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and "massifs." All Pershing has promised, the Atlanta Journal points out, is: "Send us men, guns, and supplies quickly, and we'll win in 1919." The news of victory must make us "speed up," not slacken, continues The Journal, for "all hopes of crushing the enemy by the beginning of 1920 are based upon gigantic performances by the United States." Experienced and unemotional financiers in London believe, according to the New York Evening Post correspondence, "that the war will continue another year, the presumption being that only the actual

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Luxemburg to the Rhine, "but Germany within her own borders will be defending a narrow front, and, pitiful as the spirit of her people seems in that adversity which only strengthened the French and British, it may well stimulate another and better patriotism." The Kaiser is on his way to defeat, but "he has still in his armies men who will not run," and "bravery is a quality confined to no nation."

Which is perhaps enough to keep us from undue exuberance as we consider what really has happened. It was less than three months ago, we are reminded, that the tradition of German might was still casting a heavy blight upon the minds and souls of men. At the beginning of the Allied counter-offensive in July, the Providence Journal recalls, "Germany regarded herself as invincible. She had been checked in drive after drive, but she still held the bulk of the territory taken from the Entente in these savage advances." But now we see her driven back from all the area she overran, yielding up the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg line and preparing to retreat from Flanders.

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For the first time in the history of the war Germany has no "margin of safety," writes Mr. H. Sidebotham from London to the New York Sun. For the first time "the West and East fronts are crumbling simultaneously." Germany can draw no troops from one front to bolster up the other. Of late "she has been relying on the East to compensate her for prospective losses in the West; now the East is slipping rapidly away and failure looms in the West." Germany, says this British military critic, may be able to send ten or twelve divisions to punish Bulgaria or to keep her hold on Austria; "the thing can be done, but at a price that will be the wholesale evacuation of France and Belgium west of the Meuse.". To-day Germany finds herself, as the New York Evening Post graphically puts it, "a prisoner of the Pit and the Pendulum within a double set of contracting walls."

THE CRUMBLING GERMAN LINE: TWO WEEKS' ADVANCE.

conquest of Germany can produce the results necessary to insure a democratic government in Germany and a lasting peace." Mr. Charles Edward Russell, who has been learning the thoughts rather of the toilers of England and France than of the moneychangers, sees at least nine months more ahead of us. "Nine more months of vigorous and relentless warfare against Germany on the field will find her completely defeated, a suppliant for peace, and in a position where the Allies can fix such terms as will make a democratic and lasting peace possible." Thoughtful people in Paris, according to a cabled dispatch to the New York Times, admit the bare possibility of Germany collapsing suddenly through a wholesale mutiny or wide-spread revolt, but they argue that Prussian militarism will fight for its existence to the last gasp, even tho erecting in the meantime a camouflage of political democratization. In spite of the capitulation of Bulgaria and the possible defection of Turkey and Austria, say these Frenchmen, whose ancestors fought Germans before Columbus discovered America, "Germany herself is unfettered," and "a decisive, crushing defeat of Germany in the field and occupation of German territory on a large scale remain as ever the only possible means of ending the war." Germany, The Wall Street Journal reminds us, is still "fighting in conquered territory, with German soil inviolate." German armies may evacuate Belgium, may be forced to retreat through

"One set of walls embraces Europe. The situation of the first years of the war is being reestablished. The Allied wall in the Balkans is to be shoved up to the Danube and the Save. What will happen in the far from impossible case of Turkey's defection can only be conjectured. But with an Allied fleet passing through the Dardanelles and into the Black Sea, the German treaties with Roumania and the Ukraine begin to totter. The Bolsheviki of Great Russia may stand aside, tho there is no assurance of what the Bolshevik Realpolitiker may do in the moment of Germany's decline. But among the border peoples handed over by the Bolsheviki to Germany-in the Ukraine, in Lithuania, in the Baltic lands where the population chafes under the reimposed rule of the German barons-a people's war in conjunction with the Allies may flare up. If the Bulgarian masses in their war-weariness have decided that the way out is by passing to the side of the Allies, all the more reason why the Russian nationalities now under the German yoke should rise. "In the West is the second set of Allied walls closing in on the Germans. It is contracting at the rate of miles a day. Several miles a day on any one front would be menace enough, but the progress is from all directions. The Belgians push forward five miles to the east; the Americans push forward ten miles to the

