SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1672, 12 February 1913, Page 4

SCIENCE SIDE OF BALKAN WAR.

CHATALJA LINES,

1 BULWARK OF THE OTTOMANS. [By Gtro.l Mounkir and Nakir, dwellers of the nether gloom (as tho Uleraas and tho Koran have it), ought to bo questioning the souls of the dead at Chatalja soonsay, by Saturday. The black wings of Azrael—Angel of'Deathi—may by then bo flapping hard. Chatalja is the last bulwark of Ottomans. It can only, bo stormed, one would suppose, by major. forms of assault—by pick and shovel work on the slow but deadly sap, by toilsonio digging on insidious approaches, and; parallels.

Will it be stormed? That daponds en-

tirely on the morale of the Turkish army. How dependable is that morale? No one but the all-wise "man in the street" can say.; The assassination of tho Turkish commander-in-chief will certainly not enhance the tactical stendiness of tho' Turkish, army, and, besides that, it has gravely been proposed that one of.the Great Powers should further weaken Chatalja by what is called "a military diversion." The. joint note from the Powers to the Porto hinted that Russia' might invade the vilayets of Asia, and (of course) stop the stream of soldiery which has been marching from Anatolia and other parts of Asiatio Turkey,. to - man Chatalja lines., • . \ ■ . ■ ' '. -. •

r Nazim Pasha -apparently saw that trouble looming, but, liko every other man who sees and thinks a little in ad-

vance of others, ho had to suffer. He was shot. By. whom? . By the "man in the street."

; A weird person, indeed; is'this "man in the street." In bur own country some fraction .of him will not have universal military service because, as'he states, it was "invented by capital." In point of fact, it was first' devised by the working man—the working man of the French Revolution. . He holds, also, that it is the armed; camps of Europo which depreciate national credit in finance. •' In reality that is the very thing which raises'the various national credits. Ho bawls, moreover, that, it is inimical' to the "economic interests of the worker." One may perhaps. be permitted to state'that it is tho only thing.which will eventually save his "job"', from falling into the hands of the steady,' reliable, and altogether righteous t German. . • '.-•.'■ But one can hardly stop him any moro than we could stopi him from weakening Chatalja, fifty per cent, by shooting Nazim. Like the shepherd's dog, which was run over by a locomotive, he has (as the dog's owner said) "a terrible set on .engines." '-.•'■ r: ,

• For the purposes of an invasion of Asiatic Turkey, Eussia would,' after the period of mobilisation (17 days), have tho following : troops available:—Seventh Corps, comprising the 13th and 34th divisions, to sail from, Sevastopol; Eighth Corps, comprising. the.Uth and 15th divisions, to sail from Odessa. The immediate objective would probably lx> Trebizonde. In'addition, tho powerful.Army of the Caucasus,' comprising threo .army corps, would also be sent forward into the theatro of war by land, most of the mobilisation being carried out at Tiflis. .This could all be carried out without appreciably 'weakening-- Eiissia for eventualities with other Powers. ,-'•-, . .'/•'. If,'however, the ancient .Treaty of San Stefano holds good, England is bound to resist, by force of. arms, any attempt tb invade the.vilayets of Asia, and thus wb have ah extremely'farcical position: On the one hand we.havo an entente ofEng--land, .France, and Kussia. ,' Tho lastnamed 'can'probably dissolve the_ Ottoman rulo.in. Europo by- marching, into .tho Ottoman.part of iAsia. On.the other liand ( thbre will be the resistance Of 'Austria and.Germany to such a move by Eussia, and the'pledged active resistance'of England in terms of the Treaty of San'Ste-fano.'-Now, what can poor Russia do? .. Vague as things are inJAsia, tho moves on the board in Eumelia stand out dis-

