PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 94, 14 January 1918, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Much recent news has dealt with political rather than military issues, but it is unlikely that political questions will continue much longer to occupy the centre of the stage. There is suggestive evidence that forces are working in Germany which threaten the Pan-German faction from below, but the Allies would be mad to allow this state of affairs to in any degree influence their policy in conducting the war. They are bound to base all their hopes now, as in the earliest days of the struggle, upon effective military action,.and for practical purposes such evidence as ; is available of political unrest in is simply an encouraging indication that there are definite Hmitjs to German endurance. The internal conditions developing in Germany no doubt tend to shorten the war, but at present there is every prospect that the year which has now opened will witness a struggle 'of ltnyjroeodented violence in the "Western theatre.

This is commonly recognised, but during the last few weeks much greater prominence has been given to the possibility of a German offensive in the AVestern theatre than to the broad facts of the situation or the extent to which it is dominated by the Allies. It is possible to snv very confidently, however, that although it is an open possibility that Germany may attempt another offensive on tho "West front, it would be hopelessly wide of the facts to suggest that she has prospects of profiting by action on these lines or that in anv real sensc_she holds the initiative in the decisive theatre of war. Germany's prospects in a Western offensive are nor, measured by events like the invasion of Italy, but bv the fact- that in the Western theatre her affairs have been soing stcadilv from bad to worse almost from the beginning of the war. Giving his reasons not long ago for believintr that the issue of the war was safe,' General Smuts observed 'that its fate was not decided in Serbia or in Itumania, and would not be decided in Italv. "In the principal theatre of war," he added. Germany has been goinc down hill tneso last'three vears. If she wants to win she must first decide the issue in France and Flanders." Staking her last reserves upon an offensive in the Western theatre, Germany will admit, amongst other thinss. that she feels herself no lonmr able to evade the issue which, as Gkneiui. Smuts puts it. she has been attempting to dodge by adventures in minor theatres. * * * *

The best way of grasping the conditions in which the struggle will be resumed in the Western theatre after the present lull is to consider the events of the past year. It was a year in which the heaviest burdens of the main campaign were shouldered by the British armies, though the French contributed very notably to the task of making the line on which the enemy now stands untenable. A splendid account ot the British achievement was givon by Mr. J. A. Spender, the editor of the Westminster Gazette, on his return from a recent visit to the ridges in Northern France and Flanders from which the Germans were dislodged in a series of the mightiest battles known to history. Speaking first of the recovered territory, he observes that: ■' For the space of fifty miles from south to north it is one immense battlefield, pitted with shell-craters, rent,with vast explosions, drenched with blood, stubbornly reclaimed yard by yard by unflinching will and remorseless preparation, from which all the prancing manoeuvres and brilliant surprises of the old warfare are rigidly excluded. Here a battle has been fought and won which would have decided any other war in history, and which, oven it the day of decisive battles is over, is week by week and day by day having an enormous effect on this war. If the Germans talk of peace, if they protest that they are on the defensive, and begin to speak of war as if it were criminal lunacy, it is here that we may look for the cause. Gorman militarism is getting its lesson on these ridges, and the proof that it can he beaten at its own grim game is sinking in. The word 'ridge' does scant justice to some of these positions. Vimv. Messines, Wytschaote, arc commanding elevations of great expanse, big open clowns, rising above the plain, and opening up wide views over the flat country. Any tyro can see their strategic value. They are high and dry in this land of swamp and mud; they have direct observation over greater tracts cast and west, they make a natural bastion almost continuous for .fifty miles. After coming to. see them you will never trouble again about enemy communiques which represent the withdrawal from these points of vantage as a voluntary cession of negligible territory. A rnoro look at the country gives the lie to that, and the stubbornness with which it has been contested tells its own tale."

