trenches on the ridge, but the British, in & counter-attack, threw the enemy out and restored the position. On the center and northern ends of the attacking line, British artillery and rifle fire repulsed the Germans."

17 Principal Sources: The "Military Expert" of the New York Times, Associated Press and United Press correspondents; The Sun, The Tribune, New York; Canadian Press reports, The World (New York).

V

RETROSPECT AND OUTLOOK AT THE YEAR'S. END -CLEMENCEAU MADE PREMIER OF FRANCE

W

WITHOUT further notable activity, the year 1917 came to an end, so that the promised great German offensive, if it made its appearance, would have to do so in the new year.18 A postponement, if not the final banishment, of certain German and certain Allied hopes had marked the old year. With the Russian collapse an end came to an expected Allied decision, but before Germany could capitalize for herself the moral and military consequences, the United States entered the war, bringing a moral influence which promised to dissipate the effects of Russian desertion. The Allies, trusting Russia, had hoped to win, and the Germans, knowing Russia, expected to triumph; each had been disippointed. It seemed clear that the Germans no longer had he resources necessary to obtain that decision in the west which they had sought and which had escaped them at the Marne and again at Verdun. They had hoped to find in the submarine a weapon that would force the Allies into a negotiated peace, but this by the end of the year had failed and, despite its ravages and its existing peril, it was no longer regarded in or out of Germany as likely to win the war.

The Allies, when they saw the extent of the Russian collapse sought by an offensive in Flanders to compel the Germans to shorten their lines and evacuate western France, but the thrust failed of a decision and with it went the chance for that year of clearing northern France. British and French ⚫alike won victories and Germans lost territory in this offensive, but the Germans at the end of the year made a masterly counter-offensive before Cambrai. Meanwhile in the East, Bagdad and Jerusalem with Mesopotamia and Palestine, had fallen, and German East Africa, the last of Germany's colonial possessions, had virtually passed into British hands. 18 Not until March 21, 1918, was this expected German offensive begun.

But Germany had won so great a success at Caporetto that the very safety of Italy at one time was imperilled.

If this war had been fought out a quarter of a century earlier, the Germans would before now have been driven behind their frontier; but the developments of science had so strengthened the power of the tactical defense that when a position had once been won, it could be defended much more easily than it could be captured. Machine-guns and magazine rifles had revolutionized tactics. The Germans owed

BRITISH WOMEN WAR WORKERS

They are standing before the King and Queen in the entrance courtyard of Buckingham Palace

their initial successes to the numbers of their guns, and especially to their machine-guns, even more than to the number of their men, and the perfection of their organization. Multiplication of machine-guns enabled them to defend the positions they won in the autumn of 1914, but not to attack positions in front of them. Herein lay the weakness of their situation. An invading army can not stand still indefinitely; it must either advance or retire, and the latter alternative was the one which the Germans had to face so soon as the Allies

obtained a preponderance in the ammunition supply necessary to break down resistance. Great Britain had now cleared the seas of German ships, and the Germans had lost all their colonies. In Mesopotamia the Allies were slowly but surely destroying Germany's dream of Asiatic dominion. World power had fallen from her grasp and fallen beyond hope of recovery.

The situation, as between Germany and her British foe, remained at the end of the year favorable to the Briton. Tirpitz had truthfully said that Great Britain at this time had won and Germany had lost the war, in the sense that in future a crippled Germany must face her strengthened British rival. Whatever else remained to be settled, it was clear that Belgium would remain independent and closely united in sympathy with the Entente Allies. France was equally sure to emerge from the war territorially intact. The sole western questions still to be debated. seemed to be whether Germany would keep or lose Alsace-Lorraine and whether she could be compelled to indemnify Belgium and France for the wanton destruction she had done. The year had made it apparent that Germany's western hopes had been destroyed and that France would survive the year a still great power bound in firm alliance with the British Empire. Belgian independence was ultimately certain, because, unless Germany agreed to this, she would have to fight for an indefinite time the United States, Great Britain and France.

At the beginning of the campaign of 1917, the German situation had been, on the surface, almost desperate. Russia, France, Britain, and Italy, with their minor allies, possest on every front a combined force vastly in excess of the troops of Germany and Austria. By contrast with their condition in the previous year, the Germans no longer had a strategic reserve such as they had used against Verdun. On all fronts they had lost ground and this was not to be counter-balanced by their successful offensive against Roumania, which had been successful only because Roumania was deserted by the Russian ruling faction, and abandoned to destruction. Germany had found herself hard prest all through the latter half of 1916 so that her enemies might reasonably have expected that, with a renewal of a concen

tration attack in 1917, she would be forced to shorten her lines both east and west. But when the attack was resumed, Russia, after a preliminary round of Allied successes, suddenly collapsed, and from that moment rapidly disappeared as a factor in the contest. Germany was then placed in a position where she could easily spare 100,000 men in an offensive against Italy, whose Isonzo successes had become porter.tous to Austria. The result was a great disaster to Italy, with a loss of 250,000 prisoners, half her artillery and more than half her stores and ammunition. This disaster completed the ruin of Allied prospect that year. Italy thereafter seemed to the Allies a liability, for it was necessary for them to send men and guns to save her, just at a time when the Germans were beginning to transfer troops from the eastern to the Western Front. The British attack at Cambrai, which might have resulted in one of the decisive battles of the war, had Haig been able to support Byng with the corps he had sent to Italy, ended in a dashing of British hopes.

The front which Great Britain was holding might well bear brief analysis. German concentrations from Neiuport to Soissons were heavier than on any other section of the front. Germany knew this was the front where she had most to fear. It was the front which guarded her hold on Belgium and made that hold possible. It was the front which protected her submarine bases. Moreover, of all territory occupied by her, that which she most desired to hold when the war was ended was Belgium. Her intentions, or rather her hopes, were exprest in a willingness, announced in September, to evacuate Belgium, provided she could have economic control of certain parts which were most desirable -for example, Antwerp, "the pistol pointed at the heart of England." But Belgium was the one place over which England was determined that Germany should not exert control. Therefore, Germany made her greatest showing on this part of the battle area. Between Soissons and Pont-àMousson the line east was also strongly held, but by no means as strongly as from Soissons to the sea.

Of the 3,000,000 British, about 1,700,000 were from the British Isles, 400,000 were Canadians, 300,000 Australians