Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/520

WORLD WAR 450 WORM) WAR of perfect success. It was preceded by an intense but not lengthy artillery fire made up chiefly of gas shells and high explosives. Simultaneously heavy bom- bardments were directed on the front in the Champagne and other sectors with the evident intention of preventing re- enforcements from being brought up. A touch of the marvelous was lent to it by the periodic bombardment of Paris from a gun emplaced in the forest of St. Gobain, a distance of something like seventy-five miles. The dropping of the mysterious shells in the streets of Paris long remained inexplainable and many were the sources to which they were first attributed. Meanwhile the battle line of the Germans from La Fere to the S. E. of Arras displayed enormous activity in the pushing of the offensive. The first attack broke the British lines of a six- teen-mile front from near Gouzeaucourt to Lagnicourt. It drove the British from positions held by them from the battle of Cambrai toward the close of 1917. On the day following the first attack, namely March 22, the Germans first bombarded the British along the whole front and following the artillery fire up with an infantry attack smashed through the entire British position along the extent of the whole front. The Brit- ish Fifth Army was thus completely iso- lated from French support at La Fere, and the permanent British position at Arras and with unrelenting energy the Germans started to roll it up. The task was not a difficult one, for organization had deserted the British who henceforth formed but a fleeing and struggling mass of humanity. Meanwhile the German armies drove along the road to Peronne and Albert, and along the route from St. Quentin to Amiens, and through the Oise valley by paths which led to Paris and the S. of Amiens. The advance con- tinued at what appeared an uninterrupt- ed progression for four days and it look- ed as though the Germans were destined to reach the sea and drive a permanent wedge between the French and the Brit- ish. The defeats inflicted on the British on the 21st and 22d were repeated on the 23d at Money, St. Quentin, La Fere, and Cambrai. Meanwhile demoralization attacked other portions of the British front and the British second positions between Fontaine - les - Croiselles and Mceuvres were broken beneath the Ger- man strokes. It was hoped to stem the German onrush on the banks of the Somme, but here as elsewhere the de- fense put up fell before the German at- tack. On the fourth day of their ad- vance the Germans took Peronne, Chauny, and Ham and threw their forces over the Somme by hastily constructed pontoon bridges, w^hich the demoralized British artillery fire was unable to de- stroy. Maintaining their advance, the Germans on the 25th took Bapaume, Nesle, Estalon, Barleaux, Biaches and Guisrard. By this time the British armies opposing the Germans had suf- fered a succession of defeats that put them almost wholly hors de combat and if Amiens had to be saved it was seen that the task would have to be undertaken by the French themselves. Accordingly on the 25th the French War Office an- nounced that the British lines S. of St. Quentin and around Noyon had been taken over by the French. From that time onward there was a slowing up in the German advance. On the 26th the Germans had reached the battle line of 1916 at several points and succeeded in taking Roye, Noyon, and Lihon. But here the complexion of things began to change. Moving with a swiftness such as the desperate posture of affairs war- ranted, the French came up along the southern front as far as the Ayre and succeeded in forming a junction with the ragged end of the British front at Mo- reuil. French support succeeded in stiff- ening the back of the British to some extent, and the line was further strength- ened by recruits from the forces em- ployed in various occupations behind the line. On the other hand the tremendous exertion of the Germans had reached the limit almost of human endurance and the carrying forward of the whole front with the enormous mas i of material needed if the new front was to be made permanent was a second undertaking of great arduousness. The Gei-man troops that reached the line of Albert and Moreuil were as a consequence in the last stages of exhaustion and the slowing up process was as a result an almost natural operation. On the 27th the new army of British and French forces recognized the indications of spent forces, and with a new accession of cour- age attacked the Germans and recap- tured Morlancourt and Chipilly and ad- vanced as far as Proyart. On that same day, however, the Germans captured Albert and crossed the Avell, compelling the French to fall back E. of Montdidier. On the 28th there was a similar dis- tribution of loss and gain. Montdidier fell into German hands, but to offset this they were repulsed at Arras. It was now possible to estimate the progress made by the Germans and the extent of their gains. They had driven a thirty-five mile salient in the direction of Amiens, broad at the base but dangerously narrow at the neck. While the Allies had been