THE SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1583, 29 October 1912, Page 6

THE SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

STUNNING PARALLEL. NAZIM, ZEKI, IEE, JACKSON. [Bt Gyro.l Any day now the beginning of a very heavy battlo in Enst lliunelia may bo looked for. It is likely that the result will change the setting of the wholo of tho pieces on the chess board of war, for that is the purpose for which gToat battles are fought. To the "man in the street" who loves battles—especially bloody ones—a war is merely a jumble of vaguo butcheries all over tho theatre of war. To the general officers, who etage-manngo tho heavy drama of slaughter, the battlo itself is merely n "last incident" to a sequence of settings and movements of troops. After the battle ho has to begin the setting of tho pieces all over again, for better or for worse. The Turkish commanders have just lost Kirk Kilisse, which is indeed an important square on the chess-board. Tho meaning of the loss is two-fold. Strategically, the right wing of their main army has been driven in and bent back, and our friend NazLm P«sha will now find hie position uncomfortably salient until he shifts his forces on to a new front facing less to tho north, and more to the east. Tactically, tho morale of his troops has no doubt been much lowered by tho actual beating , . , • All this by tho way, however. Tho purpose of this letter is to indicate one of the most striking coincidences which have ovor happened since the primal days when man first began his onslaughts on his fellow man with clubs ■ and road-metal. It is the stunning similarity between t.he present operations in Turk"ey and the period which officers havo fust been studying for examination —the operations of .Leo and Jackson in Virginia in the summer of ISC2. Before the coming battle in Rumelia alters the whole aspect of the board, it is interesting to look at tho setting of tho pieces for, in a week or two, tho general deployment will be permanently okingcd. In 1862 Lee's army formed the main objective for tho Federal attack advancing from north and north-east and northwest. So does Nazini. The idea that Salonika', or some other geographical objeotivo ■is the goal of tho Serbs..is only guff and moonshine. Tho main objective of Serbs, Bulgarians, and others is Nazim's army in Rumelia, and practically nothing else. Then why do not the Serbs maTch straight on that objective? Chiefly because they cannot. In 18G2, Lee, viewing with concern the advance of very heavy' Federal forces, in a convergent ring, resolved to make some of them divergent, and his brilliant lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, was detached from tho main army, and seat out far to the west—to the Shenandoah Valley. How . effectively ho fooled the Federals is known to every student of the period. • In this year of warfare, 1912, exactly the same thing is being done by Zcki Pasha. He is the chiel detached Turkish force, ami, like Jackson, ho is far out to the west. Like Jackson, also, his position is very salient, and one rather wonders how ho will escape tho meshes, if anything goe3 wrong with the main operation near Adrianoplo. But meanwhile, like a good soldier, he is doing noble duty. So far, he has kept tho whole Servian army divergent to the chief theatre ot operations, and divergent operations is a bad thing for the side which is on tho offensive. Mα is somewhere near Uskub —ono day defeated and tho next day victorious, as tho cables have it. But his actual defeats and victories in battle matter very little to the general result, so long as ho is not totally annihilated.

T.ho main thing is that ho has kept tho whole Servian army divergent to tho square on tire board on which the deciding blows are. to be struck. If tho Serbs should endeavour to march straight on Adrianople, Zeki Pasha will bo both on their flank and on their line of supply. So, instead of.turning southwest to close on Nazim, as they would like to <10, they must face due couth to deal with this troublesome Zeki. No parallel to Stonewall Jackson's work in ISG2 could be more faithful. Tho parallel would be complete if Zeki were suddenly called away from the Servian front- to join in somo big battle near to Constantinople. That was whnt tee. did with Jackson in ISG2. Jackson suddenly quitted the Shcnaudoah Volley, left the mystified Federals, to find out where he hn<l vanished, and then joined Leo in time to take a part in tho memorable Seven Days' Battle near Richmond. In many other respects the coincidence is also very remarkable. Lee, commanding tho main operation, was close back on his own capital; so is Naziiu. Lee's position rfcar tho chief town had been strengthened by a lino of fortification; so has Nazim's. Lee hnd the interior lines—tho inside running on tho theatro of war; Nazim has them too though, to bo sure, ho has not so far made much use- of them. But there, is one great point which knocks the parallel upside down. It is tho relation of the civil power to the direction of military operations. In 1862, Leo's civil superior—Jefferson Davis—was really a monarch, though only nominally a democratic president. Between Mr. Davis and his military commanders the happiest relations prevailed. Thero was very I little friction and a tremendous general co-operation. It is apparently, not so in Turkey. Recently they deposed poor old Abdul Hamid and, as Mr. Herbert Spencer truly remarks in his great work on sociology, the unexpected- consequences of any line of human action are always greater than the expected, and nowhere is this more evident than in tho wrecking of constituted authority. At present Turkey is nominally a monarchy, but, in reality, only a rabid republic, "Citizen Armies," "Committees of Public Safety," etc., cannot, and never could, wage war. They ought to bo tied up, and kept at home. The deposition, of AbduL Hamid is very like tho decapitation of Louis XVI regarding which ono historian says: "It was only years afterwards that men began to eeo how momentous n thing had been done."