America's War for Humanity Part 8

The peace delegates of Russia and Germany began their sessions December 23. On Christmas Day Ensign Krylenko, the Bolshevik commander-in-chief, reported that the Germans were transferring large numbers of troops to the Western front against the Allies, contrary to one of the Russian conditions of the armistice. Early in the new year, January 2. 1918, the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk were suspended for several days, owing to the nature of the German terms of peace, which demanded that Russia surrender to Germany the territory including Poland, Courland, Esthonia and Lithuania. Foreign Minister Trotzky declared that the Russian workers would not accept the German terms.

Germany, however, stood pat and on January 10 negotiations were resumed, continuing at intervals for several weeks. In the middle of February the Bolshevik government announced that it had withdrawn Russia from the war with the Central Empires and had ordered the demobilization of the Russian armies, but refused to sign a formal treaty of peace with Germany. Premature rejoicing ensued in Germany, and on February Berlin announced a resumption of war with Russia. Two days later the German armies began an advance into Russia along the whole front from Riga south to Lutsk; occupying the latter city without fighting.

A complete surrender to Germany followed. Lenine and Trotzky stating that they would sign the peace treaty on the German terms, which included all the territory claimed by Germany along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, comprising the western part of Esthonia, Courland with the Moon Islands in the Gulf of Riga, most of the provinces of Kovno and Grodno, and nearly all of Vilna, with a huge indemnity. Despite the surrender, the Germans continued their invasion of Russia, with an eye to booty, and captured without organized resistance of any kind thousands of guns and vast quant.i.ties of rolling stock, motor trucks, automobiles, and munitions of war. The invasion continued well into the month of March in the general direction of Petrograd, while to the south Austria, at first seemingly reluctant to join the German incursion into helpless territory, also invaded the Ukraine on the pretense of "restoring order."

SINKING OF THE "TUSCANIA."

The first serious disaster to American troops on the voyage to France occurred on February 5, when the steamship "Tuscania," a British transport with 2,179 United States troops on board, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the north coast of Ireland. The close proximity of British convoy and patrol boats enabled most of those on board to be rescued, 1912 survivors being landed within a few hours at Buncrana and Larne in Ireland. The lives lost included 267 American soldiers besides a number of the crew. The attacking submarine is believed to have been destroyed by the British patrol before the "Tuscania" sank.

LONG-DISTANCE PEACE TALK

Early in 1918, while the Russian debacle complicated the war situation in Europe and the United States hummed with war activities, a series of speeches by statesmen of the powers at war resulted in demonstrating the futility of all hopes of a general peace.

In an address to Congress on January 8 President Wilson, following and indorsing a notable speech by the English premier, Mr. Lloyd-George, laid down fourteen definite peace and war aims of the United States, closely agreeing with the expressed aims of the European Allies; "and for these," said Mr. Wilson, "we will fight to the death." Subsequently, in February, Mr. Wilson stated four general principles on which the nations at war should agree in seeking a satisfactory peace. The German chancellor, Von Hertling, addressing the Reichstag, declared that Germany could agree to Mr. Wilson's basic principles of peace, but British and French statesmen promptly pointed out that the German practices in Russia, and elsewhere as opportunity offered, failed to agree with Von Hertling's profession of the Wilson principles. German suggestions of an informal discussion of peace terms were therefore declined by the allied powers, and in March, 1918, all eyes were turned toward the Western front in antic.i.p.ation of a long-threatened German drive.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST BATTLE

All previous battles of the Great War paled into comparative insignificance when the German offensive of 1918 opened on the Western front, March 21, with a desperate and partially successful attempt of a million men to break through the British line, attacking fiercely from the Ailette to the Scarpe, along a front of sixty miles. For weeks the battle raged over the territory of the Somme, and when a second German drive occurred farther north, from Givenchy to Ypres, fully 3,000, men were engaged on both sides, and all records of human combat were broken.

The loss of life was appalling, but in the absence of official reports while the fighting was in progress, could only be guessed at, though the world knew that the rivers of France and Flanders ran with blood. The Germans attacked in ma.s.ses and successive waves, and paid the penalty of their desperate strategy. For though the British, and later the French, lines were bent backward for miles, and gaps were occasionally torn in them by the foe's furious attack, the Allied defensive withstood the onslaught and after a month of the most terrific struggle the world has ever seen, both British and French forces presented an unbroken front to the disappointed enemy.

