Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 203, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1918 — THURSDAY WAR SUMMARY. [ARTICLE]

THURSDAY WAR SUMMARY.

The Germans are now giving ground over 150-mile battle front from Ypres to Rheims. Seemingly the question whether the Germans will be able to hold even relatively their present line from Flandets to Champagne is being answered. And the answer apparently is in the negative The strategy on General Foch wh ch.imposed upon the Germans the necessity of falling back in Flan lere, Artois and Picardy, now likewise is compelling the enemy to withdraw from the Vesle river between Soissons and Rheims, northward toward the Aisne in orde rto avert disaster. Outflanked on all defensive works along the wester npart of the battle line and in great danger of a turning movement eastward from the region of Noyon and Soissons, the German high command at last has been forced to begin the retrograde movement in the Soissons-Rheims sector which the military experts long had predicted would be necessitated through the successes of the British, French and America narmies. The climax to the German maneuvers along the Vesle culminated when the French virtually swept away the last remaining portion of the old salient in the region of Noyon and the French and Americans north of Soissons and along the Vesle reached positions dominating the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames and crossed to the north side of the Vesle on a front of nearly twenty miles.All behind the front toward the Aisne, huge fires are to be seen where the enemy is making his way as fast as/ he can northward, in all probability harassed by outposts of French and America ntroops and by artillery fire and the machine guns and bombs of the allied aviators. While the debacle in the south seems complete, in the north the Germans also are facing a crisis. Everywhere from Peronne to Ypres, Field Marshal Haig’s men are keeping hard after the enemy, whose line daily is being bent back further eastward giving the British better points of vantage from which to work in their task of regaining as their first objectives, St. Quentin, Cambrai, Lille and Armentiers. From Ypres to Lens additional towns have been -recaptured and the old salient more nearly reclaimed. Lens, the famous coal city,

is said to have been entirely evacuated by the Germans, and the British are only awaiting the dissipation of the noxious gases and the rendering of the city safe from the possibility of the detonation of mines in the subterranean coal chambers to enter it. From southward to Peronne, English, Scotch, Welsh, Canadian and Australian troops everywhere are harrassing the enemy, meeting his violent machine gun fire with such irresistible pressure that the enemy has been virtually non-plussed and has retired at some points almost precipitately. Eastward of the old Drocourt-Que-ant line the enemy has been- ptished across to the east bank of the canal Du Nord, where at last accounts he was endeavoring to prevent by the use of innumerable machine guns a •British advance over the canal. To the north of Peronne, over an eight - mile front between Moisalins and Demicourt the British at several points have beaten their way across the canal and Wednesday night were pressing the enemy well to the eastward.