By August 15 the total number of prisoners captured by the British Fourth Army, under General Rawlinson, was 21,844.  In the same period of one week the prisoners taken by the French First Army amounted to 8,500, making a total of 30,344 Germans captured in the operations of the Allied armies on the Montdidier-Albert front, besides 700 heavy guns, quantities of machine guns, and other important spoils of war.

North of the Somme, between Albert and Arras, the Germans continued to fall back to the old Hindenburg line, where there were strong defensive positions, with the British and French keeping in close touch with their retreat.  On August 15 they had definitely given up the towns of Beaumont-Hamel, Serre, Bucquoy, and Puisieux-au-Mont, and at several points had crossed the Ancre river.

Field Marshal Haig announced that the proportion of German losses to those of the Allies in the Picardy offensive were greater than at any other period of the war.  The total Allied casualties were not as large as the number of Germans taken prisoner.

JOY IN AMIENS AND PARIS

One important result of the British drive was that Amiens, the “dead city of Picardy,” began to come to life again.  Its population of 150,000, including 40,000 refugees, had fled before the German offensive in March, 1918, but the former inhabitants began to return when the menace of the invader disappeared, as the invader himself was chased back toward the Somme.  A service of thanks to the Allied arms was held in the Great Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amiens, August 15.  Despite the damage from German guns and bombs, the cathedral retained the title of the most beautiful in all France.

The city of Paris, at the same time, quietly celebrated the great change in the situation wrought in one short month.  Just four weeks before, on July 18, the residents of Paris had been awakened by the sounds of such a cannonade as they never had heard before.  It was General Mangin’s counter-preparation against the great German attack which the enemy believed was to bring him to the gates of Paris.  In the meantime the Germans, who were at the gates of Amiens, Reims, and Compiegne, had been soundly beaten and outgeneraled at every point, and the initiative had been forced from them by the military genius of Marshal Foch.  The effect upon the Germans was apparent from the fact that General Hans von Boehm, the German “retreat specialist” had been appointed to the supreme command on the Somme front.  The German withdrawal north of Albert was looked upon as the first application of his tactics.  It was General von Boehm and his former command, the German Eighth Army, that stood the brunt of the Allied pressure in the Marne salient previous to the retreat of the Huns to the north of the Vesle river, where they were still standing in the middle of August.

BOLSHEVIKI EXECUTE EX-CZAR