GERMANS REALISE DEFEAT

FROM PHILIP GIBBS. WAR CORRESPONDENTS’ HEADQUARTERS, FRANCE. WEDNESDAY.

Heavy outpost fighting is still in progress east and north of Péronne, where the enemy is strengthening his rearguards and resisting the advance of our troops more doggedly. He has a considerable amount of artillery in position again, with which he is shelling our advanced lines and villages, like Fins and Equancourt, and places south of Epéhy, where there was similar fighting last spring, when he retreated for the first time over this ground. Our brave outposts are not having an easy time round about Gouzeaucourt, on Chapel Hill, where the enemy has made strong counterattacks, and their progress has been checked by severe machinegun fire from the German positions. Nevertheless, English, Welsh, New Zealand, and Australian troops have advanced their lines again during the past forty-eight hours, and have taken a good many prisoners after sharp encounters, the enemy falling back when our pressure warns the German rearguards that they must escape by further withdrawal or suffer heavy losses.

It seems probable that the main Hindenburg Line east of all this rearguard activity is now held in strength by divisions that have been partly rested and reorganised, the best troops, anyhow, that the German Command can now bring into line, while the divisions broken in recent battles are falling back through them. So for the time being the enemy gains a little respite, and after the wild chaos of recent days when, in spite of great skill in leadership, his forces became hopelessly confused, he may hope to order his defensive positions according to the old traditions of stationary warfare and repair the damage inflicted on the morale of his men by assuring them that the gravest dangers are past. It will not be easy to do that, for the German soldiers are beginning to think more acutely for themselves. There comes a point when masses of men who have been falsely led to believe in victory suddenly awaken to the awful truth that all their labours and sufferings, all their sacrifice of blood, and all their hopes have been in vain, and that their remaining strength is of no avail against the powers against them. That point has been reached by large numbers of German soldiers after the frightful disillusionment of their excited hope that the grand offensive of March would break their enemy’s will power and war machine.