northwest: the British thrust goes east and south; General
Mangin pushes north and east. Along the entire front the
German front is yielding in spite of furious resistance, and
only in the region southwest of Douai does this morning's news
bring the first report in days of a successful German counter-
thrust. There can be no question now of Ludendorff's switching
his reserves along the interior lines, or if such movements are
under way they must be swift, desperate parries which may at
any moment reveal the open guard through which Foch will
thrust the fatal blow. Never on the Western Front has the
enemy been so hard beset at so many vital points. Half a
dozen centers of communication are being simultaneously
threatened-Roulers, Cambrai, St. Quentin, La Fère, Laon,
Grand Pré. The famous Hindenburg line has been filed thin
in half a dozen places. A tragic repetition of
the One-Hoss Shay threatens the Germans."

witnessing "the last wrigglings of the dying German snake just before the sun goes down." Not only does The Globe see German morale weakening and German man-power running low, but it expects soon to see "evidence of a lack of artillery, shells, and other indispensable supplies." For one thing

"Germany did not build tanks in numbers because she could not. Similarly her weakness in the air is attributable to shortage of machines. She spent her surplus manufacturing power on the submarines, which failed her."

In the meantime, continues The Globe,

"This country, taking no chances, presses forward in the crea

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The Germans' one hope now, continues this writer, is in the very magnitude of the Allied effort; "what Ludendorff is playing for is a repetition of the Somme battle of 1916, with the Allies left spent for a halfyear to come by their vast exertions." But we may trust in Foch, he continues, and "can take it for granted that the man who bided his time during the anxious days of last spring, who would not let the enemy force him into action where means were not perfectly adjusted to the end in view, is not the man to plunge forward for a decision recklessly." And the New York Times observes that "if Germany entertains the hope that Marshal Foch may overreach himself and expose one of his armies to a successful counter-attack, it is a forlorn hope, because it is evident that in the American troops behind his lines which have not yet been sent into action he has reserves ready to deal with any drive the enemy may attempt." The Foch strategy is the marvel and admiration of humble editors and self-confident war-experts alike. As it develops from day to day, says the Columbia State, it "unfolds as beautifully as the opening of the petals of a flower." The New York World calls it "a process of attrition on a grand scale." Foch's conception, writes William L. McPherson in the New York Tribune, "is pressure, pressure, pressure-on both flanks and on the center of the long German line from the North Sea to Switzerland." This strategy "shines by contrast with the lumbering German method of concentrated mass blows at long intervals on widely separated sectors." What the Marshal is delivering is not, says Mr. McPherson, "a series of isolated battles, but one great continuous battle into which all the various operations are perfectly dovetailed." In the same New York newspaper, Mr. Frank H. Simonds compares the military situation in France to the "break-up of the ice in a river when spring comes." Here are half a dozen coordinated offensives like the old battles of Ypres, Cambrai, the Aisne, and the Champagne being refought simultaneously. It seems certain to this careful watcher of military movements that

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After a map in the New York "Tribune." By courtesy of Mr. Frank H. Simonds.
HOW THE WASHOUT ON THE BERLIN-BAGDAD ROAD" SPLITS MITTELEUROPA.
Constantinople is now cut off from rail connection with Germany, while General Allenby, hav-
ing taken Jerusalem, Nazareth, Haifa, and Damascus, is rapidly approaching Aleppo and the
rail route between Bagdad and the Turkish capital.

