ESTABLISHED 1860. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1917. THE WAR.

Marlborough Express, Volume LI, Issue 83, 10 April 1917, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1860. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1917. THE WAR.

The situation on the Western front continues to favor >>he theory that, given time, patience, and the provision of. adequate reinforcements, the Allies are assured of such successes,, and that within a very few months, as will compel the enemy to retreat to ( the line of 'the Lower Meuse—that is to say, roughly, a line frbmlLiege to NamurS There; were rumors last week : that eyeh, the Germans themselves have fiOine to the conclusion that; the 'Anglo-French pressure must, inevitably cause; them to; make a wholesale evacuation of western Belgium, in which Case they would have to relinquish the whole of their Yser line*, and, Lille would once again \be _ occupied by' the French, j! According to tliese reports, however, the ■ enemy : would putup> a ;desperate resistance for -the: retention of Brussels arid Antwerp. To vthe Germans, more especially the panGermans,, much would .be worth sacrificing could only ■.'.■ Antwerp/ be retained, after the _ war. More than once German publicist of high standing has hinted that a goodly slice of Alsace and the major part of Lorraine —excluding the iron region in the latter province—might -be given back to' France if mly Antwerp were retained.-.Antwei'p as a German port would be a rich prize, forrthe Scheldt is jalmpst as much a natural sea outlet for western Germany, for the vast industrial region of . the Rhenish provinces, as is the Rhine itself. There, would still remain, it is true, a serious disability in the fact that the 1 mouth of the Scheldt is i included in Dutch territorial waters. But once peace were s signed—a peace which - wouldt secure r. Antwerp fan German .possession and/the Allies smoothed down, as; the self-delusive German mind s^es it smoothed down, into the old indifference or lack of sufficient wariness towards German design?— Berlin might' ind_ some favorable occasion for picking si quarrel with Holland, and before Paris and riLondon had, grasped the situation the Hun legions, might sweep over, Holland as they swept over' Belgium in 1914, and the mouths of .the Scheldt and Rhine alike! would be m Germany's possession. All , this should be, and no doubt is, perfectly well understood by the Allies, and constitutes one of the strongest resons why no peace canr be possible until; the whole and not merely a part \of Belgium is freed from the: hateful ', presence of the Kaiser's armies. Mr Bohar Law's quiet but decided c:No" to the ill-timed and characteristica'llv stupid peace cackle the other day of a little coterie of Radical Pacifists in the House of Commons shows that the British Government recognises that there can be no parleying with the eneijiy so long as he remains in possession of a single square mile of Belgian territory. .Meanwhile, both French and

British continue to pound the enemy's lines in the "West .with, everincreasing' force, and. \each day witnesses a very creditable record of substantial, successes. Here and there, especially along the French line, the Germans make counterattacks ,with the hope of regaining lost positions, or .at least delaying the evil day of compulsory retreat along the while line from the Channel down to Alsace. . Such counterattacks, although, so ft is clear by the Cablegrams received, made with substantial forces of picked men and aided by liquid flame and other devilish engines r»f yvar which Teuton ingenuity has imagined and brought into employment, are met by the French with an irresistible barrage of artillery fire, and lead to no profitable results. Baffled at so many points, the enemy is meanly, revenging himself by a renewed and specially heavy bombardment of Rh'eims. That devoted city, the ancient coronation place of the kings of France, has suffered a continual purgatory for over two years. Its heroic inhabitants have to lament the destruction of the larger part of their beautiful and historically famous city, but the unquenchable spirit of the French army has always rendered it impossible for the enemy to succeed in breaking through the French line at this point. It is more than probable that the recently increased violence of the enemy's bombardment of Rheims is due to a feeling of exasperation, over th£ probability— weekly coming; nearer—-of his being compelled to withdraw his whole front in thei Champagne,,-" just :-.. : as he has been forced to; -do on *ne Somnie. For a time'we must expect to [hear of heavy fighting, ; with ■:. varying success, in this particular sector, but eventually the pressure on his northern lines cannot fail to affect the enemy's position in the Champagne, and the unfortunate civil population of Rheims, so long suffering under the hell-storms of German shells, will be freed from the horrors of the "Bombardment. - Jt is disquieting to" read of the onenw's claim that the Allies lost, in one" single aerial reconnaissance by tho Germans, no fower than fortyfour machines. This, if " true—at

present its authority' is a German wireless communique—would seem to substantiate' the enemy's claim that ko dow possesses aonal , superiority. On the other hand, we have a dpnnito statement by Sir Douglas Haig to the effect that British aeroplanes havo been doing splendidly elfecuvo work, bombing important railway junctions, munition depots, artel aeradmmos. This does not look as if the German claim to aerial superiority is based upon any correct estimate of the relative superiority of his a:id the Allies' aeroplanes, fpr it goes without saying that "^the new ;ind allegedly all-powerfuL Ger. man machine of; which we, read last we«k -vere -such; a. success as it is claimed to v. be, ' tho Allies %vould never be / able to carry out siich highly destmctive operations .in the rear of the enemy's lines as those to which- tho Commander-in-Chiof allrtdeaV '-The; British airmen have flovvn, far behind the Orerman linen, doing excellent work, and the fact that the British lost but 28 machines as compared with the enemy's 46 in the. period covered .by one communique goes to show that the voty,heavy aerial fighting has demonstrated,*' a. distinct ascendancy on -.ho part of the British. Retent news from the Eastern front, especially on the' Stokhod line, in southern. Russia,',has been decidedly unfavorable to the .Allies. Although, no doubt the German reports as .to the result of last week s , fighting on the Stokhod may (■ bo, liberally discounted, it seems clear that ttie Russians have not -only lost a strategically valuable position, but that they suffered a very heavy loss of men and giins. The importance of the Stokhod River lies in tho fact that it acts ' as a bar. to Brussiloff's long and determined attempts to capture Kovel, and thus cut the line of tho enemy's , railway communications, whichI." at present enable him to transfer, !at will, largo bodies of troops *rom the "southern or Galician, frontier to" his lines in Russian Poland. The set-back which the Russians are- , reported to have suffered on the Stokhod must therefore be considered a peculiarly disagreeable reverse. . On the other hand, the "positi.w! at Petrograd soms to be 'decidedly better, and with undivided counsels ana an absence of tho element of treachery which so long .paralysed 'the Riissian. efforts, we may soon', it is to bo hoped, witness' a., general hardening up ai)d a renewed and more powerful offensive which will ennble Brussiloff to secure tho long-desired prize of Kovel. ' ' .