The flowing tide

Allies advance continues

Fine work by the British

It is pleasing to find the the South Wales Argus no longer stands alone in the view of the situation and that during the last two or three days the majority of newspapers have endorsed the findings.

The wonder is that so much pessimism has prevailed and the only explanation is that the military correspondence have not taken the human factor sufficiently into account.

So far, if it is pardonable to point out, this paper has managed to keep a day in front of most of its contemporaries and although there has been no indulgence in dogmatic assertion it's deductions have proved sound and practically everything foreshadowed has come to pass.

To read some of the matter which has passed for logical reasoning was almost sufficient to make one despair for the British temperament , but perhaps in keeping our hopes and anticipations within bounds, a good purpose was served and there is no necessity to pursue the subject further.

At the present moment everyone is agreed that things are going well and the press bureau message issued at midnight should restore to hopefulness even those constitutionally prone to look on the black side of things.

The pressure against the enemy continues all along the allies front, the British force has been engaged all day, the enemy opposed to it after a stubborn resistance, retired and is now crossing to the North of the Marne, the superior training and intelligence as well as the incomparable valour of the British has again been demonstrated. What we would not give now for an Archibald Forbes pen picture of the battle.

The Fifth French army has advanced with equal success and reported many captures. The sixth French army has been fully engaged on the Oureq and here too the enemy has been pushed back.

The German army has suffered severely along the whole front with the advance everywhere being resolutely pushed home. The British casualties are small in comparison with the scale of fighting.

Apparently it is in the centre in the Verdin region where the fight is raging most fiercely and where the Germans, beaten everywhere else, are putting up the most stubborn resistance.

The Teuton realises that if the French succeed in breaking through here the whole of the invaders right would be in peril of being surrounded and destroyed.

Conceivably this is what may happen, but optimistic as we may be, we must not hope for too much too soon.

Nevertheless we are prepared to believe that the allies line is roughly in shape, a crescent on it s back and that the German right and left are therefore turned. If the allies left can push still further eastward then the Germans will be in a jolly tight place.

That the allied are in great strength now is evident from various revealed facts and there may be some significance in the fact that in the latest casualty list is the name of an officer of the Bengal Lancers, on this though we shall make no more comment nor upon the statement published yesterday as to the force in a North westerly direction. Upon this latter we have hinted enough lately to indicate what we know.

At present we repeat, the situation is very nearly all that could be wished. Our men are full of fight and the Germans must be tired and disheartened if they have as is generally believed lost 400,000 men, killed, captured or wounded, then the morale of the remainder will not have improved