The city of Amiens, one of the keys to Paris, had been a chief objective of the German drive, but all efforts to capture that important railroad center failed. True, Noyon, Peronne, Bapaume, Albert and Montdidier, on the south, and Festubert, Neuve Chappelle, Armentieres, and Paaschendaele, to the north, were successively captured from the Allies, in spite of the most gallant and heroic resistance. But then the lines held firmly, and all the Germans had to show for an awful sacrifice of life and morale was a few miles of advance into territory already devastated by war.

On April 21, when the Hun offensive had lasted a full month, not only were the armies of the Allies intact, and better still, their spirit and morale unbroken, but the utmost confidence prevailed among them. All the Allied forces, British, French, Canadian, and American, on the Western front, had been by this time placed under the supreme command of the eminent French strategist, General Ferdinand Foch, an important step in the co-ordination of effort that met with universal approval among the Allied nations.

GENERAL PERSHING OFFERS AID

A magnanimous offer by General Pershing, approved by President Wilson, to brigade the United States troops in France with the British and French forces, was gratefully accepted by General Foch. While the Americans bore only a minor part in the big battles, or rather the continuous battle of March and April on the Somme, and had no part at all in the fighting in Flanders, they held splendidly to their section of the front-line trenches in the vicinity of Toul, and gave the enemy a taste of their quality in many a trench raid. Several attacks by German storm troops were also beaten off, the most important of these occurring late in April, when the Americans defeated a force of some 1,200 picked Hun troops, driving them back to their own lines with a loss of 400, while the total losses of the Americans was about 200.

GERMANY PREPARES TO STRIKE

The great German drive had been in course of preparation for months before it began. The Russian situation had been settled, and large bodies of troops were thereby released for service on the Western front.

The Kaiser and his general staff then determined upon a final effort to win a decisive victory in the west. Their plan was to vanquish the British and French, if possible, before the United States could transport a sufficient number of men to France to turn the tide of numbers in favor of the Allies, and enable them to take the offensive with good prospects of success.

German troops were therefore concentrated near the points chosen for attack, and this was done with the utmost secrecy, the troop trains running unlighted at night, so as to escape the observation of Allied aviators. Two hundred divisions in all were gathered for the German drive, and fully half of them were a.s.sembled near the British front on the Somme. March 21 was set as the date for the attack and every precaution was taken to render it a surprise to the British. The German troops were led to believe that they would be irresistible, and that Paris, their long-looked-for goal, would soon be won.

Meanwhile the Allies had not been idle. Expecting the drive, but not knowing where it would strike first, preparations had been made all along the line, not merely for strenuous defense of the positions held, but also for eventualities in case of enforced retreat. New positions back of the lines were prepared, reserves were distributed at strategic points, and full co-operation between the Allied armies was arranged for. The British took over the section of the French front between St.

Quentin and Chauny, in addition to their former front, and by so doing relieved the strain on the far-flung French line.

The Germans counted for victory upon their concentration of vast bodies of troops and the element of surprise, hoping to break through between the British and French armies before Allied reserves could be brought up in sufficient numbers to halt them.

OPENING DATS OF THE BATTLE

On the day set, Thursday, March 21, the great battle opened, after a six-hour bombardment, the British 3rd and 5th armies being attacked simultaneously. The German infantry advanced in waves, of which there seemed no end, and these were followed by batteries of trench mortars, until the front line of German trenches had been reached. Then, wave after wave, the advance was continued, in the face of a furious British fire, until the defenders were compelled to draw back through sheer force and weight of numbers. The German waves moved forward at the calculated rate of 200 yards every four minutes, wherever it was found possible to do so. Each wave, on reaching its objective point, dropped to the ground and opened fire with rifles and machine guns, placing a barrage 2,000 yards ahead of them, under cover of which the succeeding wave advanced. Thus each wave pa.s.sed over the one ahead of it, and fresh troops were constantly coming to the front. With such tactics, against a spirited and determined foe, the losses of the attackers were naturally enormous. In fact, it was estimated that the casualties suffered by the Germans during the first few days of such fighting amounted to 250, men. But, driven on by ruthless commanders, they continued to advance in ma.s.ses, though mowed down by the British at every successive step.

"All the German storm troops, including the guards, were in brand-new uniforms," said the correspondent of the New York Times. "They advanced in dense ma.s.ses and never faltered until shattered by the machine-gun fire. The supporting waves advanced over the bodies of the dead and wounded. The German commanders were ruthless in the sacrifice of life, in the hope of overwhelming the defense by the sheer weight of numbers.

