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Show PROGRESS OF THE WAR. In two weeks of offensive fighting the Italians have taken immensely strong enemy positions between Tolmino and the sea and have captured 23.000 prisoners. The prisoners alone equal the number of captives taken by the British in a month of attacks and counter-attacks along the Hindenburg line. It would be difficult to imagine stronger positions than those held by the Austrians on the Carso plateau, where nature has constructed ideal fortifications for-tifications for the warfare of today. The action of the elements for thousands of years has produced innumerable caverns cav-erns and trenches, gullies and ravines which have served the Austrians as shelters. The Italians began their offensive about May 14 and made rapid progress at various points along the Julian front. They crossed the son;o river at n brideghead which had long resisted their efforts. They advanced in the Gorizia sector and to the southeat-ward southeat-ward aloirg the ' ar.-o plateau as far us the Adriatic sea. The most notable plunge forward occurred early lat week 'when they broke the enemy's lines in a ferocious ru-di f'"m the Adriatic to ja point on the plateau about ten miles ; to the north of the coa-.t. They over-I over-I ran the caverns and trenches and fur-1 fur-1 tirbations before the enemy was able ; to react in co unter-attacks. When the reaction came the Italians had e.-tab- i ished themselves so firmly they could not be ousted. Since then they have continued to work their way forward despite desperate resistance. The victory was achieved by the most careful mobilization of military resources. In addition to their own ar tillerv the Italians had many batteries of Fnglish heavy guns to assist them in battering to pieces the Austrian defenses. de-fenses. While the British were methodically consolidating their position iiLaide the ( Hindenburg line the French, at the command of General Petain. leaped for- j ward to the foot of the Moronvilliercj , ridge, southeast of Ttheims, and carried : it bv assault. The Germans had been preparing for a lunge to the south, ea--t and west in this region and had mas-ed several hundred thousand troops and hundreds of (run"- They were caught bv surprise and when they began to counterattack the enemy was in control con-trol of all the. high ground. General Petain did not rest upon his laurels, but launched another big attack down the reverse slope of the ridge and carried further confusion into the foe's ranks, capturing positions all along the slope to the north. 1 ighting in the Poi-sons sector, and between this sector and Rheims. has been lively. The Germans succeeded in capturing a number of trenches, but lost, most of them in counter attacks. The latest announcement of the British Brit-ish admiralty on submarine operations continues fairly encouraging. Only eighteen eight-een Hritish ships of more, than tons were sunk in a week, which wns tho record for tho week previous. Immediately Im-mediately after the arrival of tho American Amer-ican iiavnJ forces in British waters the German submarines scorned to lose their power. Whether this Is due to some new invention or system of fighting them has not been officially published. The Westminster Gazette publishes a letter from a correspondent who dc claren that the decline in I' bont of fieiency is dun to the Invention of an A mericfin. The French admiral, 1ww, addressing address-ing the French deputies, declared with apparent candor that, ho would name all of the devices being used by the French navy to combat the submarines, lie mentioned nets, patrol boats, armed merchantmen, airplanes nnd all the other well known devices. He snid nothing about, an American invention, but he failed to explain how it wns that, the ' boats suffered such a sudden sud-den slump. The old devices hud been ot work for morn than two years when the American naval forces arrived in the "barred -one." and the F boats I, ii, I steadily increased their power of destruel.i ceiieis. Suddenly that power as rut down fifty per cent and bus phowil no signs of recovery. !ul even wilh their p.mer cut in half I he H boat c lire doing formidable elocution. elocu-tion. In addition lo Hie Knglish bouts jieiit, to Hie bollolii I hey have dc I roved la number of Sv.edi'di and Norwegian vessels, and one French vessel of more j than 1 (( tons. Their toll for the week 1 must have been considerably over 1U0,-00n 1U0,-00n tons. i General Goethals. who was assigned to the task of building 1000 wooden ships in eighteen months, hns given up the task in despair and hns turned to the steel men of the country. They have, promised to build several million tons of steel shipping in eighteen months. These, together with the wooden ships, should go far to replace ' the losses caused by the submarines. ) The general severely criticised the ad-; ministration for letting contracts for wooden ships before any plans or specifications speci-fications had been prepared. The belated announcement was made by the British admiralty that the 14,000-ton liner, Transylvania, had been sunk early in May by a submarine. ; The vessel was attacked during the forenoon on the French-Italian coast i and sent to the bottom with two torpedoes. tor-pedoes. The first torpedo crippled the vessel, which began to sink slowdy. . While destroyers were trying to save those on board another torpedo was launched. It blew up tho engine room ; and caused the ship to sink rapidly. ; The admiralty reports that 4 1:'. officers and men lost their lives. The liner w-K lieinir used us a trnoii transport. French and German destroyers fought a running engagement off the coast of France on May 2". Both sides sustained sus-tained damage and losses, but none of the warships was sunk. On Friday airplanes from Belgium, sixteen in all, it is said, attacked the Fnglish const tovvns of Hover and Folkestone. Folke-stone. The airplanes flew in columns of five at rapid intervals ami dropped some tons of explosives. The attack took place in the davtimo, when shoppers shop-pers were thick on the main .streets of Do er. Bombs falling in their midst killed about seventy and injured about 2'ln. most of them women and children. At Folkestone much damage was wrought, but the loss of life was slight. On their return trip the German machines ma-chines were attacked by French and Knglish machines ordered out from Dunkirk. Frauce. Three of tho German Ger-man rn ichines- v rro destroyed. |