Part 3

The German submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend on the Belgian coast have been repeatedly bombed from the sea and shelled by British monitors with indifferent results. With the adding of super-U-boats to the German submarine fleet and the increased transatlantic traffic of the Allies the necessity for effectually sealing these bases has long been apparent. Theoretically the nature of the entrance to the harbors of both places, resembling the neck of a bottle, about 250 feet wide, made such a task easy by the sinking of block ships. Practically it was most difficult, on account of both sea obstructions and the shore batteries.

On the night of April 22-23 British naval forces, commanded by Vice Admiral Keyes, with the co-operation of French destroyers, and hidden by a newly devised smoke-screen, invented and here employed by Wing-Commander Brock, attempted to seal up the harbors. At Zeebrugge the enterprise was entirely successful. The Intrepid and Iphigenia were sunk well within and across the narrow channel, the Thetis at the entrance. All three were loaded with cement, which became solid concrete after contact with the water and can be removed only by submarine blasting. A detachment of troops was also landed on the mole from the Vindictive and engaged the crews of the German machine gun batteries stationed there. An old submarine was placed under the bridge of the mole and detonated. A German destroyer and some small craft were sunk. Before the blockships were placed a torpedo had been driven against the lock gates which lead from the channel into the inner harbors. The expedition retired with the loss of fifty officers and 538 men, of whom sixteen officers and 144 men had been killed.

At Ostend, the entrance to whose harbor is protected by no mole, the block ships Sirius and Brilliant were not effectively placed. Against this port the experiment was, therefore, repeated on the night of May 9-10. The Vindictive, with a cargo of concrete, was planted and sunk at the entrance to the channel, but not entirely blocking it.

ITALIAN RAID AT POLA

Another naval exploit of the month worthy of record was the sinking in the Austrian Harbor of Pola of a dreadnought of the Viribus Unitis class (20,000 tons) by Italian naval forces, in the morning of May 15. The achievement was similar to that performed by the President of the Anaconda Copper Company, who has been appointed Director of Aircraft Production for the United States Army] Italians on the night of Dec. 9-10, when a destroyer sawed her way through the steel net protecting the Harbor of Trieste and torpedoed the predreadnoughts Wien and Monarch, (5,000 tons each,) sinking the former. The Harbor of Pola, however, is much more difficult to penetrate. It is three miles deep and entered by a two-mile channel, at certain places less than half a mile wide, and protected along its entire course by strong defenses. A mole covers its mouth, making the channel here less than 1,000 yards wide. Forts Cristo and Musil guard the entrance.

[Illustration: CHARLES M. SCHWAB

Head of the Bethlehem Steel Works, who has been appointed Director General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation to carry out the Government's shipbuilding program

(© _Harris & Ewing_)]

[Illustration: JOHN D. RYAN

TEUTONIZING THE BLACK SEA]

Save for the reports which have come to hand denoting the steady progress of the British forces in Palestine and Mesopotamia, little of importance has occurred in the Near East. Still the Teutonizing of the Black Sea goes steadily on. On May 2 it was announced that a German force had occupied the great Russian fortress of Sebastopol, famous for its protracted siege by the British and French in 1855, and until then considered impregnable. On May 12 part of the Russian Black Sea fleet was taken possession of by the Germans at that place, while the remainder escaped to Novorossysk. Among the captured vessels only the battleship Volga and the protected cruiser Pamiat Merkuria were in serviceable condition. At Odessa a new dreadnought and two protected cruisers had already been seized by the Germans as they lay in their slips.

In Macedonia the huge allied forces under the French General, Guillaumat, are still waiting on events. The Greek Army is still in process of reconstruction under the Venizelos Administration. The month, however, has not been barren of engagements on this battleline. On April 28 the Serbians beat back attempts of the Bulgars to capture fortified positions in the Vetrenik region; the French and British did the same in regard to German attacks aimed at points west of Makovo and south of Lake Doiran. So it has been all the month, the monotony only varied on April 27, when there was intense artillery fire by the allied guns in the neighborhood of Monastir, on the Cerna, and, in the Vetrenik region, a Serbian assault annihilated a Bulgar section.

