THE SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1611, 30 November 1912, Page 6

THE SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

WHAT'S GONE WRONG? HALT OF BULGARIAN AEMT.

[Bi GTRO.I

On no account chould an army bo committed to tlie offensive until it is fully prepared to keep the offensive. Having taken the offonsive, every effort must be made to maintain it. Tlio principles of strategy do not alter with, the ages. When a halt comes, one knows that something has gone wronp. —Von der Golti.

■ Mohammed V'o luggage, and how the ladies of the Imperial haTem' will escape over the Bosphorus into Asia are about the only things which have engaged the attention of that dear old wiseacre—"the man in the street"—for the last throp weeks. Such a trifle as the ultimate winner of this war he picked long ago. That tho crowned heads and commanders of I Europe cannot pick the winner. yet does I no't disturb him in the slightest. Somewhere" in tho back of his mind he holds a vague, but not unmusical, jumble of "brigades," "divisions," and "army corps." He knows where each one is on the map, and, what is more, can always tell wht they are there, which, to be sure, is often a good deal more than the generals commanding them can do. leaving "the man in the street" .to pursue his humorous'and pleasant pastime of "picking winners," one stops to ask; What has gone wrong with the Bulgarian Army? The moral effect of marching into the city of the Padishah would have/shakea Islam from end to end. Why forego it just as the Golden, City was 60 near,? Why the peace pourparlers? ■Assuredly something has gone wrong, with the anticipations of the Bulgarian General Staff. • It could not be want of; money, for Bulgaria knew that Bhe was almost penniless before a blow was struck. It could not be the heavy losses in battle, for those arß but the hall mark of war wajjed on the German model. It could not be the coming of winter, for most people know thav winter comes, round regularly once a . year, and the almanac shows you when. What then brought, on the halt and the peace negotiations? : It was the Chatalja lines. Tho Chatalja position , is remarkable inasmuch ,as it is tho exact counterpart of the famous lines of Torres Vedras, which the Duke of Wellington set up against .Marshal Massena in Portugal, Both flanks rest securely on an "impassable barrier—the sea. -When a flank rests on artificial fortifications, as was the case with the Turks at-Kirk Kiliese, it is always possible for the ingenuity and heroism of man to "turn" it, and bend it back. But how can the best army in the world swim out into tho eternal sea to-"turn" flanks,' especially .when opposing warships are steadily shelling the coast? ' ■

In this connection the old cruiser Hamidieh seems to have performed excellent service for the Turks, and the Bulgarians certainly knew their business when they sent .torpedoers.out to attack her. The IlamidieX is not by any means the most 'formidable ship in the Turkish navy, but, as only the little Messudieh has been sent up the coast to replace her, one. infers that the water offshore must be shoal for, some distance out, and that more formidable vessels cannot edge in close enough to efficiently observe the effect of the fiie. ' With Nazim's : flanks so the problem for the Bulgarian commanders would naturally be that- of breaking the Turkish centre, for an army has only to make one breach in an enemy's line to.turn two"flanks at once... ,The.,heayy; artillery: duel, mentioned far recent\"cabies J is'evidence that this was the bloody work to which the Bulgarian soldiers were bending their energies -when the halt came, and the peace pourparlers began. Breaking a fortified centre is an interesting operation, to ; say nothing of ' its niore dreadful aspects. There is first a' heavy ■ artillery fire,. which may' last for days (or weeks), and a gradual, steady, pushing forward of the infantry from position ,to position. . Behind all this heavy reserves are massed- in ominous blocks, and, when the time comes for Bending them forward, it only becomes a question of.feeding wave: after wave of' men into the fight.. If enough "waves" are forthcoming at the last, the battle is won.

Hera one comes to the real meaning of Chatalja. To feed in sufficient waves of men, the presence of the Servian armyengaged in direct conjunction with the Bulgarians—would now be desirable. If the Chatalja centre is broken, Constantinople falls, and the war ends, but, as far as we know, the Servian army is still far away, locked up in the struggle round Monastir'with Zeki Pasha, and so kept—much against its will—divergent to Chatalja, which' is 'the main operation. Zeki Pasha has done excellent service for Turkey by keeping the' Servian army sidetracked all this time, or, rather Von der Goltz has, for one can hardly conceive that this excellent major strategy, had its birth in the brain of a Turk. •. Out of all these various considerations we., merely arrive back at three mossgrown principles in strategy which held good in the days when Joshua. overthrew the Canaanites, and will hold good to the end of time, no matter how "modern" tlio- weapon in the hands of the soldier happens to be. The first principle is that divergent operations never did, and never will do any good in war. This is sufficiently illustrated by the present position of the Servian army. It hardly matters how much they hammer Zeki so long as they are kept away from the Vicinity of Chatalja. The second principle ' is'that an army which is thrust into ; a. funnel—a re-entrant—is heavily, handicapped. This wa3 the position of Sir George White's army in Natal in 1899, and, as we know, he was totally enveloped. The same difficulty has now halted the Bulgarian army, for it is in a funnel with .fhe sea on each side. ' The third principle is that an army, once committed to the offensive, must keep the offensive whatever the cost in life may be, and, when a halt (such as .the'present) happens, one may safely deduce that toinetbiing has gone wrong. The same thing happened to the Japanese in 1904. They forced a passage of. the Yalu in May; and then came to a dead standstill until September, when the battle of Liao Yang came on. Something had gone wrong, and, although it was not known then it is beginning to be known now—five out of the six Japanese battleships had been struck by underwater explosions, and two of them had been sunk. For a time the Japanese commanders hardly knew whether it would be safe to continue the war or not. Are these principles—so well in Germany—well-known by British generals? One fears not. In giving evidence before the Elfrin Commission on tlie' Boer iAVar, Lord Methuen stated that, had lie Wen successful at Magersfontein; liis_ instructions were to remove-, the gartison from Kimberley and retirs .'south to" the Orango River. That is .to : say, thaVhaving committed his army to .the.offensive, lie proposed, after a certain tiling had happened, to deliberately abandon tho operation begun! It rather makes one hold his head and think hard....