"one of the many blows will achieve the first objective, to compel a general German retreat out of France, away from the Hindenburg line. And the second objective is to crush the retiring armies, to turn the withdrawal into a rout, to break the military power of Germany, to do it this year, and in the present battle this is the single purpose."

The Indianapolis News recalls E. C. Stedman's line, "You'll find lovely fighting along the whole line." There, says the New York Globe, "the whole Western Front is aflame." Everywhere it sees the German line breaking, the capture of guns, supplies, and prisoners, terrific losses in futile counter-attacks. We are

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tion of a war-machine not yet one-quarter completed. ordnance plants, each as large as Krupps, are but beginning to produce. The promise of 20,000 planes in Europe will be fulfilled. By June our effective Army will be 3,000,000 instead of 1,000,000. Germany has no chance, and she at last knows it."

Up to the 26th of September, Foch's marvelous victories, as the Birmingham Age Herald notes, had "in each case simply wiped out salients and annihilated offensive gains made by the Germans and straightened the battle-line in northern France." But on that date the Marshal made his first incursion into "what might be termed real enemy territory" by the Franco-American attack in the Champagne just west of the Meuse, apparently intended to outflank the Hindenburg line from the south. On the first day the American troops pushed ahead five miles, capturing twelve towns and 5,000 prisoners. On the 27th, while the Champagne offensive proceeded vigorously Haig crossed the Canal du Nord before Cambrai, piercing the Hindenburg line. On the 28th the Belgians began an attempt to repeat what the Servians had done, for, in the words of the Buffalo Express, they were "given the lead in a campaign for the recovery of Belgium as the Servians were given the lead in the campaign to recover their country." They drove forward on the YpresDixmude line under personal command of their King, passing.

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Cambrai and with the French driving the Germans from St. Quentin. Farther south the French under Mangin took Fort Malmaison and part of the Chemin des Dames position. To the right of Mangin other French forces pushed north from Reims, and on the second of October the Germans were apparently losing the entire Hindenburg line in the Cambrai-St. Quentin region and were about to evacuate most of their important positions in Artois and in Flanders.

During September alone the Allies took 123,036 German prisoners in France and Belgium, with 1,600 cannon and 10,000 machine guns. From July 15 to September 30 the total of prisoners was 248,494 men and 5,515 officers, with 3,669 cannon and 23,000 machine guns. Total German casualties have been estimated at upward of 600,000.

This new multiple offensive is looked upon by war-experts as a successful attempt to drive the Germans from the Hindenburg positions by combining an attack at the center-Cambrai and St. Quentin-with turning movements in Flanders and Champagne. They all expect to see a German retreat to a shorter line and an attempt at prolonged defensive effort. But, as one Washington correspondent points out, the actual penetrations of the German line have furnished Marshal Foch "with the means to embarrass a German retreat always with the possibility of precipitating a veritable rout." At worst, we are told, a German offensive is no longer possible and we are once and for all on the way to Berlin. A London correspondent of the New York World calls attention to the significant fact that "the farther back Germany goes in the West the more vulnerable her cities become to the operations of airplane-bombers, whose work has played such an immense part in producing the dejection and hopelessness now prevalent throughout the Empire."

While these events were developing in the West the Allies scored a complete success in the conclusion of the campaign in

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Servia by the signing of the armistice by Bulgaria on September 30, which put that nation entirely out of the war and gave the Allies military control over her territory. Here, says the Newark News, "Germany has lost her one real victory of the war, which was the conquest of her allies." In Germany Vorwärts has called attention to the possibility of Austria and Turkey following Bulgaria. That, says the Socialist daily, means that our arm to the southeast no longer stretches beyond Bodenbach (on the Elbe, just over the Bohemian frontier), and that we lose all influence over those parts of Poland and the Ukraine which Austria occupies." Germany, our Washington correspondents think, is likely to send troops from Roumania to defend the Danube, and Allied progress may be slow through northern Servia. But the use of Bulgarian railroads and ports ought to be able to carry the Allies very soon to Adrianople and the Tchataldja lines, and then to Constantinople itself. Besides the opening of the way to the elimination of Turkey and the construction of a new East Front threatening Austria from Bulgaria and Servia, the submission of Bulgaria may, according to Mr. Charles Michelson, of the New York World, result in

"A renewed offensive by Italy when Austria is compelled to weaken her forces in the West by the Balkan advance.