* * * Still they came on, with most fanatical courage of sacrifice.

When the first lines fell, their places were filled by others, and the British guns and machine-guns could not kill them fast enough." Two batteries of field artillery at Epehy, it is said, "fired steadily with open sights (that is, pointblank) at four hundred yards for four hours, into the German ma.s.ses swarming over No Man's Land."

On the first day, some field batteries aided the Germans, but these were soon left behind in the advance over difficult and sh.e.l.l-torn ground, and the battle became one of rifle and machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand combat.

On the north the British 3rd army made a splendid resistance and held its ground well, but the 5th army farther south, which bore the princ.i.p.al brunt of the attack, under General Gough, was gradually forced to retreat, though in good order, in a northwesterly direction, towards Amiens. French troops were ordered from the southwest to reinforce the British in the vicinity of Noyon. There the French stemmed the tide of Germans, and the drive was soon turned northward, with Amiens as its evident objective.

ALLIED LINES BEGIN TO HOLD FIRM

The battle continued along these lines, with the British still slowly retiring, with their faces to the foe, until the 26th of March, the French stretching their lines farther and farther to the left to keep in touch with the British, and never failing to maintain connection between the two armies. The Germans' fond hope of cutting them apart was doomed to disappointment. French and British cavalry aided in keeping the line intact, and for the second time since the early days of the war the hors.e.m.e.n came into their own, doing valiant service in covering the retreat of the British and impeding the enemy's advance at many points where their aid proved invaluable.

On March 27 and 28, the situation began to improve. British reinforcements arrived at the points of greatest danger, and the defense stiffened, then held the lines firmly before Amiens, and at a distance from that threatened city sufficiently great to prevent its successful bombardment by all but the heaviest artillery of the enemy. The devastated and sh.e.l.l-torn condition of the terrain taken over by the Germans was unfavorable for bringing up the great guns to within striking distance. From that time on, the Allies were supremely confident of their ability to cope with any forces.

While the Allied armies, especially the British, lost heavily in men and guns during the Hun advance, many of the German divisions engaged in the drive were literally cut to pieces. The 88th division was reported by prisoners to be practically annihilated. The same prisoners, taken in counter-attacks, expressed the utmost surprise at the relatively small number of dead whom they had found in the British and French trenches as they advanced. They had been informed by their officers that the offensive would be over in eight days, and that a complete victory over the Allies would be won within three or four weeks.

GERMAN DRIVE IS HALTED

The eighth day of the German offensive, far from finding the Huns victorious, resulted in tremendous attacks by the Germans being stopped by the unbeatable British, while the French won a brilliant victory at the south of the line. Meanwhile the Germans had begun another attack in the Flanders sector, with the object of wresting from the British the control of Messines Ridge, which dominated the lowlands of Flanders and had been so gallantly won by the Canadians in the previous year. They gained a partial footing on the ridge, but the greater part of it was grimly held, and all efforts of the enemy to advance through Ypres towards the Channel ports were frustrated.

Another sector was added to the north end of the battle line on the eighth day, March 28, when the Germans attacked heavily on both sides of the River Scarpe toward Arras. Here some of the fiercest fighting of the offensive soon developed, but the ground gained by the Germans was insignificant. Daily, however, they claimed to have captured thousands of Allied troops and hundreds of guns; while, on the other hand, enormously long ambulance trains were reported pa.s.sing through Belgium with the German wounded, the hospitals in northern France not having sufficient accommodation for the sufferers. On every battlefield of the 100-mile front--for the fighting now covered that enormous stretch of territory, in two sections, north of La Ba.s.see and south of Arras--the German dead lay literally in heaps.

On March 29, the ninth day of the great battle in France, the German drive was practically halted, and both British and French reports noted a decrease of the fighting, enemy activity being manifested only by local attacks all along the front, which was being strengthened each day by the arrival of Allied reinforcements.

PARIS BOMBARDED AT LONG RANGE

Soon after the great offensive opened, the city of Paris was surprised by being bombarded from a distance of approximately 70 miles by a new German long-range gun, which was discovered by French airmen to be concealed in a concrete tunnel in a wood behind the German lines, A number of persons were killed and wounded by the nine-inch sh.e.l.ls from this new weapon, 54 women being killed when a sh.e.l.l struck a church in the suburbs of the city on Good Friday. The Allied commanders refused to regard the long-range gun as of any great military importance except as a means of spreading terror among the civilian population,--and the population of Paris refused to be terrorized by such a method, exhibiting the same spirit as that of the people of England with regard to the futile aerial raids.

