Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-10-13 | Page 6 | Town of Lille Now Regarded as Insecure for Huns

TOWN OF LILLE NOW REGARDED AS INSECURE FOR HUNS By Associated Press. The Anglo-American forces on the southerly side of t he great wedge that has been tin rust into the enemy lines southeast of Valenciennes are halting momentarily before an extemporized German Ger-man defense line running from Valenciennes Valen-ciennes to the Oise. Both to the north and south of this area, however, the Germans are either retreating re-treating or preparing to fall back under the continuous pressure that Marshal Foch is applying. Douai, the most important of the northern north-ern French cities within the immediate scope of the allied thrust, with the exception ex-ception of the- fallen Cam bra i and the threatened Lille, seems about to pass into British hands. Lille itself, the greatest of the French manufacturing towns, is In none too secure se-cure a position. The wedge below Douai is threatening the whole line running north past Lille into Flanders, and the Germans are palpably worried also over the prospect of General Limner's Second British army and King Albert's Belgian forces on their right Ilank, above Lille, springing into renewed activity. In the south, General Petain's armies and the Americans under General Pershing Per-shing have struck renewed heavy blows against the German left In the great pocket formed by the German positions from Verdun around the Laon curve to ! the sea. The Chemin-des-Dames no longer stands as a bulwark for Daon in the Aisne region, and to the east in the Champagne the French, by a swift advance ad-vance of from three to four miles In a day, have entered Vouziers and carried their line so far north that the communications communi-cations between the German northern armies and those east of the Champagne bid fair to be cut. On the extreme allied right In the active ac-tive battle area the American First army is keeping up its hammering tactics and daily gaining more of the most valuable ground remaining to the Germans n northern France that protecting their communicating lines from the home soil through the Metz and Montmedy regions. - But the Germans, although they are in general on the retreat, by no means yet are in a state of broken resistance. This is shown by the desperate right they are giving the Americans from the Arson ne to the Mouse, by the stand they appear to be about to make before Fieid Marshal Haig's armies south'of Valenciennes, and by the persistence with which they are clinging to their positions around Laon, although doubtless aware of the peril to which they are exposing their large forces in this area by so doing. Douai, and perhaps Dille, they seem to have prepared themselves to give up. But they are still holding on to most of Bel-glum, Bel-glum, as well as to the Laon pocket, and are throwing everything they can possibly mass into the effort to keep their vital left flank north of the A'erdun area protected.