Forging ahead

Allies ruthless pleasure

Communications threatened

OFFICIALLY and unofficially - for the morning papers reveal the communique in placidity - we continue to learn of the steady advance of the allies.

This modesty is painful! For while in one locality the progress may correctly be described with graphic brevity as house by house, in another we are going forward with tiger leaps.

“Particularly the Belgians” is the phrase which caught the eye last night and their successes are producing a feeling of exultation which is the measure of our sympathy for them in the tribulations their nation has experienced.

To see them getting their own back warms our hearts even if it increases our patience for the day of full reckoning.

The allied forces particularly the Belgians have not only repulsed the renewed attacks by the Germans but have advanced as far as Roulers.

Advanced, well look at the map, it is a positive jump.

Roulers is 22 miles North of Lille and moreover it is. Only about 50 miles from Brussels.

We had learned before that the allies were at Ypres and later that Armentiere had been retaken and we now see distinct evidence of the formation of a wedge which certainly suggests that the German forces released by the fall of Antwerp are in great danger of being cut off.

Their object had palpably been to make a rapid march to Dunkirk and from Dunkirk on to Calais, but it has been frustrated and it would now seem that the more progress they made in that direction the greater their peril.

The reading of the situation may not commend itself to everybody but a few days will show the correctness or otherwise of the deduction.

The probability is that the Germans have already realised their mistakes and that having failed to round up the Belgians and take the allies in flank, they will concentrate their attention upon points in the allies line further south.

In this case it will not be surprising to learn soon that the enemy is rapidly moving from the coast and Ostend, Bruges farther inward and of course all the intervening district too is being evacuated.

This is not cheap optimism it is a fair statement of the position as it appears in the light of recent facts.

The German line of communication between Ostend and Ghent is most certainly threatened and with their advance upon Dunkirk and Calais blocked at a point from near Nieuport onwards, what is there left for them to do but get out of it.

Relieved of this responsibility however they saddle themselves with others.

There is the possibility of the allies, particularly the Belgians sweeping their flank and making the first move leading to even greater disasters than the envelop, eat and capture of their forces, now reaching from the coast to the allies new wedge.

The hard fighting for the remainder of this week, if it does terminate earlier, is likely to be, as it has been near Lille and Arras and already there is every inclination that the German is feeling the overwhelming weight which is being fling against him.

We are now battling for the freedom of Belgium, straining every nerve to hurl the invading hosts back upon the Meuse, and it won’t take too long.