[Illustration: MAP OF PALESTINE AND MESOPOTAMIA, WHERE TWO BRITISH ARMIES ARE AIMING AT BAGDAD RAILWAY]

IN THE NEAR EAST

There has been no serious attempt on the part of the Turks during the month to oppose the expansion of General Allenby's front beyond Jerusalem or the triumphant march of General Marshall up the Euphrates and the Tigris--on the latter river now sixty miles below Mosul, Marshall's obvious objective. The objective of Allenby is Aleppo, where there is said to be a single division of German troops in addition to the Turks, who have been forced north from Jerusalem. Allenby and Marshall are advancing along parallel lines with a desert space of about 400 miles between. The Turks and their ally still have possession of the caravan trail and the partly built and entirely surveyed Bagdad Railway, which intersect the prospective parallel paths of Allenby and Marshall, whose lines of communication already reach hundreds of miles to the rear. But while Allenby has a lateral sea communication with Syrian ports, no such advantage is enjoyed by Marshall, who must get all his supplies from the head of the Persian Gulf, 450 miles to the south. Whatever be the force at the disposition of the enemy, it is evident that he will continue to possess a predominating tactical and strategic advantage until he has been decisively defeated at both Aleppo and Mosul or a junction has been established between Allenby and Marshall, or both.

[Illustration: SCENE OF LATEST ITALIAN FIGHTING IN THE ALPS]

The former's line, which is a sixty-mile front, extending from Arsuf el Haram on the Mediterranean east to the Jordan, took Es-Salt with thirty-three German and 317 Turkish prisoners on May 1--twenty miles north of Jerusalem--which was first occupied by Allenby early in December.

Marshall's advance has been much more rapid. In the week of May 1 his cavalry, in pursuit of the fleeing Turks, advanced twenty miles and captured 1,000 prisoners. On May 7 he was 80 miles from Mosul; on May 10 he was within 60 miles. Allenby is 300 miles from Aleppo and 110 miles from Damascus.

ON THE ITALIAN FRONT

Without any large movements of troops taking place, several things have occurred since April 18 to invite attention to the Italian front, and much speculation by military men has been indulged in as to whether the resumption of the Teutonic offensive would be from the Piave or south from the Astico-Piave line lying across the Sette Comuni and the Brenta, or from the west of the Adige and the Lago di Garda, in an attempt to reach Brescia and the metallurgic centre of Italy.

And most of the things in question which have occurred have served to restore and augment the confidence of the Italians in their position. A new 2d Army has taken the place of the old, annihilated in the Capporetto campaign. All the lost guns have been replaced and new heavies added. Revolution is, at any moment, expected to break out in Austria-Hungary, while the Congress of Jugoslavs in Rome on April 9-11 has secured the adhesion to the Allies of the subjects of the Hapsburgs and enabled the Italian Government to make use of them as a fighting force. There are now believed to be no German divisions on the Italian front, where the entire enemy strength, not measurably increased since the snows have disappeared in the north, consists of 800 Austro-Hungarian battalions, or less than 1,000,000 men.

But what has promoted most satisfaction in the Italian Government and people was the decree issued by the Interallied Supreme Council of War at Abbéville on May 3, giving General Foch authority to include the Italian front under his supreme command, that front thereby becoming the right wing of the allied battle line in Europe--now "one army, one front, and one supreme command."

That is the way Bonaparte fought his victorious battles in the days of the First Republic, alternately on the Rhine and the Adige. Moreau could not win without Bonaparte, nor Bonaparte without Moreau, while Carnot, in the centre, was the vehicle of transit.

Before the snows made manoeuvres impossible the Italians had closed two gates which threatened the plains of Veneto from the north--one at the junction of the front with the Piave, one at the angle of the Frenzela Torrent and the Brenta River.

Gunfire had been steadily augmenting on the front when, on May 10, they closed another, and on May 15 still another. The first of these was the capture of Monte Corno, which commanded the part up the Vallarsa, the second was a partial recovery of Monte Asolone, between the Brenta and the Piave, sufficient to cover the path up the Val San Lorenzo. Both mountains are really plateaus of about two square miles area each, whose irregular summits the enemy had strongly fortified in order to clear the valleys below. In both places subsequent Austrian counterattacks were broken up.

Meanwhile, Italian aircraft dominate from above. On May 14 the enemy lost eleven airplanes with no losses to the Italians and the British, who were assisting them.

Premier Lloyd George on German Autocracy

Premier Lloyd George wrote the following preface for a volume containing extracts from speeches he delivered during the war:

I have never believed that the war would be a short war, or that in some mysterious way, by negotiation or compromise, we would free Europe from the malignant military autocracy which is endeavoring to trample it into submission and moral death. I have always believed that the machine which has established its despotic control over the minds and the bodies of its victims and then organized and driven them to slaughter in order to extend that control over the rest of the world, would only be destroyed if the free peoples proved themselves strong and steadfast enough to defeat its attempt in arms. The events of the last few weeks must have made it plain to every thinking man that there is no longer room for compromise between the ideals for which we and our enemies stood. Democracy and autocracy have come to death grips. One or the other will fasten its hold on mankind. It is a clear realization of this issue which will be our strength in the trials to come. I have no doubt that freedom will triumph. But whether it will triumph soon or late, after a final supreme effort in the next few months or a long-drawn agony, depends on the vigor and self-sacrifice with which the children of liberty, and especially those behind the lines, dedicate themselves to the struggle. There is no time for ease or delay or debate. The call is imperative. The choice is clear. It is for each free citizen to do his part.

