nsive. Nearly four
hundred thousand men were completely used up, without gaining the
slightest strategic success.

Then followed a period without battles of major importance, during which
General Foch by periodic assaults on the Lys, the Somme, on the flanks
of Montdidier and Soissons, on the Chateau-Thierry sector and southwest
of Rheims, captured many important positions and kept the enemy in
constant anxiety.

During the great German offensives the Germans had lost at least five
hundred thousand men, while the casualties of the Allies were barely one
hundred and fifty thousand. The Germans also were beginning to lose
their morale. They were finding that however great might be their
efforts, however terrible might be their losses, they were still being
constantly held. Their troops were now apparently made of inferior
material, and included boys, old men and even convicts.

The system of making attacks by means of shock troops was producing the
inevitable result. The shock regiments were composed of selected men,
picked here and there, from the regular troops. Their selection had
naturally weakened the regiments from which they were taken. After three
months of great offensives these shock troops were now in great part
destroyed, and the German lines were being held mainly by the inferior
troops which had been left. Moreover, in other parts of the world, the
allies of Germany were being beaten. In Italy and Albania and Macedonia
there was danger.

The Germans prepared for one more effort. On June 18th they had made a
costly attempt to carry Rheims. On July 15th they made their last drive.
Ludendorf took almost a month for preparation. He gathered together
seventy divisions and great masses of munitions, and then drove in from
Chateau-Thierry on a sixty-mile line up on the Marne, and then east to
the Argonne forests. His line made a sort of semicircle around Rheims
and then pushed south to the east and west of that fortress.

Once again he had temporary success. West of Rheims he penetrated a
distance of five miles, and on the first day, had crossed the Marne at
Dormans, but was held sharply by the Americans east of Chateau-Thierry.
On the second day he made further gains, but with appalling losses. On
the 17th he was still struggling on with minor successes but on July
18th the French and Americans launched the great counter-offensive from
Chateau-Thierry along a twenty-five mile front, between the Marne and
the