Part 5

Second--The object of this propaganda is to disorganize the enemy army and to obtain information regarding it. The propaganda must be carried out in the following manner: (a) By throwing into the enemy's trenches newspapers and proclamations destined for the more intelligent elements; (b) by persuading the troops by oral propaganda. For that it will be necessary to utilize officers, under-officers, and soldiers who appear to be most adapted. The posts for making contacts with the enemy must be placed under the direction of the company commander, who must be in the first-line positions. These officers must ascertain the points where it will be the easiest to throw into the enemy trenches newspapers, proclamations, &c. At these points you must seek to gain contact with the enemy by means of our interpreters, and if the enemy consents then fix an hour for future conversations. You must then advise immediately by telephone the chief of the Information Bureau of the division of every contact with the enemy.

Only the chief of the Information Bureau will have the right to direct the conversations according to the instructions he has received. It is rigorously prohibited for any of our soldiers to enter into relation with the enemy except those who have received the mission to do so, for fear that the enemy may seek to profit by their ingenuousness. All letters and printed matter which the enemy may have on his person must be taken from him, and transmitted to the chief of the Information Bureau. Company commanders, above all, must seek to establish the points where the enemy's soldiers have received newspapers, the points where the newspapers were taken openly, and without precaution. There are posts of observation for the artillery, as it may happen that French officers or foreign army instructors are in these posts.

In these enterprises for obtaining contact with the enemy, success depends on the ability with which you operate. Good results can be obtained by calling in a friendly tone and indicating sentiments of comradeship or by reiterated promises not to fire and offers of tobacco. The tobacco for this purpose will be furnished by the company commanders.

Every evening, at 8 o'clock, the company commander must transmit directly to the information officer a report of the propaganda accomplished during the day. This report must contain the following indications: (a) Has the enemy picked up our newspapers and proclamations? (b) Have you endeavored to enter into relations with the enemy? (c) With whom have you had contact--officers, under-officers, soldiers? (d) Where and when were our newspapers and proclamations thrown into the enemy's trenches? (e) All other information of the enemy's conduct. At the same time, our interpreters will send to the chief of the Information Bureau a detailed report on all conversations they have had with the enemy. The enemy's positions where propaganda is under way must not be shelled by our artillery; they must indicate to the batteries the positions of these points to be spared. The enemy is perfidious and without honor, and it is necessary as a consequence to be careful that they neither take our propagandists prisoners nor kill them. Those of our soldiers who leave our lines for the purpose of carrying newspapers and pamphlets to the enemy must be advised. To protect them it will be necessary to constitute with care special detachments, who will mount guard in the trenches, and who will fire only on the order of the company commander who is directing relations with the enemy.--Signed, on behalf of the temporary commander of the division, the Major General commanding the 62d Brigade.

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

Third Month of Desperate Effort to Break the French and British Lines in France

By GEORGE H. PERRIS

_Special Correspondent with the French Armies_

[Copyrighted in the United States of America]

_The May and June issue of Current History Magazine contained detailed descriptions of the first and second months of the great German offensive in France, which began with a terrific blow in Picardy, apparently with the object of driving a wedge between the French and British, and then shifted to a deadly attack on the British in Flanders, aiming to break through to the Channel ports. These phases of the great battle were described by Philip Gibbs. The new phases, sometimes called the third and fourth offensives, began May 27 and June 9, respectively, and are known as the battle for Paris and the battle of the Oise. The blow of May 27 was delivered between Rheims and Montdidier, with the evident purpose of breaking the French lines and clearing the way for a drive to Paris. The descriptions which follow are written by George H. Perris, a special correspondent with the French armies._

[This dispatch was written before the drive toward Paris was was launched, and indicates that Mr. Perris had a clear and correct idea of the German plan]

May 26, 1918.--The delay of the third act of the German offensive was abnormal. The first was perhaps, in design and execution, the most powerful operation in the history of warfare. The second, the attack in Flanders in the middle week of April, almost certainly began as a diversion intended to draw the British reserves from the Amiens front and to fill the interval needed for the reorganization of forces.

Up to the middle of April the German armies not occupied in fighting could do little but commence the strengthening of their new fronts, as lines of defense and departure. Their staffs, high and low, must, however, have been already engaged upon plans for the next push. Six or seven weeks then have passed in constituting a new mass of attack, with its armament and transport, in constructing roads and railways, dumps and supply centres, in bringing forward batteries, airdromes, hospitals, and so on.

