Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1918 — WAR SUMMARY. [ARTICLE]

WAR SUMMARY.

A gash more than ten miles deep already has been cut into the German Picardy front east of Amiens by the Anglo-French offensive begun at dawn yesterday on a front of twenty miles between Braches, on the Avre, and Morlancourt, three and a half miles southwest of Albert. The drive is still in full swing. Early yesterday evening Bonar Law was able to announce in the Commons that upward of 100 7,000 prisoners had been taken.riela Marshal Haig, who has chief command of the offensive, gave no estimates, beyond saying that several thousand prisoners” and many guns” had been taken. . , Haig’s bulletin shows the British center to have penetrated as far as Framei-ville, which libs nearly eleven miles east of Villers-Breton-neux. When the drive began the British line passed less than a m>*« east of the two latter towns, which is nine and a half miles east of Ameins. _ ... , The arrowhead of the British wedge points straight at St. Quentin from which region the Germans lunged forward on their terrific drive on March 21. - Meanwhile the French, on the British left, made important headway along and between the Luce and Avre rivers, crossing the latter, lheir advance threatens to outflank Montdidier, the pivot both of the German Amiens and the German Compiegne fronts. _ .. • A large-scale German retirement between Noyon and Montdidier appears inevitable and simultaneously Ludendorff must draw back his front astride the Oise. The first day of the new allied drive insures, therefore, the chief object for which it has been launched—the elimination of what remains of the German “Paris front. With the collapse of the southern portion of that front, between the Aisne and the Marne, the whole German Picardy wedge became a menace to the Germans rather than to Paris and the allies. Realising this, Ludendorff had begun a couple of days

I ago, under cover of feint attacks to- | ward Villers-Bretonneux, to make ' preparations for getting out of the ' deep Picardy cup, voluntarily, and ' at a minimum cost. | But before even his preliminary plans were laid Foch anticipated him and decided to strike. With irresistible speed and aided by a dense fog, the British Fourth army surged forward, after only three minutes of preliminary bombardment, and crushed everything before them, plunging ahead two, four, six, ten miles in the center. On their right, around Moreuil, the Germans were better prepared, the French attack having been preceded by a forty-minute bombardment. But there, too, the dash of the attacker* was too much for the Teutons, and Moreuil and Morisel fell in the first few hours of the offensive. More than a dozen German villages were'taken by the French and British. Capture of Morlancourt, reported unofficially late yesterday afternoon, ha* not yet been confirmed, but in the British center Marcelcave, Lamotte-en-Santerre, Harbonnierers, Bayonvillers, Cayeux and Caix fell to the atackers in swift succession.