[This dispatch was written before the drive toward Paris was was launched, and indicates that Mr. Perris had a clear and correct idea of the German plan] May 26, 1918.--The delay of the third act of the German offensive was abnormal. The first was perhaps, in design and execution, the most powerful operation in the history of warfare. The second, the attack in Flanders in the middle week of April, almost certainly began as a diversion intended to draw the British reserves from the Amiens front and to fill the interval needed for the reorganization of forces. Up to the middle of April the German armies not occupied in fighting could do little but commence the strengthening of their new fronts, as lines of defense and departure. Their staffs, high and low, must, however, have been already engaged upon plans for the next push. Six or seven weeks then have passed in constituting a new mass of attack, with its armament and transport, in constructing roads and railways, dumps and supply centres, in bringing forward batteries, airdromes, hospitals, and so on. True, this is not as long as the time of preparation for the first phase of the battle, which may be broadly counted as from New Year's to March 21. But there should be a vast difference between the mounting of a wholly fresh offensive and its pursuit into the later stages. A relentless continuity of pressure is evidently of very great importance after the advantage of the initial surprise. It is the thing which a commander will most aim at. If the Germans did not keep going on the main line of their attack north and south of the Somme after the middle of April, it was because they could not do so; and the partial success of their ex-temporized campaign in Flanders should not disguise from us this significant fact. It would be useless at this period of the war, when all Germany demands a decision and nothing less, if the new offensive did not lead to the capture at least of some place of symbolic importance, such as Rheims, Verdun, or Nancy. But that would require a force so large as to cripple the major effort in the northwest. All the military virtue of the German strategy is against such a dispersal of effort. CHEMIN DES DAMES LOST _May 28_--_The opening of the attack and the first day's results are thus described by Mr. Perris:_ Hindenburg has scored another spectacular success. At dawn yesterday, after three hours' bombardment, composed largely of gas shells, a new German mass attack was thrown upon a twenty-five-mile front, extending from the Ailette near Vauxaillon to the Aisne-Marne Canal near Brimont.