True, this is not as long as the time of preparation for the first phase of the battle, which may be broadly counted as from New Year's to March 21. But there should be a vast difference between the mounting of a wholly fresh offensive and its pursuit into the later stages. A relentless continuity of pressure is evidently of very great importance after the advantage of the initial surprise. It is the thing which a commander will most aim at.

If the Germans did not keep going on the main line of their attack north and south of the Somme after the middle of April, it was because they could not do so; and the partial success of their ex-temporized campaign in Flanders should not disguise from us this significant fact.

It would be useless at this period of the war, when all Germany demands a decision and nothing less, if the new offensive did not lead to the capture at least of some place of symbolic importance, such as Rheims, Verdun, or Nancy. But that would require a force so large as to cripple the major effort in the northwest. All the military virtue of the German strategy is against such a dispersal of effort.

CHEMIN DES DAMES LOST

_May 28_--_The opening of the attack and the first day's results are thus described by Mr. Perris:_

Hindenburg has scored another spectacular success. At dawn yesterday, after three hours' bombardment, composed largely of gas shells, a new German mass attack was thrown upon a twenty-five-mile front, extending from the Ailette near Vauxaillon to the Aisne-Marne Canal near Brimont.

It was four or five times as numerous as the defenders, and in other regards correspondingly stronger. In these circumstances, an attempt to retain the line of the Chemin des Dames would have meant that the French troops would have been massacred before reserves could reach them, and there was nothing for it but to fall back steadily and in good order, using successive lines of trenches and deep folds of ground to punish the enemy for every forward step he made.

As I anticipated in my last message, the method of the first phase of the German offensive was again employed with some improvements. This method rests upon two main elements--the prodigal expenditure of the large reserves obtained by the collapse of Russia and Rumania, and the skillful use of the great advantage of what are called interior lines of communication to throw a mass attack suddenly upon the chosen sector, and so to gain the further advantage of surprise.

The front now chosen was held till a day or two ago by parts of two armies belonging to the group of which the Prussian Crown Prince is the titular chief. General von Boehm's army, extending from the Oise at Noyon to east of Craonne, numbered nine divisions. In the sector of General Fritz von Below, extending across the Rheims front to Suippe, near Auberive, there were eight divisions. The whole twenty-five miles attacked yesterday had therefore been held till the eve of battle by only seven or eight divisions. The exact number of divisions engaged yesterday is not yet known, but it seems to have been about twenty-five, or over a quarter of a million combatants.

There is here a curious difference and likeness as compared with the first phase of the offensive on March 21. To the seventeen divisions already holding the sector of attack there were added another seventeen. This time the same number has been added where there were only eight. Two months ago the front of attack was about forty miles long. This time a rather denser force was employed, perhaps because the Aisne height constituted a formidable position, and it was intended to carry it at a single rush.

While the front keeps its present shape the German staff has necessarily a great advantage over that of the Allies in that it is acting from the centre of a crescent, and they are around and outside of it. If enough time can be given to preparations--and as my last message showed the pause had been abnormal--they must gain a certain benefit of surprise, and with this benefit such a mass of shock must win a certain depth of ground.

Our only notions of the Chemin des Dames were obtained in a time very different from the present emergency, the time of fixed fronts and of methods defensive and offensive that are already old-fashioned to those of us who have watched these blood-soaked hills and gullies for nearly four years through heartrending vicissitudes, who remember Haig's and Smith-Dorrien's first attempts to scale what seemed an impregnable fortress, who saw the French bluecoats rush forward last Summer till at length they stood firm on the cliffs of Craonne and Heurtebise, who explored the Dragon's Cave at Malmaison Fort and the vast Montparnasse quarry when they still stank from rotting flesh.

WITHDRAWAL NECESSARY

It is not a light thing that ground so full of tragic memories should be lost. It seems only the other day that I was adventuring along the Ailette by Anizyle-Château, sleeping in a dugout in Pinon Forest, and examining the outposts that then held the northern edge of the hills.

War pays little regard to sentiment, and it is not any spectacular stroke or sentimental score that will restore the falling fortunes of the Hohenzollerns.

SHADED PORTIONS SHOW TOTAL GAINS OF THE GREAT GERMAN OFFENSIVE. THE NUMERALS INDICATE THE SEQUENCE OF THE FOUR BATTLES OR PHASES. THE DRIVE ON THE SOMME WAS LAUNCHED MARCH 21, THAT IN FLANDERS APRIL 9, THE CHAMPAGNE DRIVE MAY 27, AND THE OFFENSIVE ON THE OISE JUNE 9

No doubt the French command found it grievous yesterday to order a retreat to the Aisne. Feebler men might have temporized and lost in doing so many good lives which are, after all, more sacred than the most sacred earth.