Facts which were supplied by Sir Douglas'' Haig a few days ago in a dispatch reviewing the battles of 1917 prior to Oambvai emphasiso the magnitude of the enemy defeat The most notable fact of all is that in the battles fought in Flanders and in Northern France 131 German divisions were defeated by less than half that number of British divisions. It is true that the average German division is now much below the strength of a> British division, but it is a fairly safe conclusion that on an average a German division is not withdrawn from the

fighting front, under such conditions as obtained in the Western theatre during 1917, until it has suffered losses relatively much higher than any British division is allowed to suffer before it is withdrawn for rest and recuperation. It is impossible to read the particulars supplied by the British Com-mander-in-Chief as meaning anything else than that the enemy suffered much greater losses than he inflicted on the attacking armies. This is to be added to the conquest of positions the loss of which has made the Gorman position as a whole desperately anxious and precarious. To take account of the French achievements during tho year certainly does not improve the outlook from the enemy's point of view. There is no room for doubt as to the amount of leeway he would have to recover in order to gain the upper hand in the Western theatre. It is possible in the conditions that exist that Germany may attempt an offensive in the Western theatre i? the hope of usefully supplementing her peace intrigues, or the Pan-Ger-mans may secure tho adoption of this policy as an antidote, for tho time, to popular unrest. But to credit tho enemy with prospects of success in such a venture would be to ignore the great* t events and most clearly established facts of the war.

Looking at the facts it would seem that unless the enemy is able in some miraculous fashion to reverse the present balance of fighting power in the decisive theatre, he must not only fail in offensive tactics, but must seek relief, as ho did last year, by retreating. As Mh. Frank Simonds observes in a recent article in the American Review of Reviews, if the German peace offensive fails, as did that of last winter, then a retirement next spring seems inevitable. Mr. Simonds's observations on this point are interesting and worth quoting. He points out that a six-mile advance on the Softimo in 1916 compelled the Germans to retire over twenty miles on a wide front and to give up more than a thousand miles of French territory. "Another six-mile advance in Flanders," he continues, "would almost certainly compel them to abandon all their hold upon the Belgian.coast and upon industrial Northern France. Finally, once such a retreat had taken place it is probable that the whole Allied effort would be shifted to the Franco-German frontier, in Lorraine, where the present front straddles the frontier, and any considerable advance would bring with it the transfer of operations to German soil. Once Franc* has been freed from the invader, it is improbable that the Allies'will waste time in trying to hack their way through Belgium, when a better road.is at their hand in Alsace and Lorraine, where they are either at the frontier or even across it."

Mr. Simonds offers one _ rather striking piece of evident in support of his conjecture—it is admittedly more—that the Allied offensive plans for this year will cover an invasion of Germany by way of the Lorraine frontier. He points out that the first detachments of Americans sent into the firing line have been located close to the point, cast of Nancv, at which the Rhine-Marne Canal _ crosses the Franco-German frontier. "I visited all this ground in the spring of 1916," he goes on to observe, "getting within two or three miles of Parroy. It is a country of rolling hills, 'clear, swift rivers, considerable forests—one of the largest of which is close to Piirroy (east of Nancy). "In a wide circle about Parroy the villages were destroyed bv the Germans in the invasion.

." . . It may be that the assignment (of the' American troops) is only temporary, and purely for the purpose of training our green troops on a relatively quiet front. But at the least the of Pershing's army in Lorraine, if it he there, must suggest interesting speculations. Would it not be a strange turn of the wheel if American troops should by their campaign win hack for France those provinces lost in 18701 Such a repayment of the debt that Lafayette laid us under would supply one of the romances of all history."' Apart from' romantic possibilities, a direct invasion of Germany would bo like_ ly enough to appeal to the Allies if their primary object of dislodging the enemy from the Belgian coast and from the'industrial areas of Northern France bad been gained. It is noteworthy also that it is from bases in Lorraine that British air squadrons are making the attacks on German centres, which no doubt will develop during the next' few months into a sustained aerial offensive against enemy territory. It certainly seems quite possible that Lorraine may be fated this year, as it was in the' opening days of the war, to witness events of decisive importance.