THE BIG OFFENSIVE
A WRITER SPECULATES ON THE causes' IS IT THE REAL THING? Australian-New Zealand Oablc Association, (Rec. August 15, 11.40 p.m.) , Sydney, August 15. The Sydney_ "Sue's" London correspondent, writing on July 6, gives an extremely interesting resume of most of tlie facts which forced the Allied offensives. "These," lie said, "were noti the carefully-planned, general attack ivhich was to be. the beginning of the end, but were due to the necessity of relieving other positions against AustroGerman attacks. When tlie Austrians were within sight of' the Venetian plains, Italy appealed to Russia, who wanted some months yet before, the vast effort which the General Staff was preparing could bo made. Russia sent the word along the line, General Brusiloff accepted the hint, and struck and shattered Austria's southern armies. Meanwhile the enemy was within an ace of taking Verdun, owing to his new artillery methods. Germany was still far better supplied with heavy. ' guns than •_ we; and she' struck so hard in her fn;st -attack that the French dyided to evacuate the fortress. Tiiis decision was countermanded when General Castelnau arrived, and ordered the famous counter-attack which drove tho Germans east of Port Douaumont, General Joffre had been fiercely assailed in the French Parliament for ordering the evacuation a fortnight ago. Verdun had" all but fallen, and the French troops in the outer lines, were completely exhausted. Tho supreme crisis arrived, and if three days' heavy rain had not fallen, and so enabled th'e French to change the companies in tlie outer works, Verdun would have fallen. This was the time that strong appeals were made to Britain for an offensive. Germany knew about these appealsfew things in Paris are hidden from the spies._ Before M. Briand (the French Premier) and General Joffre arrived in London upon their mission,'the news was published in the German Press. We would have liked at least another two months' preparation. We had not nearly reached our maximum; strength; the conscripted drafts had not been trained to their full efficiency, nor Had we all the supplies of heavy guns and shells desired before we em-' barked upon a supreme effort. We were ready for a serious, solid push, but {Tie' offensive nevertheless was Torced by the German offensive elsewhere. [The above dispatch is published for what it is worth, but it may safely beassumed that it is more speculation on the pars of the writer.]
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19160816.2.25.13
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2851, 16 August 1916, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
403THE BIG OFFENSIVE Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2851, 16 August 1916, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Dominion. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.