PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2685, 3 February 1916, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

It is a little startling to be told after many months of successful blockade that a German raider—an extemporised cruiser apparently—is at large, and that half a dozen ships have been sunk or captured in the great Atlantic sea-route over which a considerable proportion of the British overseas _ traffic passes to and fro' Yet this news affords no legitimate ground for surprise. The British Navy has worked wonders in elearing the seas and winning almost perfect immunity for the sea traffic of Britain and her Allies, but the oceans are very wide ancl neutral ports are legion. "With all that the British and Allied Navies can do, a wide field of opportunity is open' to Germany in the way of' sccrctly fitting out ships devoted to commerce destruction. _ It is on the whole rather-surprising that such scant use has been made of this opportunity. The circumstances a.vguo a lack of enterprise on the part of the German naval authorities even if full account

is taken of-that part of the naval activities of the Allies which consists in keeping the closest possible ivatch on neutral ports and on all places where German intrigue ancl conspiracy are likely to gain a footing. Tho appearance ancl exploits of the Moewe do not imply that the Navy has lost its stranglehold or that any material change has occurred in _ the conditions of the sea-war —conditions which involve for Germany the obliteration of her sea commerce and the confinement of her war fleet in its harbours of refuge. All that has happened is that an armed ship has somehow and somewhere been smuggled out of a neutral port, and has entered upon a career of commerce destruction which. is likely _to he brief. So long as it is possible to set bribery ancl corruption against the faithful observance of international law such incidents are liable to occur, but the protective measures taken by the Admiralty should furnish an ample guarantee against their assuming at any time undue importance. A commerce-raider cannot well strike a blow without advertising its position and assisting such a pursuit as is doubtless by this time hot on the heels of the Moewe.

Naturally, the Moewe is for the time being a ship of mystery. The most obvious explanation of the facts is that she has been smuggled out of some neutral port, possibly in South or Central America, but at the moment evidence of her identity is lacking. Several German ships named Moewe appear in Lloyd's Register. The only one of any size is a steamer of twelve hundred tons. She is equipped with wireless and submarine-signalling apparatus, but does not figure _ in the speed lists which cover ships of twelve knots and upwards, so that unless she has been accidentally overlooked in the compilation of these lists she is hardly the type of steamer the Germans would settle upon in selecting a com-merce-destroyer. In the absence of aty,' better explanation it seems likely that they have rechristened some other ship, no doubt the fastest they could lay their hands upon. They had a gunboat named the Moewe, which was sunk in August last j'ear, and it is possible that her name has boon passed on to the solitary representative of the German Navy known to be at large in tho outer seas. One message states that a German submarine captured a prize, put a crew and guns aboard, and used it to capture the liner Appam. This is a very unlikely story, and it is made more so by the supplementary statement that the submarine sank an Australian me<it_ ship (apparently the Clan MacTavish), taking off the passengers. Such transport feats as are here attributed to a submarine are beyond the compass of any known' vessel of that type. Some of tho later submarines carry a four-inch gun, and such a weapon might conceivably be transferred to a surface ship, though the mounting would present difficulties. But a ship so armed would be in poor case to copo with the resistance even of an armed liner, and the gun would have been much more effective in such service if retained on board_ the submarine. On the evidence visible it romains probable that the Germans have succeeded in obtaining_ and arming an auxiliary cruiscr in some neutral port.

