World War

The Turning of the Tide.

On July 15 Ludendorff launched his new attack, but its coming was no secret. East of Reims it was foiled by an elastic defence, and west of Reims the German penetration across the Marne merely enmeshed them more deeply to their downfall—for on July 18 Foch launched a long-prepared stroke against the other flank of the Marne salient. (See MARNE, SECOND BATTLE OF THE.) Here Petain, who directed the opera tion, turned the key which Ludendorff lacked, using masses of light tanks to lead a surprise attack on the Cambrai method. The Germans managed to hold the gates of the salient open long enough to draw their forces back into safety and straighten their line. But their reserves were depleted, Ludendorff was forced to postpone if not yet to abandon the offensive in Flanders and the initiative definitely and finally passed to the Allies. Foch's first concern was to keep it, by giving the enemy no rest while his own reserves were accumulating. To this end he arranged with Haig, Petain and Pershing for a series of local offensives, aimed to free the lateral railway communications and to improve the position of the front ready for further operations. To Haig he proposed an attack in the Lys sector, but Haig saw "no advan tage in an advance over this flat and marshy region" and sug gested instead the Somme area as more suitable and more stra tegically effective. Already, before the Marne counter-stroke, Rawlinson, commanding the British 4th Army in front of Amiens (q.v.), had submitted to Haig a plan for a large surprise attack there, and Foch agreed to this in place of his own proposal. He also placed under Haig the French 1st Army (Debeney) to extend elle attack to the south. Rawlinson's army was doubled, and by skilful precautions the enemy were kept in the dark until, on Aug. 8, the attack was delivered—led by 450 tanks. The blow had the maximum shock of surprise, falling on an opponent who had done nothing to strengthen his position by entrenchments, and south of the Somme the troops of the Australian and Cana dian Corps rapidly overran and overwhelmed the German for ward divisions. By Aug. 12 when the advance came to a halt through reaching the tangled wilderness of the old 1916 battle fields, if also through lack of reserves, the 4th Army had taken 21,00o prisoners at a cost of only 20,000 casualties. Great, if not fully exploited, as a material success, it was far greater as a moral one.

Ludendorff has said : "Aug. 8 was the black day of the Ger man army in the history of the war. . . . It put the decline of our fighting power beyond all doubt. . . . The war must be ended." He informed the emperor and the political chiefs that peace negotiations ought to be opened before the situation became worse, as it must. After July 18 Ludendorff had by no means lost hope and as late as Aug. 2 was ordering preparations for four fresh attacks, including his cherished Flanders design, if on a reduced scale. But after Aug. 8 these dreams vanished. The conclusions reached at a Crown Council held at Spa were that "We can no longer hope to break the war-will of our enemies by military operations" and "the object of our strategy must be to paralyse the enemy's war-will gradually by a strategic defensive." In other words the German command had abandoned hope of victory or even holding their gains, and hoped only to avoid sur render—an insecure moral foundation.

On Aug. 10 Foch issued a fresh directive for the preparation of an "advance" by the British 3rd Army "in the general direc tion of Bapaume and Peronne." Meantime he wished Haig to continue the 4th Army's frontal pressure, but Haig demurred to it as a vain waste of life and gained his point. Economy of force

was henceforth to be added to the advantages of the new strategy now evolved. Thus the momentum of the 4th Army had hardly waned, before the 3rd Army moved. From then on Foch beat a tattoo on the German front, a series of rapid blows at different points, each broken off as soon as its initial impetus waned, each so aimed as to pave the way for the next, and all close enough in time and space to react on each other. Thus Ludendorff's power of switching reserves to threatened spots was stopped, as his balance of reserves was drained.

On Aug. 10 the French 3rd Army had struck to the south; then on Aug. 17 the French loth Army still farther south; next, on Aug. 21, the British 3rd Army, followed by the British 1st Army on Aug. 26. Ludendorff's order to the troops holding the Lys salient to retire was hastened in execution by the attacks of the reformed British 5th Army, and by the first week in Sep tember the Germans were back on their original starting line— the strong defences of the Hindenburg line. And on Sept. 21 Pershing completed the series of preliminary operations by eras ing the St. Mihiel (q.v.) salient—the first feat of the Americans as an independent army. Pershing had originally intended to make this a stepping stone to an advance towards the Briey coal fields and the eastern end of the Germans' main lateral railway near Metz, but the project was abandoned for reasons that will be referred to later. Thus no exploitation of the success was attempted.

The clear evidence of the Germans' decline and Haig's assur ance that he would break the Hindenburg line where the German reserves were thickest, decided Foch to seek victory that autumn instead of postponing the attempt until 1919. All the Allied armies in the West were to combine in a simultaneous offensive.

The Collapse of Bulgaria.

But before it could develop an event occurred in the Balkans which, in the words of Ludendorff, "sealed the fate of the Quadruple Alliance." He had still hoped to hold fast in his strong lines in the West, falling back gradually to fresh lines if necessary, and with his strategic flanks in Mace donia and Italy covered, while the German Government was negotiating for a favourable peace. At the same time there was alarm as to the moral effect of the Western front defeats on the German people, their will-power already undermined by shortage of food, and perhaps also by propaganda.

But on Sept. 15' the Allied armies in Salonika (q.v.) attacked the Bulgarian front, which crumpled in a few days. Guillaumat, who had succeeded Sarrail in Dec. 1917, had prepared the plan for an offensive, and when recalled to France in the crisis of July as governor of Paris he won over the Allied Governments to consent to the attempt. His successor in Salonika, Franchet d'Esperey, concentrated a Franco-Serb striking force, under Michich, on the Sokol-Dobropolye sector, west of the Vardar, where the Bulgarians trusted to the strength of the mountain ridges and were weak in numbers. On Sept. 15 Michich attacked and while the British attack at Doiran pinned a large part of the Bulgarian reserves, he broke right through towards Uskub. With their army split into two parts the Bulgarians, already tired of the war, sought an armistice, which was signed on Sept. 29. Franchet d'Esperey's achievement not only knocked away the first prop of the Central Alliance but opened the way to an advance on Austria's rear.