The Greatest Battle of the War

Second Month of the Desperate Fighting in Flanders and Picardy

By Philip Gibbs

_Special Correspondent With the British Armies_ [Copyrighted in United States of America]

_The May issue of Current History Magazine contained Philip Gibbs's story of the great German offensive up to April 18, 1918. At that time the Germans were seeking to break the British lines in front of Ypres, as part of their drive for Amiens and the British Channel ports, generally known as the battle of Picardy. The pages here presented are a continuation of his eyewitness narrative of the most sanguinary battle in history._

April 18.--The arrival of French troops on our northern front is the most important act that has happened during the last three or four days, and it was with deep satisfaction that we met these troops on the roads and knew that at last our poor, tired men would get support and help against their overwhelming odds.

Beside the khaki army of the British has grown very quickly an army in blue, the cornflower blue of the French poilus. They are splendid men, hard and solid fellows, who have been war-worn and weather-worn during these three and a half years past, and look the great fighting men who have gone many times into battle and know all that war can teach them in endurance and cunning and quick attack.

As they came marching up the roads to the front they were like a streaming river of blue--blue helmets and coats and blue carts and blue lorries, all blending into one tone through these April mists as they went winding over the countryside and through French market towns, where their own people waved to them, and then through the villages on the edge of the Flanders battlefields, where they waited to go into action under shell-broken walls or under hedges above which British shellfire traveled, or in fields where they made their bivouacs, and fragrant steams arose to one's nostrils as cuistots lifted the lids of stewpans and hungry men gathered around after a long march.

The attack this morning from Robecq, below St. Venant, down to Givenchy, is a serious effort to gain La Bassée Canal and form a strong defensive flank for the enemy while he proceeds with his battles further north and also to get more elbow room from the salient in which he is narrowly wedged below Merville.

For this purpose he brought up several more divisions, including the 239th, which was in the Somme fighting of March, but not heavily engaged. This one attacked the British at Robecq and was repulsed with heavy losses. It was at a place called La Bacquerolles Farm, near Robecq, where after heavy shelling last night the enemy rushed one of the outposts at 10 o'clock. In order to facilitate the attack this morning of German divisions north and south at 4 o'clock the German guns began a heavy bombardment of the British lines as far down as Givenchy and maintained it for five hours, using large numbers of gas shells, on account of the east wind, which was in their favor.

His guns shelled the bridges across the canal in the hope of preventing the British supports going up. Then his troops came forward in waves on a wide front. They were in immense numbers as usual, with many mixed battalions. One of the British units today took prisoners from ten different regiments. There were some ten German divisions facing four British ones north of Béthune, and all along the line the troops were much outnumbered; nevertheless, the enemy was repulsed at all but a few points of attack and beaten back bloodily.

THE GHASTLY LOSSES

In this battle one regiment of the 42d German Division has lost over 50 per cent. of its strength, and other losses are on a similar scale. These ghastly casualties have been piling up along this line between Merville and Béthune since the 13th of this month, when the Germans made a series of small attacks as a prelude to today's battle, owing, it seems, to battalion officers taking the initiative without orders from the High Command, in order to push forward and break the British lines if they could find weakness there.

On the 13th and 14th some of the South Country troops were attacked by strong forces repeatedly, and on the second day for five hours at a stretch the enemy endeavored to come across from houses and inclosures west of Merville toward St. Venant. For those five hours the South Country lads fired with rifles, Lewis guns, and machine guns into solid bodies of Germans, and their field guns tore gaps in the enemy's formations and broke up their assemblies before the attacks could proceed. One advance in five waves was mown down before it could make any progress, and others were dealt with in the same way.

_Mr. Gibbs describes the German repulse between Robecq and Givenchy as a "black day for the enemy," and continues:_

April 19.--At the end of the day all the enemy's efforts ended in bloody failure, in spite of the daring and courage of his troops, who sacrificed themselves under the British fire, but were only able to gain a few bits of trench work and one or two outposts below the fortified works at Givenchy, which are quite useless to them for immediate or future use.

It was a big attack, for which they had prepared in a formidable way. After the shock of their repulse by the Lancashire men of the 55th Division they increased their strength of heavy artillery by three times bringing up large numbers of howitzers, including eleven-inch monsters. They were massed in divisions in front of us and determined to smash through in the wake of a tremendous bombardment.