French estimates of the German losses for the first eleven days of the offensive placed them at between 275,000 and 300,000 men. The Germans claimed that during the same period they had captured 70,000 prisoners and 1,000 field guns.

ANOTHER ATTACK ON AMIENS

Having been foiled in an attempt on March 31 to break through the valley of the Oise, Paris ceased to be the German objective, and another offensive against Amiens was undertaken on April 4. By this time a French army had repaired the ragged line between the French on the south and the remainder of the British army of General Gough, whose enforced retirement had been conducted in good order. Though outnumbered two to one, the British and French repulsed the attack on Amiens with heavy losses to the Germans, who were effectually stopped at a distance of fifteen kilometers (nine miles) from that city. This ended the first phase of the great battle.

BATTLE RENEWED IN THE NORTH

The second phase of the battle which was expected to prove decisive began April 9 with an attack on the British, aided by Portuguese troops, on a front of fifteen miles, from La Ba.s.see to Ypres. The center, held by three Portuguese divisions, was broken through, and on April 12 the situation seemed critical. Determined counterattacks by the British, however, and reinforcements by the French, stopped the Germans in the next few days, and this offensive, like that farther south in the valley of the Somme, gradually died out, leaving the Germans with gains of only a few square miles of devastated territory to show for their continued heavy losses. And the reserve forces of the Allies were still intact, the strategy of General Foch in this respect being universally applauded as correct under the circ.u.mstances.

Sh.e.l.lS FIRED BY THE MILLION

In the beginning of the offensive which thus failed to accomplish its object, the most desperate means were employed by the Germans to break down resistance; In the first six hours of bombardment on March 21, when three great German armies were ma.s.sed for the attack, under Generals Von Bulow, Von Marwitz, and Von Hutier, commanding from the north to south in the order named, it is estimated that at least 1,500,000 sh.e.l.ls were fired by one single army--that opposed to General Gough's forces on the south, while the British 3rd army, under General Byng, to the north, was similarly a.s.sailed. Most of the sh.e.l.ls contained gas and were designed to destroy the occupants of the trenches about to be stormed. Only the utmost individual valor and persistency of the thin British line, as it retired still fighting, prevented the desperate and over-confident foe from turning the gradual retreat into a decisive defeat. As it was, the Germans paid dearly for every yard of ground they gained, as their successive waves of troops swept over the zone of trenches and then engaged the groups of Allied forces in the open beyond.

All the German units were under orders to advance as far and as fast as possible, being provided with three days' rations and two days' water.

After the first few days, the difficulty of bringing up supplies, with the expected objectives far from being gained, aided in slowing up and then halting their advance. Behind the German storm troops great numbers of reserves were a.s.sembled, to fill up the gaps torn in the ranks and restore the divisions to their normal strength as fast as they were depleted by the defense. The German tactics took no account of human life, but expended it in the most reckless manner, with appalling results throughout the drive. The Allies, on the other hand, sought at all times to conserve their forces by intrenching as fast as possible at every point during the period of their retirement. Their artillery was constantly in action, and aided greatly in checking the German. advance.

ALLIES CONTROL IN THE AIR

German aeroplanes played no great part in the advance, although they bombed the British and French rear nightly, and the air service of the Allies proved superior throughout the battle. For the first time in a great battle British and French airmen attacked the enemy infantry from low alt.i.tudes with their machine guns and bombs, and rendered invaluable a.s.sistance in damming the swelling tide of the Hun hordes. Having gained the mastery of the air, as they did prior to the British drive on the Somme in 1916, they retained it until the foe was halted. To a considerable extent they replaced the heavy guns of the Allies by their constant bombing and gun fire.

Between March 21 and March 31, the French and British pilots shot down more than 100 German planes, losing about one-third of that number in the air battles. After the first few clays there were practically no German machines in the air over the fighting front, as was the case on the Somme in 1916, but at the end of March the Hun planes began to reappear in ma.s.s formation patrols, sometimes consisting of as many as fifty planes in a group of patrols. Then followed a period of intense air fighting, of which a single day's record of the French may be cited as an example. On April 12, the Allied aviation report shows that French fighting scouts made 250 flights, fought 120 combats in the sky, shot down eight Germans and damaged 23 others, burned five enemy balloons, damaged five more, and bombarded German troops with 45 tons of explosives.

GERMANS FAIL IN THEIR OBJECT