their divisions In the line have no f iili t left in theni and are waitinsr for the storm troops behind them to relieve them before the next massacre to which they are dedicated by their hih command, for it will be nothing noth-ing lpss than a massacre when it comes, whatever ground they take or fail to take. |