The attack could not be anticipated. It was far beyond the powers of the small defending forces to ward it off. With sound tactical sense the heaviest assault was directed toward the eastern end of the Aisne Hills at Craonne as soon as it became evident that this corner could not be held, and that from here the whole line was in danger of being turned.

The German forces included some of the specially trained units that fought in von Hutier's army in the March attack--two divisions of the Prussian Guard and other crack formations. It was only at heavy cost that they got forward so quickly. The French retired from position to position without confusion, firing continuously. The fact that their losses are small in comparison with those of the enemy is an essential point.

THE SECOND DAY

May 29--There has been very severe fighting today, with results necessarily favorable on the whole to the enemy because the allied reserves are only just beginning to reach the front. A strong thrust toward Soissons and the road and railway from Soissons to Coucy-le-Château at the moment when the head of the columns of the offensive were striking south of the Vesle from Braisne, Bazoches, and Fismes suggests that the armies engaged have already been reinforced. [See maps in preceding pages.]

So far an almost insolent boldness has won through, but the French resistance is steadily increasing, and more prudence will soon be necessary. For instance, the River Aisne is a most awkward obstacle to have on your line of communications. The enemy was able to prevent the Allies from destroying all the bridges during the withdrawal, but it is not too late, and the bombarding squadrons of the Allies will doubtless find telling work to do in the early future.

Last evening when the enemy had got across the Aisne near Pontavert part of the British brigade was falling back. A group of French territorials, firing continuously upon the swarming graycoats, were taking refuge in Germicourt Wood and being gradually surrounded. Some Englishmen and older Frenchmen decided to make their last stand, to die there together or to beat the enemy off. A handful of territorials got away to tell the tale. The Englishmen fell to a man.

The French officer who told me of this episode of the battle spoke also of the gallant work of a British cyclist battalion fighting with the French before Fismes, and of the fate of some British officers who lost their lives in blowing up Aisne bridges near Craonne. There was no time to take the usual precautions, but the thing had to be done, and they did it. My informant showed that he felt all the nobility and pathos of these sacrifices, and he wished, as much as I, that the folk at home should hear of them.

The first reports seemed to indicate that the success of the German assault on the British sector led the defenders by a threat of envelopment to retreat from the Aisne heights. This was not so. The Germans first crossed the river further west, and the British left was therefore obliged to fall back.

TERRIBLE BOMBARDMENT

It was the left, and particularly the 50th Division, that had to bear the heaviest of the shock. The bombardment, which lasted three hours, was of indescribable intensity, the chill night air being soon saturated with poison gas, and when at dawn the German infantry, hideous in their masks, broke like a tidal wave upon the thin British line it was overwhelmed. The 50th is a territorial division.

A counterattack toward Craonne failed under a flank fire from tanks and machine guns, and step by step the heroic line was withdrawn through wooded and marshy ground to the Aisne.

The French on the left were resisting like masses with the same bravery; contact was lost with them for a short time, as also with the British 25th and 8th Divisions further east, and as the men fell back a front could be preserved only by a converging retreat toward the south by night. When the hills north of Vosle were reached the 50th Division had lost a number of its officers and other ranks.

The British centre, consisting of part of the 25th and 8th Divisions, was more fortunate. The 25th had been in reserve, and its support in the low and difficult ground at the east end of the Aisne Valley was most important. It and the 8th maintained their second positions till late in the afternoon.

On the right the 21st Division, together with the neighboring French division, had to defend the line of the canal from Berry-au-Bac to Bermericourt against the onset of four German divisions, aided by the strongest fleet of tanks the enemy has yet put into the field. This northwestern edge of the great plain of Champagne is very favorable ground for the use of cars of assault, and it was here that the French made their first experiments with indifferent results that have since been greatly bettered.

These two British and French divisions had the advantage of a line of heights with batteries and perfect observation behind them. They held out obstinately till the retreat of the left made it necessary to move southward.

DESTRUCTION OF SOISSONS

May 30.--During last night the enemy took Fère-en-Tardenois and drove the allied rearguards back to Vesilly, whence the line ran this morning northeast to the outskirts of Rheims. As the Marne is thus brought into the picture, it is pertinent to point out that in the famous battle of September, 1914, the Germans reached to more than thirty miles south of the river in this region.

This is at present their strongest push. The road from Soissons to Compiègne is closed to them, but further south they have got to the road Soissons-Hartennes.

