OCR Text |
Show MILlTMVlEN I MUCH PUZZLED American Officers Do Not Un-deraiand Un-deraiand Delay in Starting Counter Attacks. WASHINGTON. April 1 With the battle of Plcardy brought to a standstill, stand-still, for the time bcinff at least, and he initial momentum of the German drive overcome, military observers hero werf plainly puzzled last ninht by the fact that a great counter-assault had not developed. Thp psychological psychol-ogical moment of the counter-stroke I under 1ho rules of strategy, they ihink.j is passing, if it has not already i passed, without a recorded movement Of the allied forces toward throwing back the exhausted foe before he has had time to die himself in. Officers here admit frankly, however, how-ever, that they do not know what the situation at (ho front is. If any report re-port has come from Generals Bliss or I Pershing that would serve to explain J the defensive tactics of the allies, it ia a carefully guarded secret. Naturally Nat-urally nothinc would be made publiei regarding ueh advices. een without! Secretary Baker s order of yesterday, shu'tinc down absolutely on war dc- i partment announcements regarding operations in France. That order has J served, however, in make officers even more cautious about diseucsinc,' the. situation informally. It was suggested as possible that the plan of campaign mapped out by General Gen-eral Foch is of far greater scope than would be involved in an effort to hurl the enem back to his old line. The German defensor, there, which sue cessfully stemmed the British assault in 1916. are still intact and even if the allies were .successful in rushing the Herman line back over the twentj " uu tjr -nine mil ii - iicir wreoLeu from them, they would face those do- I fenses when their own organization was badly demoralised b their advance ad-vance and iheir men showing the wear and tear of .1 prolonged offenr-ie. For this reason, sonv officers were inclined to look elsewhere for the ag-gressive ag-gressive campaign to which they are' pinning their faith. They have counted upon the creation of a unified army under General Foch 10 prod ice offensive offen-sive operations and they see nothing in the situation at the present limp to warrant the conclusion tht the allies have not the necessary reserve forcer, or supplies. It was suggested that the now pur-i pose of employing American troops to fill out allied fighting divisions might have some bearing upon the situation. If General Foch is laying hif founda- ; tlons for continuous operations of an aggressive character be would need to be certain of his reserves and the dc- ' tailed plans for employment of American Amer-ican troops would have to be worked out. Will Call Many Men. Spending up of American troop movements to France is engrossing attention here now. Fresideut Wilson held his weekly conference with the heads of the war-making and production produc-tion branches of the government yesterday yes-terday and it is understood that ways and means, for throwing the full resources re-sources of the United Slates into the conflict this year were talked over. One immediate step to that end is known to be contemplated. It has to do with the calling to the colors of the 800,000 men which it already has been announced will be mobilized through the selective service machinery machin-ery during the year. Assurances have been gien that no great withdrawals of men from agricultural and indus trial lite would oe iuaue ai one time but the indications are that a state-1 ment now being prepared regarding the number of men to be called out first under that plau will show that a larger force will be mobilized this month than had been intended before the German drive altered conditions abroad. The means of housing and training the men are rapidly becoming available avail-able and the movements to France have been already greatly accelerated. Jr. was learned authoritatively that, with additional British troop ships available, the war department now has In sight transportation and supplies for all the men it plans to send under it constantly quickening program, i From now on the proportion of f.ght-ing f.ght-ing troops in General lJershlngs army will increase rapidly. Heretofore, the (extensive scale on which preparations were being made in France has de-j de-j manded tho sending ahead of special j units and technical troops at a rate out of proportion to the fighting units i which were also moving Probabh nearly GO per cent of the force in France up to a short time ago were troops of this character. Figures reaching here as to allied I losses in the bitter days just closed in Picardy in that British and French casualties have been unexpectedly light in view of the scope of the action ac-tion One estimate heard, although its accuracy is open to doubt, fixes the the total, including prisoners at between be-tween 125,000 and KJo.OOO for the jtwehe days of tea-less battle along la 55 mile front. This is to be compared, com-pared, if correct, with French esti-I esti-I mates of 350.000 to 450,000 Germans killed, wounded or captured during the '' same period Tin bulk of the German losses were dead and wounded men as there have been no claims from the allies al-lies having captured any great num- ber of the enemy although some thousands thou-sands undoubtedly were taken. nn |