GERMANS’ NEW WEAPON

OUR TANK CORPS CONFIDENT

FROM PHILIP GIBBS. WAR CORRESPONDENTS’ HEADQUARTERS (FRANCE), WEDNESDAY. Although to-day is dull, the last two days have been wonderfully bright for the time of year, with a blue sky over the frosted fields, and our airmen have made the most of visibility by getting out and about across the enemy’s lines, noting the changes there and watching for any movement on his rails and roads. It is not often in this war nor in many places that one can see the enemy himself above ground except in actual battle, for, as a rule, if a man is seen, he dies, but two days ago I had the chance to see many German soldiers behind their lines no bigger than ants to the naked eye, but through one’s glasses quite clear and distinct as human creatures busy with some purpose of their own. They came winding down a track 2,000 yards away, not knowing, I guess, that they could be seen from the hummock of earth where I had crawled into a hole to look through a squint box. First came a column of lorries and then a body of marching men and then a party of cyclists. These men moved very slowly like a creeping shadow. It gave me a queer emotion to see them there in their own lines, these fieldgrey men who are hidden as a rule until our own men go forward in attack to rout them out of their holes and ditches after enormous bombardments. Behind them, much farther away, were the guns which have no human nature, but in this war seem to the infantry like the powers that belong to the spirit of evil, blind in their destruction, careless in their choice of victims, ruthless as the old devil gods of the world’s first darkness. It was a quiet day on this part of the line, as on most others just now in this breathing-space before great battles, but the German guns were sending over some ranging shots and doing a little target practice against some of our positions. As I walked towards the knoll from which I could see the hill track, they sent over some “woolly bears,” a mixture of high explosive and shrapnel, which burst high up in the blue as though a bottle of ink had been spilt on a silken cloth. They spread out like that in a widening smudge, and were as black as that, but burst so high that they did no kind of damage. Our men are not deceived, however quiet the line, and they are watching every tiny sign in the enemy’s lines, the slightest change in the shape of a trench or a mound of earth, the daily habits of the enemy’s shellfire, any unaccustomed movement which may be detected by sound or sight with vigilant senses. “What are the enemy’s chances of attack?” I asked. It was a private soldier, a signaller, who answered in one grim sentence. “The chance of getting hell,” he said. I think that is the belief of most of our men. And I believe also that, if the enemy persists in his preparations for the offensive against us, and then drives his men forward, they will pay a hellish price for any ground they get. For the first time it seems they will bring up tanks against us to break through our wire. They have copied our tanks and our method of using them against wired defences. But our tank pilots and their commanders smile at this menace, while accepting the compliment of imitation. “We had to learn by bitter experience,” some of them said to me yesterday, “and the Germans have got to buy their knowledge in the same school. We are many battles ahead of them, and we shall make rings round them with any luck.” It is not boastfulness but knowledge that makes them confident. Yesterday I rode across the fields in a tank as the sun was setting, and a big family of tanks had come home to tea after their day’s work, and were squatting round the camp, with a golden haze about them. They looked inert and sluggish things, but if the enemy’s tanks come out against them there will be some deadly work. The German soldiers must realise the power that lies behind our lines, a power of which these engines are but a small unit, and I believe that thousands of men like those I saw winding down the hill track are filled with horror at the thought of the slaughter that awaits them if they are hurled against our strength. But the days are passing, and their time is drawing near. MR HENRY WOOD, THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE UNITED PRESS OF AMERICA, WITH THE FRENCH ARMIES, WRITES:

While loudly proclaiming to the entire world a gigantic offensive on the Western front, the German armies have been working there day and night for months past, building up the greatest system for defensive warfare the world has ever seen. Germany’s offensive threats are belied in the same breath that utters them by her preparations for defence. Germany knows that in the end she must sustain on the French front the shock of the combined French, English, and American armies. She knows perfectly well that in spite of whatever initial success she may gain by a big French front offensive, yet in the end she is going to be obliged to defend inch by inch every step of the territory between the Western front and the Rhine. Not only does she know this, but with all the thoroughness of German psychology and method she has built up a system of defence that bespeaks a pretty fair idea of the terrible onslaught she is going to he called up in the end to meet. The entire Western front, extending for miles and miles to the rear – in fact, practically back to the Rhine – has now been converted into one vast field of a defensive system that bears little, if any, resemblance to Germany’s original defensive fortifications on the Western front.

THE COMING “OFFENSIVE” ENEMY’S VAST BATTLE ZONES