"The opening of the Black Sea to the Allies and the release of the food-supply of that section.

"The return of the Ukraine to the fighting ranks, as it is demonstrated that Germany can not prevail, and through the Ukraine the influencing of Russia generally away from the Bolsehvik-German alliance.

"The deliverance of Roumania and the nullification of the treaty of Bucharest."

Altho Bulgaria is now out of the war, a number of our editors feel with the Syracuse Post-Standard that she will not come back into good standing with the family of nations "until she has shown her repentance of an unholy alliance in a substantial way." These same editors, as they note rumors of peace offers

MITTELEUROPA.

-Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

from Turkey, declare that no peace should be made with the Sultan which does not take from him the rule over such nonTurkish peoples as have not already been liberated by the advancing Allied armies in Syria and Mesopotamia.

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SHALL THE PEACE LEAGUE INCLUDE GERMANY?

be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?

"Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them subject to their purpose and interest?

"Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their own will and choice?

"Shall there be a common standard of right and privilege for all peoples and nations, or shall the strong do as they will and the weak suffer without redress?

"Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alliance or shall there be a common concert to oblige the observance of common rights?"

EARLY EVERYBODY in the Allied lands, and even a few in darkest Germany, have made their pet plans for a "league of nations" after the end of the present international mêlée, but that very fact has, some think, hindered rather than helped the idea. It has been "smothered with praise" by its advocates. It remained for President Wilson, in his speech opening the Liberty Loan campaign, to bring the dream of a league of nations into the realm of practical politics, as many of our editors now point out. And since that date the critics and upholders of his views have been led to add to his suggestions so that the phrase is at last capable of more or less precise definition in the new lexicons of international politics. The service thus rendered by the President is acknowledged not only by our own press, but by the dailies in London, in Paris, Madrid, and the SouthAmerican capitals. Writing from Washington to the New York Evening Post, Mr. David Lawrence has called this speech by far the most important the President has made on the political and diplomatic side of the war. The Raleigh News and Observer has now not the slightest doubt that "the fundamental principles of the league of nations which is going to come out of the worldwar will be pretty much as Mr. Wilson stated them in New York." President Wilson, as the New York Times notes, believes that the constitution of a league of nations must be a part of the peace settlement itself. And that, it declares, "would mark the beginning of a new era in the history of the world, a wonderful reversal of the intents and policies that led to the formation of the Holy Alliance." By this speech, declares the Philadelphia Public Ledger, President Wilson "has made permanent peace possible." He did not simply reassert the necessity for such a union of peoples, but proceeded to propose a practical plan for forming the union, or in the words of the Philadelphia daily:

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Copyrighted by John T. McCutcheon.

Since these are the issues of the conflict, no peace can be obtained by bargain or compromise, because the Governments opposed to us have shown at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest that "they are without honor" and "do not intend justice." For the nations associated against Germany the price of a lasting peace is "impartial justice in every item of the settlement." This means the creation of the "indispensable instrumentality" assuring that the agreements of the peace will be honored and fulfilled, "a league of nations formed under

I covenants that will be efficacious." Therefore, as the President sees it,

"The constitution of that league of nations and the clear definition of its objects must be a part-is in a sense the most essential part of the peace settlement itself. It can not be formed now. If formed now, it would be merely a new alliance confined to the nations associated against a common enemy. It is not likely that it could be formed after the settlement. It is necessary to guarantee the peace; and the peace can not be guaranteed as an afterthought." The President then proceeds to give some details to make his terms "sound less like a thesis and more like a practical program":

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THE THREE RS."
-McCutcheon in the Chicago Tribune.