Interest in the further proceedings of the Moewo is almost overshadowed at the moment by questions concerning her prizx:, the West African liner Appam, which has bewi sent into the American port of Newport News. Captured off the Canary Islands, the liner, with a prize crew on board, successfully ran the gauntlet of the British Atlantic patrols. That the ocean passage was accomplished in safety is perhaps less remarkable than that the ship passed without hindrance into an American port. According to recent American newspapers, strong British cruiser patrols are being maintained outside the United States territorial waters. The chief question now to be settled concerns the status of the prize, and her right to take shelter for an indefinite period in an American port. Taking the Hague Convention as a guide, the international regulations governing this matter appear to be so clear that it is not easy to understand why American State Department should have any difficulty in determining the status _of the Appam. Regulations .governing the right of entry of prizas into neutral ports are embodied in Section 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907, to which Britain, the United States, and Germany are signatories, though of the three only Germany has_ ratified the section in full. Britain and the United States have signed it with reservations. The United States has signified adhesion which has the effect of ratification. Britain as yet is bound. b v v none of the provisions of tho section, _ since she has only signed it tentatively, and Jias withheld the formal ratification which would make her a party as to a binding agreement. The essential point at the moment seems to be that the United States has entered into .a binding agreement as regards certain articles of the section governing the rights of prizes in neutral ports. These articles arc 21 and 22, the first of which provides that a prize may only be brought into a neutral port on account of unseaworthiness, stress of weather, or want of fuel or provisions, and that it must leave as soon as the circumstances wh'ich justified its entry are at an end. Failing this, the neutral Power must order it to leave at once, and should it disobey must release the prize, with its officers and crew, and intern the prize crew. Article 22 provides that a neutral Power must release a prize brought into one of its ports in the absence of the justifying circumstances set forth in Article 21.

Accepting these conditions as binding, the United States has declined to endorse Article 23, which provides that a neutral Power may allow prizes to enter its ports and roadsteads when they are brought there to bo sequestrated pending the decision of a Prize Court. This being so, the only course open to the United States would seem to be to order the Appam to sea, either immediately or within a limited period, which would doubtless mean her early recapture by the British patrol. It is reporteel that instead the State Department is uncertain whether to intern the Appam or" not, and, further, that Me. Lansing will probably favour the . reference of the whole question to the German Prize Court. It is not surprising to be told on top of this that complications are expccted. Unless the predictions quoted are merely speculative. the United States is contemplating a course of action for which neither warrant nor precedent seems to exist. Internment of the Appam and reference of the question of the vessel's status to the German Prize Court would amount to an apparent breach of the regulations to which,

the United States has signified its' forma] adhesion. If a doubt exists as to the validity of this view of the matter it must presumably rest upon the facts that (ireat Britain has not formally agreed to any one of the three articles citcd (though she has tentatively accepted those by which the United States . is bound), and that Germany has agreed to bo bound by all three articles, including that which provides that a prize may be taken into a neutral port and there sequestrated pending the decision of a Prize Court. If the United States considers that the status of the Appam is affected by the position of Great Britain and Germany in regard to the Convention, a legal tangle exists which may take a lot of unravelling. The venturesome voyage of the Appam across the Atlantic was perhaps undertaken in the hope of throwing down a bone of contention between Britain and America, and it seems not impossible that the hope may be to some extent realised.

It is to be hoped that the report that the British Consul at New York has warned British shipping of the danger from submarines in American waters is an unfounded rumour. If it has any foundation in fi.ct it points to a state of affairs which should bo capable of speedy remedy, German submarines could scarcely operate in American waters except by receiving supplies from ships clearing American ports. This would call for instant and drastic action by the American Government which would certainly not. be withheld. _ It is possible, of course, that there is nothing in the story,

Opinion as to the rate at which the German reserves of man-power are being exhausted necessarily rests to some extent, though not by any means wholly, upon a basis of conjecture, and widely different estimates of the enemy's total losses to a recent date have lately been published. The estimate credited today to Mr. Warner Allen, the representative of the British 'Press with the French armies, may deserve all the more attention since it lies midway between two extremes, and also because Mr. Allen is in an exceptionally favourable position to scrutinise the available evidence. He is in more or less close touch with the French Staff, which from the outset has been at pains to obtain and collate the most reliable evidence regarding enemy losses. Mr. Allen's estimate that the Germans are losing 200,000 per month dead or permanently disabled is not new. Writing some time /ago, he estimated the German monthly avn-age of permanent and temporary losses during the first fifteen months of war at 300,000, of which number, he estimated, not more than one-third was able to return to the front. The interest of his present communication is in its computation of remaining German reserves. The reserve of 800,000 men,_ which he says Germany had available at New Year, presumably consists of the 1916 and 1917 classes—men who reached the ages of 19 and 18 last year. They constitute a valuable reserve of excellent quality, inferior only to men in the full vigour and prime of life, but it is to be observed that authorities who agree with Mr. Allen as to the strength of the 1916-17 classes, notably Mr. Belloc, main-: tain that Germany has kept this reserve in hand only at the cost of diluting her field armies during the winter campaign with much inferior personnel—men too old to make good soldiers or of indifferent health and physique.

