PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 124, 12 February 1918, Page 6

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Several items of news to-day tend to support recent predictions that Germany, as soon as weather and ground permit, will muster her remaining resources in a tremendous effort for victory. Lokd_ Reading, who has gone to the United States ns British Ambassador, is credited with the statement that tho next few months will be the most critical of the war, and observations by President Wilson and by Adikiul. Lord Jellicoe, which were published yesterday, indicate that this opinion is general amongst those wno are exceptionally well placed to weigh the facts. Testimony of thia kind is not to be lightly set aside, but it must be recognised that it owes its force largely to the fact that the main trend of tho war has turned very decidedly against the cuoray. A point lias been reached at which tho men and factions in Germany who bear responsibility for the war and all its horrors may quite conceivably prefer tho moat desperate gambling venture to a prolongation of the strugglo by a more prudent, policy. Given their way, theso criminals, to whom defeat would in all likelihood connote at least destruction of the place and standing they ha.ve hitherto enjoyed, would almost certainly prefer to spin out tho war in the hope of ultimately exhausting the resolution of the Allies. If Germany, within the next few weeks, throws all her available resources _ into an offensive of maximum violence by land, sea, and air, tho best possiblo evidence will be afforded that the men who made the war feel that they are nearing the end of. their tether.

Thk appalling conditions in Germany and Austria described by a United Press correspondent in messages published yesterday and to-

day would in themselves amply account for a determination on the part of the Prussian military clique to stake everything upon an offensive whilo that course is still possible. Economic distress and political dissension are- in any case superimposed upon a military situation which is nowhere even faintly hopeful from Germany's point of view. Her prospects, if she- should now throw all her energies into an attempt to force a decision, are measured by her overwhelming defeats in the Western campaign—defeats which have brought her perilously near to having to meet the Allies on even terms, shorn of the enormous advantages she formerly derived from the occupation of dominating positions on practically every vital section of the front—by the' continued decline of tho submarine campaign, and by her present inferiority in the air and the assured prospect that the Allies will heavily outclass whatever new aerial forces she may bring to Icar.

A London message to-day declares that the French and British forces in the Western theatre, without the Portuguese, retain a slight superiority in'numbers. The form of tho message suggests that it has possibly been mangled in transmission. The Portuguese constitute a very small portion of the total Allied forces on tho West frontprobably not more than two divisions. Perhaps the statement originally made was that the French and British, irrespective of Americans, Belgians, and Portuguese, retain a slight superiority. It is improbable in any caso that the- Germans have contrived to concentrate forces in the Western theatre closely approaching in strength that of the French and British armies combined. According to best available information Germany has uo more than three and a half million effective troops (irrespective of those necessarily employed on transport and other services in the interior) available for service in all theatres, and the aggregate FrancoBritish strength on the West front should exceed that of Germany not by a slight but by a very considerable margin.

It is to the point, also, that. Germany is by no moans so freed from embarrassments in Russia as to bo in a position to withdraw all troops from that theatre. As Lord Robert Cecil has observed, tho attitude of the Bolshevik leaders ct Brest Litovsk docs not se.em to be consistent with past and current allegations (hat they are in German pay. The explanation offers that Lenin, Trotsky, and their associates were in German pay, but have now turned against their taskmasters; but there does not seem to be any doubt that Germany is now actually being thwarted in Russia. Her latest move in the Eastern theatre has apparently been to concentrate upon f.n attempt to intimidate and dispose of Rumania, but at time --it writing the outcome is not disclosed.