THE ROOTS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2664, 8 January 1916, Page 12

THE ROOTS OF WAR

AND THE STRUGGLE OF ENDURANCE [By A.G.G. in the "Daily News."] We have all been talking our hardest this week about c.oney and the need of economy. It ;s a hopeful sign, for it shows that wo are beginning to understand tho bedrock fact of the struggle. That our grasp of that fact should be belated and uncertain is regrettable, but not unnatural. War is an experimental affair. It is not a formula but a convulsion. It is no more like'the calculable processes of normal' times than the blowing of the Cloth Hall at l'pres to pieces by high explosive shells was lilco the slow building up of that great monument of the past, victory is often disguised as defeat, and defeat as victory. Hannibal at the gates of Rome was victorious and beaten; Napoleon at Moscow had gained his military object and lost his career. For three years tho Peninsular campaign was regarded as a hopeless enterprise by the critics of tho Government in England. But in the end it was found that the Peninsular campaign was the ulcer, which had sapped the Napoleonic system. Tho lines of Torres Vedras seemed inglorious inaction; but it was in the lines of Torres 'Vedras that Wellington laid"tho foundations of final victory. Waterloo was only the cop.ing stone.

The First Phase. And in spite of the years of preparation and the wonderful efficiency of his machine, the Kaiser has shown himself as incapable as Napoleon of foreseeing, much less of controlling, the wayward and incalculable events of war. History will say where the mortal blow was struck—whether at the Marne, at l'pres, before Dvinsk, or elsewhere. It is the opinion of M. Vcnizelos—an opinion 011 which he has based his glorious struggle in Greece —that it' was ! struck at tho Marne, that from, that I moment the Kaiser's chances of victory were at an end, that a new phase of tile war was ontered on which, however, prolonged, and whatever the fluctuations, could only result in disaster for the Central Powers. What he meant was, I think, very admirably represented by Mr. Balfour at the Guildhall this week. Germany s enormous initial advantages had to be realised at once if they were to be realised at all. Those advantages were: (1; The immediate superiority in men, material, and military initiative, (2) interior lines of action which gave all those superior resources tlie maximum of instant value and mobility, (3) unity of control. .The Kaiser's plan of campaign was based on the assumption that these factors ivould assure him a iour de force that would end .the struggle. The battle of the Marne knocked that plan to pieces, denied the Kaiser his tour do force, and changed the character of the war. It was to have been a knock-out blow in th 9 first round; it became a tug-of-war, from which the factors of surprise and shock were eliminated, and m which the power to endure was the dominating element.

The second Phase. In that power the Kaiser knew himself to be ultimately inferior. Tho advantage of numbers would in tho course of a year pass to the Allies; the advantage of unity of control, though always with him, would be qualified by the tendency of the Allies to see that all their efforts must be co-ordinated, and that they must hang together to avoid being hanged separately; 1 that the advantage in munitions would pass to the side which had the furnaces of America, arid Japan as well as the resources of England &t.its command; tliat the advantage of , interior■' lines would vanish and the advantage of exterior lines slowly begin to operate; that his central position, so valuable for a tour de force at the beginning could become only a prison in a war of endurance. Sea Power. In a word, he saw tho shadow of the British Navy. Under the protection of that Navy the power of his enemy would grow while his own power, after reaching its early maximum, would decay. 'lo prevent tho last word, being with the Navy lie has used his. resources with apparently reckless prodigality in order to get a decision. But it was calculated prodigality,, for he knew that the longer the decision was delayed tho more certain it was to go against him. He sought a decision in tho West and failed, in the Bast and failed. And now his hopes aro fixed on the diversion in tho Balkans to which he looks for that dramatic success which will give him, not victory as he would have understood it fifteen months ago, but a chance of oscaping .from tho doom that approaches. Ho looks to it, we may bo sure, as tho means of snatching the best terms of peace before the exhaustion of his power has become manifest, and beforo the last opportunity has gone of bargaining on the basis of an equal. He knows very well that, whatever success he has in the Balkans, it will not do tho essential things. It will not restore to him the advantage of numbers or material; it will not. supply him with the wool, the rubber, the fats and tFe other necessaries of which he is in want; abovo all, it will not remove tho pressure of sea power Which envelops him in its deadly folds, tf he reaches the Aegean, or even tho Persian Gulf, lie will find the British Navy in possession, just as it is', in possession of the North Sea end tho Baltic. in a-very real 3ense, in fact, it may bo said that on the day that Von Kluck turned back from the Marne the British Navy beilame the chief actor in the war; It was not recognised then, because it is only the visible achievements of war that a,re at once measureable, and tho achievements of the Navy aro invisiblo. Tliey operate with the silence and secrecy of a force of nature.