Lest it be thought that the allied reserves are slow in coming into play, I may point out that the front of the offensive has been nearly doubled in length in the last three days. At the outset it was about thirty-five miles. It is now sixty. Merely to make good losses and to provide a screen of troops along this greater extent, with everything in movement, has required effort.

At midnight on May 26 the battlefront was ten miles away from Soissons. The few civilian inhabitants and the many hospital patients had settled down to sleep, the usual hour for airplane raids having passed.

An hour later they and the few army bureaus in the neighborhood were aroused by a sudden outbreak of bombardment, such as they had never heard before, and soon afterward shells began to crash upon the town.

With the wounds of four years of war upon it, the northern quarter completely destroyed and the cathedral grievously damaged, Soissons still possessed something of its old-time grace and air of substantial well being. It would be an exaggeration to compare it with Richmond, for the Aisne is not the Thames and the French woods are not English parks; but after the victory of Malmaison had put the boche back beyond the Ailette we hoped to see the great mansions repaired and the happy life of the shopping quarters gradually revived. Today the Germans are camped in the smoking ruins of Soissons.

INCENDIARY SHELLS

On May 27 at least 1,200 explosive and incendiary shells were fired into the place. The hospitals, including a special hospital for poison gas cases, were hurriedly evacuated, American ambulance cars doing good service in carrying away the wounded.

On Tuesday, the 28th, the bombardment continued, its purpose being, no doubt, to put out of service the most important bridgehead of the Aisne Valley and one of the most important lines of communication between the regions to the south and north, the town being a railway centre of some local consequence. That afternoon a good many houses were in flames, and during the night a large part of the town was involved in fire.

The enemy had now shouldered his way on the north of the Aisne westward from Pinon, Laffaux, and Vregny, and had reached the highroad running from Coucy-le-Château to Soissons. Yesterday he pressed still further west, and the road being thus covered, as well as the roads from Laffaux and Vailly, made a powerful direct attack upon the town.

It looked at first like being an easy success. The French, wearied with thirty hours of unceasing combat and impossibly outnumbered, fell back, and the Germans reached the centre of the town. In the narrow streets, however, the effect of superior numbers largely disappeared. The French fought fiercely from corner to corner, and at last, gathering themselves together, swept the enemy back to the northern and eastern suburbs. In the afternoon new German contingents were brought up and in a few hours gained complete possession of the place.

Soissons was, of course, in no sense fortified, and, the northern and eastern roads having been lost, it had no military value. The highway down the valley to Compiègne is bordered by the old French trench and wire systems and dominated by hills on either side of the river. The range on the south bank is covered for miles by the great forests of Villers-Cotterets and Compiègne.

[Another correspondent stated that 1,200 shells fell in Soissons on May 27. The Bishop of Soissons stated in Paris on June 7 that 100 churches had been razed to the ground by the Germans, and that at least 100 others had been pillaged and partially demolished. The famous cathedral in Soissons suffered severely. The Bishop added that the Germans knew neither faith nor law. They knew nothing but war and pillage. The Germans, he said, were stripping and carrying everything away methodically.

The Bishop also asserted that women, children, and old men had been brutally murdered by German aviators, who flew over and fired with their machine guns upon long lines of refugees on country roads.]

VON HUTIER'S METHOD

Something like forty divisions, most of them the best troops available, have now been thrown across the Aisne--400,000 men who might possibly have reached some vital part of the allied defenses in the north.

The von Hutier method is a prodigious invention, but it is as costly in fire and blood as it is impressive for force and speed. In the last week of March it was, in a purely military sense, properly employed, even though it failed, because the objective could be said to be of a vital or decisive character.

What vital objective is there in the present operation? The central part of the German line has been pressed a little further in the last twenty-four hours in the obscure region of scattered hamlets, large farms, and deep tortuous valleys, midway between the Aisne and the Marne. It now comes nearly down to the small market towns of Fère-en-Tardenois and Ville-en-Tardenois, thence running east-northeast to the Vesle just outside of Rheims.

The advance is meeting ever increasing resistance, and by the time the first week is out it will perhaps be definitely arrested. But suppose that it goes much further and reaches the Marne Valley, or even still further to the Montmirail Valley. Two useful highroads, with some country towns, would be lost to the Allies in these altogether unlikely contingencies, but nothing vital would be lost. The German Army would be no nearer than it now is to winning the war.

A TRAIN UNDER FIRE

In an evacuation station, where a number of British were waiting for the hospital train, the ragged fellows told me of adventures that only their scarlet, honest faces made credible. There was a young Lieutenant who was on a train that was sent up north yesterday toward Fismes. The exact whereabouts of the enemy was unknown. They ran right into the German lines.