"He took the league of nations out of the toy-shop of speculative statecraft and presented it to us as a workable tool and weapon with which the police power of organized civilization can be put squarely behind the informed, impartial, and just judgment of civilization. He sees that to make peace without making simultaneously a league of nations to protect it would be like driving a band of bandits out of a village they were looting, without providing any police law or armed force to keep them from coming back again. He is no impractical visionary fondly fancying that the world can be ruled as yet without force. His slogan is 'force, force to the utmost,' when force is needed. But he does believe-and this is where he leads the best thought of the world at this moment-that force can be recruited into the unselfish service of law, order, and justice, and employed to protect a peace based in every nation -even the weakest on the content of the peaceful."

President Wilson pointed out how the war has brought into existence its own issues, which are now facts, not the mere statements of any group of men. These issues, he says, are: "Shall the military power of any notion, or group of nations,

"(1) The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no standard but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned.

"(2) No special or separate interest of any single nation or any group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all.

"(3) There can be no league or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the general and common family of the league of nations.

"(4) There can be no special selfish economic combinations within the league and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion except as the power of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world may be vested in the league of nations itself as a means of discipline and control. '(5) All international agreements and treaties of every kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the world."

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President Wilson did not make these suggestions, he explains, because of any doubt "whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with whom we are associated were of the same mind and entertained like purpose, but because the air every now and

again gets darkened by mists and groundless doubtings and mischievous perversions of counsel." The President exprest his hope that the leaders of the Allied governments "will feel free to say whether they think that I am in any degree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues involved or in my purpose with regard to the means by which a satisfactory settlement of those issues may be obtained."

This speech finally "establishes the creation of a league of nations to enforce peace as the official program of the free Allied nations, a program, however, based upon the necessity of victory," says Mr. Herbert S. Houston, of the League to Enforce Peace. High praise comes from such important London papers as The Morning Post, Times, and Daily News, tho they naturally select different passages for a special consideration.

The Times notes with approval the ruling out of "the economic boycott, or 'war after the war,' except for the purpose of punishment, awarded in common or of enforcing the will of the league.” In our own country, the San Francisco Chronicle thinks that thoughtful people will enthusiastically indorse the paragraphs in the President's address declaring against economic boycotts.

While the President's declaration for "complete victory" was enthusiastically and unanimously hailed by our press, the details of his peace program "will not be accepted unanimously," the Philadelphia Press thinks. This paper reminds us that there are many among our allies who believe they are fighting to secure not only political but economic independence of Germany. Le Temps, of Paris, is not convinced that there will not be need for special alliances after the war. The Boston Transcript, the Rochester Post-Express, and Lowell Courier-Citizen are three American papers which, while they are thoroughly in sympathy with a league of nations, are not certain that it is entirely practicable. The Transcript thinks the very universality of it. would split the league into hostile groups, and the other Massachusetts daily sees no guaranty that there might not be an alinement, in case of future difference, not of twenty members of the league against one, but of "ten against eleven, or some such fairly even division, insufficient in its disparities to prevent a resort to arms." Ex-President Roosevelt pointed out in his Lafayette day speech in New York that a league of nations would have to include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia, and he asks: "What earthly use is it to pretend the safety of the world would be secured by a league in which these four nations under the Hohenzollerns or the Hapsburgs, under the Sultan and the Bolsheviki, would be among the nine leading partners." Continues the Colonel:

"Long years must pass before we can again trust any promises these four nations make. . . Therefore, unless our folly is such that it will not depart from us until we are brayed in a mortar, let us remember that any such treaty will be worthless unless our own prepared strength renders it unsafe to break it.... "Let us support any reasonable plan whether in the form of a league of nations or in any other shape which bids fair to lessen the probable number of future wars and to limit their scope. . . . Support any such plan which is honest and reasonable. But support it as an addition to, and never as a substitute for, the policy of preparing our own strength for our own defense?"