tinctly. To tho onlooker' the strategy is/'easy," however hard it may be to those, carrying.it- out, for, -in war (as Clausewitz remarks) "every move is simple, but the simplest move is vory difficult.'" A glance backward makes things very interesting'indeed. '.' Rule off a lino on tho map from Mnstapha Pasha, through Adrianople, to Kirk ilCilisse, and you havo the chain of fortified positions—almost a piano front— which was laid down by Turkey on the •advice of that grizzled old Prussian strategist Von dor Goltz. 'I do not sup- | pose that this fortified line- included many permanent works,' "closed at the gorge,", as was the case. at. Port' Arthur. Pro-, bably there would be merely a series of redans, lunettes, and other open works on tho spurs and summits of the hills, with firo trenches for .'infantry on the spurs and at the heads of the valleys. The object of this lino of positions would not bo defensive, but offensive, for German arrangements always look to such an offensive. The idea no doubt was that tho line would prove sufficiently strong to keep the Bnlgnrian army stacked up in front of it, while the Turkish army would be free- to move "by the flank" on offensive enterprises, and;also that there would be easy co-operation in this intended offensive between the Array of the East (Nazim) and the Army of the West' (Zeki), for both enjoyed the splendid advantage of having tho interior lines—tho inside running. Unfortunately for the Turks, strategy is not tho solo thing which decides wars. The ultimate rcferonco is always to the boldness and steadiness of the troops cn : gaged,-- and . the Bulgarians, being tho bolder and steadier, carried Kirk Kilisse almost at the first rush. The loss was as discreditable to tho Rcdif engaged as the Boer storming of Majuba was' to the Highlanders and others who manned the top of that mighty mountain. Kirk Kilissa gone, -tho whole lino of fortified posts' sagged at the kuec3 and, eventually, only its' centre—tho town of, Adrianople—stood; Tho chance was too good to be lost, nnd the Bulgarians pressed on, regardless of loss of-life, and compelled Turkey to fight tho Battle of Lule Burgas.- One is not inclined to share th.B view that this was ■ a Turkish routi Comparatively few men, in this great world of ours, have ever seen a big battle, but tho consensus. of opinion by those who have seen one seems.to bo that if you stand in rear of a great nruvv during a great battle (as the correspondents have to do)-you would generally suppose that the army is routed, so great is the mas 9 of cowards and skulkers who steadily, stream to tho rear, even in tho best of'armies. However, routedor not routed,' Nazim Pasha certainly did lose one important thing—ho lost the ground on which his army stood. Having lost that, the great Turkish advantage of interior lines came to an end.

Tinder the circumstances, Nazim did the next best thing. He'gathered his army insido Chatalja lines, and apparently did his best to restore the.morale of his troops. It was this move which "steadied" Bulgaria sufficiently,to bring on the peace negotiations. ' Unfortunately the "man in the street" in Constantinople bus done his best to undo all this by assassinating Nazim. The effect should bo to undermino the united feeling nnd determination of tho troops manning Chatalja, and that, in the last resort, is everything.

Chataljn, in itself, is an exceedingly strong position. Its flanks are guarded 'by fire from thn warships: fnntnHy it !s so full of fino "fields of fire" that it ought to be able to beat'off attackers for years: it cannot bo starved out: it compels the Bulgarians to commit their army to.a very uncomfortable re-entrant position. And, if the Turkish regimental officers have not Wn dabbling too much in "kismet," but have been sternly reading the "ratcb" and "sura" of the pick and shovel to the men, it ought, by now, to bn as heavily scored with trenches as a street Socialist's speech is with bad English and subordinate clauses.

Glancing through the Now Zealand papers, I notice that there have been plenty of forecasts and prophecies about this war. None of tho "tips ' seem to have worked out anywhere near the truth, and this makes mo rather bold to repeat my only prophecy, mndo in those articles months ago. The "tip" wa«: Democracies, "men in the street," republics, etc., cannot wage war. Generally it can only bo do.no successfully by a single; direction,

partaking of the nature of an absolute monarchy.' The shooting of Nazim,' I think, bears this forecast out. Since writing this article I notice 'that sterner measures are being taken with Adrianople. Naturally: The 60,000, 80,000, or 90,000 Bulgarians detained by this last remnant of the defensive line ordained by Von dor Goltz would be very useful now if they were in front of Chatalja. In its way Chatalja is tho Torres Vedras of 1913. In proper fix, the Turkish army now lining the trenches ought to prove infinitely moro formidable than tho British who manned the original Torres Vedra9 against Marshal Massona. But— and one can hardly, repeat it too often— everything depends on morale.