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Show UU ! WHEN THE BREAK. COMES. English papers are predicting the early termination of the war. The 1 London Observer views the conflict in ' this light: "As we extend our view from the ' Somme to the Styr and from the southward streams of the Alps to the 1 headwaters of the Euphrates, we shall see still more clearly how an Ger- 1 man calculations are breaking down and how alarm and foreboding are 1 spreading through the Central Em- plres, and even more through Turkey ' and Bulgaria. Nemesis Is sternest 1 when it turns the very purposes and 1 methods of guilt against the authors of it. That is what we see. If the 1 allies had designed the conditions of 1 the final struggle they could hardly have ordered it more to their advant- 1 age as respects the extent of the 1 enemy's lines. Stretched to the utter- ' most they must yield the sooner. Every day's struggle, whether ground is gained or not, thins the defense at some points, and brings the allies 1 nearer the day when they will rupture : the enemy's dispositions, 'break up bv i degrees his continuous fronts, and roil i up hiB sections. The Germans will i make an immense struggle. Let there be no mistake about that. They will , try to make up in mechanism what i they lose In man. Their multiplying increase their present gigantic output 3Lnf2e .heavy artillery, gas : shells and all their apparatus of war. But that formidable resort, however desperately used, cannot avail the cen- vSL thnelr railways and their interior I.?J P8! !utQ?y hoped' to Sn strategic superiority in decisive directions, despite des-pite the growing Inferiority of their fS?U?e8 rhere throughout a S.0 6 .g0 of war in Europe and trl& amles 01 the central league are held or hampered. Astwe have said they make the whole process worse for themselves by the extent of their lines. The aggressors are sc situated that they are to a remarkable degree the victims of their former overwhelming movements and calcii' latlons. A time will come when they will be chiefly imperilled by their reluctance re-luctance to retreat. Where and when the real strategical penetration of the enemy's fronts and the rolling up of his sections will begin to be effected ef-fected we cannot yet tell. We know, nevertheless, that the coptinuous all-round all-round pressure of the allies with their increasing predominance of men and metal must sooner or later confront the central empires with the alternatives alter-natives of collapse or retreat." oo |