Here the Colonel is quite right, the Minneapolis Tribune thinks. The Wichita Beacon wonders whether any international court or police force would "be any more of a restraining influence upon international outlaws than were the combined armies and navies of England, France, and Russia in 1914." The trouble, as the New York Tribune sees it, is that "if you form a league of nations with the Teutonic and Allied Powers left out, you appear to have turned the earth into two great hostile camps, and if you admit them to the league of nations its security will rest upon the word of criminal members who have no faith to pledge." Since Germany can not be trusted, The Tribune continues, she must be "first defeated on her own soil and disarmed," made to surrender unconditionally. The Allies,

The Tribune suggests, might "guarantee her the status of a permanent neutral, unarmed, and therefore immune from attack." And as far as the economic boycott is concerned, this daily remarks that if we would resolve "to exclude Germany from all intercourse whatever-that is, to ostracize her utterly for a period of years-no economic boycott would be necessary." But, commenting on the Wilson speech, The Tribune makes a suggestion which implies that the price of peace demanded by the President from Germany might meet even the doubters of the practicability of a league of nations including Germany, for "the first indispensable instalment on it is the extinction of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs, with all that other locust blood of kinglets and princelets which has fattened on German servility and has maintained itself in power by debauching German morals and conscience."

A

WOMAN'S CAUSE HALTED BY TWO MEN HEARTACHE IS FELT by one of the woman-suffrage leaders at the Senate's adverse vote on the womansuffrage amendment, but the sorrow is not for herself or her sisters; it is for the Senate, which has "shamed our nation before the world." Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the author of this remark, even exprest satisfaction that the vote was taken, since, as she is quoted in the New York Tribune, "we know now exactly how to place our work," and the same journal quotes Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as saying, "we are stronger to-day than we have ever been before, and we renew our struggle for the reign of law based on the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind." Miss Paul, head of the National Woman's party, is quoted by the New York World as follows: "This defeat is a temporary defeat. The vote of the United States Senate, we are convinced, will be reversed before this Congress ends. Our efforts to secure that reversal will begin at once and will continue until our victory in the House is confirmed in the Senate." From Washington dispatches we learn that the total number of votes cast was only 84, owing to the absence of twelve Senators on the Liberty Loan campaign and other business. The absent Senators were all paired, and, counting the absentees, the vote stood at 62 to 34, lacking two votes necessary for passing under the two-thirds rule. Some observers consider as not the least surprizing feature of the Senate's stand the fact that it was taken in despite of the President's personal appeal to support the amendment as a warmeasure. Altho the New York World disagrees with the President's judgment on this point, it does confess that it "can find no evidence of either consistency or of principle in the action of the Senate," and, recalling the Senate's attitude toward the Prohibition Amendment, this daily remarks that it is evident that the adverse vote on suffrage represented "personal prejudice rather than adherence to any known theory of government." Reflection upon the status of suffrage in England, in Canada, in every English-speaking country save America, observes the New York Tribune, can not fail to turn the dwindling minority of opposition in the Senate from its error. The President's declaration that suffrage is a war-measure "in its nature can not have specific and material demonstration," The Tribune goes on to say, but "the larger truth lay unquestionably with Mr. Wilson's plea, and the coming weeks and months are certain to establish that truth." The voters of the nation, men and women alike, it adds, can be counted on to attend to these Senators in due course, for the United States of America "will not long support a Senate that insists upon being more reactionary and less progressive than the British House of Lords." The Wheeling Intelligencer, too, has not the least doubt that woman suffrage will finally prevail in this country, for "this great reform has progressed too far to be turned back now." A Washington correspondent of the New York World calls attention to the fact

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