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Show I COMMENT ON THE RETREAT. Whelher they go forward or bark ward, the German military heads do-scribe do-scribe the movement as a great success. suc-cess. Today the Berlin papers are praising Von Hirfdenburg for his strategy in retiring from his front lines between Arras and Soisson in northern Franco and they predict the retreat is to be turned into a crush Ing victory. Drawing a parallel to the retirement of the Germans from in front of Warsaw In the early part of tho war, they find in the present falling back in France a source of com fort because Hlndenburg, after the Warsaw campaign, made his famous drive which carried the German flag to the eastern boundary of old Poland. But there are many elements in the two campaigns which diffen. Von Hindcnburg retreated from In front of Warsaw from positions which had not been built up by two years or more of endless wurk On the Somme, deep trenches, concrete redoubts, underground un-derground passwnys, railroad arteries, arter-ies, gun positions, barbed wire entanglements en-tanglements had been constructed, and all this was given up. At Warsaw War-saw the Germans were virtually in the open. Then again, when Von Hindcnburg made his drive, tho Russians were without adequate equipment and were short in ammunition. Even the Ber- Ilin accounts gave descriptions of the Muscovites fighting with iron bars, which were made to serve the purposes pur-poses of guns. Moving to their second line of defense de-fense running on a line from Lille ihrough St. Quentin to the Alsne, the Germans have yielded up 1,000 square miles of territory, much of which can be cultivated and made to sustain a considerable population With the Germans on the verge of starvation, tillable soil is as essential as munitions, muni-tions, and would not be given up except ex-cept under stress. When Von Hlndenburg is back on his St Quentin front, he will have no advantage he did not possess at Ba-paume Ba-paume and Peronne, except the handicap han-dicap of lack of railroad transportation, transporta-tion, which he shall have inflicted on the British and French in their advance ad-vance over a devastated country. If the German papers were to tell the truth, they would either discourage discour-age their fighting forces or, by explaining, ex-plaining, disclose important military plans. The retreat, in our opinion, has been made necessary by a loss in man power which calls for a shortening short-ening of the battle front. Hindenburg must be preparing for a mighty effort to 6trike at Riga on the north Russian lines, or at the Rumanian front, and he is making available a reserve force equal to the task. Hindenburg's hobby hob-by has been a study of the Russian military problem, and his mind naturally natur-ally turns to the possibility of crushing crush-ing Russia. Drawing in on the west front, eliminating the salients and lessening the lines of communication are preliminary not to a blow on the west front, but a drive elsewhere. |