A Parallel. The course of the war may in some measure be paralleled by the case of the American Civil War. If that strug§le could have been brought to a swift ecision tie South would have won. Their supwiority in generalship and impetus at the beginning was overwhelming. From Bull's ltun until the defeat at Gettysburg Leo's armies had a succession of dazzling victorios, and had lie won at Gettysburg he would probably have won the war. He himself, if I remember aright, expressed that view at the same time that he said that ho would have won tlie battle if Stonewall Jackson, wlio had boeh killed in the hour of victory at Chancellorsvillo, had been by his side. But ho lost, and thenceforward the superior potentialities of the North began to tell. In a war of exhaustion the South had no chance, and, as in the presont case, it was tlio superiority of the North at sea that largely turned, the scale. Lancashire starved to give tiie North tho victory. The blockade of tho southern ports deprived the South of their trade in cotton with Lancashire and of their power of supplying their elemontary needs. Lee's campaign against Grant in the Wilderness was' one of tho greatest achievements in the records of generalship, but ho was a beaten man all tho sinio. Ho was a beaten mail because the South had no trade, and therefore no money and no means of competing witli tho groat resources of tho North. Mo failed Imcausc, in spito of his victories, ha did nut briiiff Lincoln to tho point of Mir. render in tho lint two years, He failed, iis jvar, ti£ beiiiu; jnu

longed, was dccided, uot by military but by economic forces. The War of Resources. . he said that there is 110 parity between the resources of the Central Powers, and those.of the Southern otates. In magnitude, of course, there is not; but relatively there is. Moreover, great as the resources of the Central Powers are, they have been spent with unexampled extravaganco in order to lorco ail early issue. And that expenditure has certainly not achieved anything comparable with the success which the South had) up to Gettysburg. But the essential point) of comparison is this, that, like the South, Germany has to face a war of exhaustion with the whole of the resources of the external world closed to hor 'and opon to ■her enemies. It is probable that the Kaiser had a very much earlier appreciation of the full meaning of tho Lattlo of the Marno than we in this country had. When lie say t'hat his "spring" had failed lie. knew that ho was threatened with a war of resources which, if allowed to proceed to tlio end, must go against llim. For more than a year lie Las been struggling by crashing blows to prevent that development, and again ho has failed. But there is one particular in which tho terror that overshadows him has stood him in good stead. lie has been preparing for the lean time that approaches. Ee has not dared it is true, to tax his Junkers, but he lias put the nation on rations. "Trada or Viotory?" We, on the other hand, have hardly now come to realise the nature of the new phase of the war on which we entered with the defeat of the Germans at the Marne. Wo began bv thinking of war only in the terms of the number men that could be put in the field. Then we realised. that to be of any value they must be armed and supplied 011 a scale without precedent and that the man and the woman in the factory -was as necessary as the man in the trench. We are now slowly coming to see that in the last resort the war of endurance is a war of money and of the control over resources which money gives. Both Houses of Parliament have resounded this week with the alarms of those who are alivo to the gravity of tho financial position and the startling demands that aro being made on our productive capacity. But even now there are Mad Mullahs amongst us who cry out, in tho words of tho military correspondent of "The Times"r-"Trade or Victory?" This primitive soul tbinks that trade—-i.e., money—and victory aro alternatives. Is there 110 one to tell him that they are cause andi effect, that you can no more win a victory without money; than you can drivo a Dreadnought without power? Was it not Napoleon who, when asked what was the first thing in war, said, "Gold'' and the second, "More gold ; and the third, "Most gold"? It would be far truer to say that "Trade is'victory," than to suggest that you must destroy trade in order to win victory. ■ If Jefferson Davis could have got liis cotton to Lancashire, Lee's armies would not have been reduced to rags and misery and defeat.

I was talking the other day to a Scotch manufacturer, 500 of whose 2000 workpeople (many of thein women) had enlisted and all of whom are being paid by the firm. "Our profit," ho said, "lws entirely gone, and we are running now at a loss. If more men go we shall have to close down, and I shall go into the Army too, if I am not too old for a commission. It means the end of our business, but if it is necessary I shall not complain." His trade was, he said, chiefly for export. It represented a six-figure credit to the account of this country for paying for tlioso supplies for tho Allies that are coming from all the world. Aro we quite sure that it will be good business from the military point of view to end that credit? The War Basis. This is not a question, as some suppose, of limiting our effort: it is a question of applying our resources in tno most profitable way for the general cause. There are three great generating power stations in the world —England, Germany, and America. _ W& are running two of them, 'for_ it is our credit that keeps the American poworhcuso as well as our own working for the Allies. If our trade goes our power of supplying our Allies and ourselves with the resources of America goes too. Already tho trade balanco has gone against us to the extent of £400,000,000 (Sir George Paish, indeed, estimates it at £600,000,000). If this serious tendency is to be checked there must bo not iess but more energy put into our export, trade. We must redress the balance ill order to assure our command of the goods wo need for the prosecution of .the war. And side by sido with that stimulation of trade we need much more compulsion in the matter of economy and a steru restriction of unnecessary imports. Neither the rich nor the ■poor have been put on the war basis that 'is necessary _to tjiis great emergency. AVo liavo to findrtive nrißms a day and wo have to find it out of our savings. We cannot continue to do that without a much more rigorous economy than has yet been exercised. Voluntary loans, on a high and increasing mto of interest, cannot be raised indefinitely and_ if tlicy are raised through the banks it means not real savings but more paper, a depreciated currency and higher prices. There seems no expedient except to make us all economise by making _ us all pay a percentage of our earnings into the war chest at a small, oven nominal rate of interest. In that way we should realy effect saving, reduce unnecessary spending, and conservo our resources.