Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1918 — WAR SUMMARY. [ARTICLE]

WAR SUMMARY.

Still the allies continue to press back the hordes of the German Crown Prince in the SoisspnRheims salient. And again American troops have come out of a hard fight .with new glory! The outstanding feature of the past twenty-four hours’ fighting is the smashing defeat inflicted on the fourth division of the Prussian Guard—Germany’s storm troops de luxe —which jammed head-on against the American advance ht Sergy and was smashed to pieces. The little town changed hands nearly a dozen times before the Yankees finally established undisputed possession of it and then advanced 1,500 meters over the top of a ridge with what was left of the crack Prussian division advancing before them in retreat. The German attempt to drive the Yankees back across .the Ourcq ended in a disastrous failure. Meanwhile the Franco-Americans had plunged forward from. Fere-en-Tardenois and pushed their advance within eight miles of .Fresnes, latest dispatches say, while reinforced by Scottish troops, the armies on the west side of the salient, south, of Scissons, also made good progress. An attempted diversion east of Rheims netted the Germans nothing but another failure.

Opinion ~in the allied capital* today is that the Germans will be lucky if they stop their retreat at the Vesle. The belief is growing that the withdrawal will go as far back as the Aisne line. Meanwhile, on every hand is being heard praise of the masterly tactics of Gen. Foch in refusing to allow his troops to plunge ahead after they had forced the Ourcq line. Had they done so, they would have run directly into the German counter attack which the Americans on Monday smashed. It was in refrainjng frpm following up the enemy with undiminished speed at the front where the enemy was weakest and retreating fastest — between Fere-en-Tardenois and Ville-en-Tardenois——that Foch demonstrated that wise restraint that is the prequisite of true generalship. For the Germans an almost ideal situation would have been created by a headlong Franco-American advance between those two rail keys. The pocket would have been swiftly emptied by Germans and filled by French and Americans; the German death trap would have become an allied death trap, for a* long as the German sides field Ludendorff could have set into motion, at the proper moment, one of the most effective pincer movements ever carried out. If the German command . figured upon such a contingency, if misguided perhaps, by the magnificent dash and spirit of the young “inexperienced” Americans it counted upon the intoxication of victory to lure the Yankee* and Foilus Into the heart es the funnel below the Vesle, Foch was prompt to add another disappointment to the long series of disillusionments the Kaiser’s staff has suffered since July 15.