BRITISH UNDER FIRE

For five hours, as I said, this storm went on with high explosives and gas, and the devoted British had to suffer this infernal thing, the worst ordeal human beings may be called upon to bear, this standing to while all the earth upheaved and the air was thick with shell splinters.

But when the bombardment had passed and the German infantry came forward the British received them with blasts of machine-gun fire, incessant volleys of rifle fire, and a trench mortar bombardment that burst with the deadliest effect among the attacking troops.

This trench mortar barrage of the British was one of the most awful means of slaughter yesterday, especially when the enemy tried to cross La Bassée Canal further north, and in that sector the infantry and gunner officers say more Germans were killed yesterday along the canal bank than on any other day since the fighting in this neighborhood. One battery of trench mortars did most deadly execution until their pits were surrounded, and only two of their crews were able to escape.

The machine gunners fought out in the open after some of their positions had been wiped out by gunfire, caught the enemy waves at fifty yards' range, and mowed them down; but the enemy was not checked for a long time, despite his losses, and when one body fell another came up to fill its place and press on into any gap that had been made by their artillery or their own machine-gun sections.

There was one such momentary gap between a body of the Black Watch, who had been weakened by shellfire, and some of their comrades further north, and into this the enemy tried to force a way. Other Scottish troops were in reserve, and when it became clear that a portion of the line was endangered by this turning movement they came forward with grim intent, and by a fierce counterattack swept through the gap and flung back the enemy, so that the position was restored.

Further north some Gloucesters were fighting the enemy both ways, as once before in history, when they fought back to back, thereby winning the honor of wearing their cap badge back and front, which they do to this day. The Germans had worked behind them as well as in front of them, and they were in a tight corner, but did not yield, and finally, after hard fighting, cleared the ground about them.

Meanwhile further south some Lancashire troops on the canal lost some parts of their front line under an intense bombardment, but still fought on in the open, repulsing every effort to drive them back and smashing the enemy out of their positions, so that only remnants of the German outposts clung on until late last night, up to which time there was savage strife on both sides.

FIGHTING FOR THE CANAL

Extraordinary scenes took place on the canal bank when the enemy tried to cross. In the twilight of early dawn a party came out of a wood and tried to get across the water, but was seen by the British machine gunners and shot down.

Then another body of men advanced and carried with them a floating bridge, but when those who were not hit reached the water's edge they found the bridge as fixed did not reach to the other side. Some of them walked on it, expecting perhaps to jump the gap, but were shot off, and other men on the bank also were caught under British fire.

A Corporal went down to the canal edge and flung hand grenades at the Germans still struggling to fix the bridge, and then a Lieutenant and a few men rushed down and pulled the bridge on to their side of the bank.

Later this young officer saw one of the British pontoons drifting down and swam to it and made it fast beyond the enemy's reach, but in a position so that some of his men ran across and caught the enemy under their fire on his side of the canal.

At 7 o'clock yesterday morning, while a handkerchief was hoisted by the enemy, three hundred of them made signs of surrender. Some of them changed their minds at the last moment and ran away, but 150 gave themselves up, and some of them swam the canal in order to reach our side for this purpose. They were shivering in their wet clothes and in the northeast wind, which lashed over the battle lines yesterday, and they were very miserable men.

THE BELGIAN VICTORY

_Mr. Gibbs declares that had the Germans been able to pass Givenchy or cross the canal north of Béthune on the 18th and 19th the result would have proved disastrous. He gives credit for the repulse to the British and French combined lines. He thus describes the achievement of the Belgians on April 17_:

The Germans on the 17th pressed the attack in force against the Belgians. Besides three regiments of the 1st Landwehr Division usually holding this sector, between the Ypres-Staden railway and Kippe, they brought up from Dixmude--poor Dixmude, into whose flaming ruins I went when it was first bombarded in October, 1914--two regiments of the 6th Bavarian Division, and from the coast the 5th Matrosen Regiment of the 2d Naval Division, with a regiment of the 58th Saxons. It was a heavy force, and they hoped to surprise and annihilate the Belgian resistance by their weight and quickness of attack.

The Belgians were waiting for them, standing, too, in those swampy fields which they have held against the enemy for three and a half years, always shelled, always paying daily a toll of life and limb, not getting much glory or recognition because of the great battles elsewhere, but patient and enduring as when I knew them on the Yser in the first dreadful Winter of the war, and their little regular army fought to a finish.

Even before the battle the German marines, Saxon troops, and Landwehr suffered misery and lost many men. They lay out in the flat, wet fields two nights previously, and were very cold, and scared by the Belgian gunfire which burst among them. They had no great artillery behind them, and the Saxons and German sailors now prisoners of the Belgians curse bitterly because they were expected to get through easily in spite of this.

Germans Cut Off