Bearing in- mind that Mr. Allen reaches a conclusion midway between those who form an extremely high, and those who. form an extremely low, estimate of German losses, his observations quoted to-day point convincingly to a very serious depletion of the enemy's man-power. He credits the Germans with having reserves sufficient to keep_ up the numerical strength of their armies, with a net wastage of 200,000 per month, until August. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind tho distinction between numerical and effective strength. Only half of the 1,600,000 men whom Mr. Allen believes to bo available can be classed as effective reserves. The 800,000 men of the IAI6-17 cltsses would make good the wastage.of war at what he computes to be the present rate of. permanent loss for only four months. * The other 800,000 men consist of those who have been declared unfit for service and of those to be obtained by raising the age-limit to 54. Mr. Allen suggests that these men would serve as sccond-line troops, implying, perhaps, that better reserves would thus bo made available for active service. But the question must arise whether Germany has not already watered down the quality of her garrison and line of communication troops, more especially as evidence is not wanting that she has already had recourse to inferior material in reinforcing her field armies.' Some of the questions , involved are complex and shrouded in obscurity, but the opinion is held by some authorities of standing that the 1916-17 classes represent Germany's last remaining effective reserves. If this is the case her power of effective reinforcement will cease with the exhaustion of these classes. Using old men and weaklings to fill the gaps_ in her ranks, Germany might maintain the numerical strength of her armies for some time longer, but their effective strength would not be maintained in anything like a corresponding degree, This factor is so important that even if Germany still has the whole of her 1916-17 classes to draw upon she may have already passed her period of maximum strength.

An opinion that President "Wilson's recent intimation that the United States was prepared to go to war if necessary in defence of its liberty and honour was not addressed to Germany only is endorsed by the Washington correspondent of the Morning Post, who should know what he is talking about in this matter. Though, he paints, no sensational or alarmist jncture, the situ--1 ation as he presents it affords ground for some anxiety. President Wilson, he thinks, though bent in the first instance on reaching a settlement of some kind with Germany, is as ready to make a major grievance of England's blockade measures as of Germany's submarine outrages. It must be confessed that apart from whatever weight the correspondent's estimate of the position carries on its own account, it receives not a little support from a comparison of the Notes which the United States has addressed to Britain and to Germany. In America itself the jibe has gone about that Uncle Sam has mado as much noise in his dispute about dollars with England as in his dispute with Germany about his citizcns murdered on the high seas. Juefc how the existing situation will!

develop under President. Wilson's handling remains to be seen, but in its present shape it certainly does not warrant an outlook of careless optimism. _ Britain would doubtless make no difficulty about owning that a conflict, or even a disagreement, with America is the last thing she desires, but effective block-adc is one of her most vitally important assets towards winning the war, and if America attempts to seriously challenge the right of effective blockade, England will be faced by the most serious problem that the war has yet raised.

There is at the moment a singular absence of campaign news which may conceivably cloak even more important developments than have lately been astir in the Western theatre. One notable item, ; not however official, is to the effect that a Turkish army corps, based on Constantinople, is to reinforce the Turks at Erzerum, instead of going to Mesopotamia. _ For what jt is worSn this is an indication going to confirm others recently afforded that the Allies are making their weight tell with effect in the tentative and preliminary operations as yet under way in the Near and Middle East.