PROGRESS OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 255, 16 July 1918, Page 4

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

The .continued, delay of the German offensive on the West front is naturally occasioning a good deal of comment and speculation. If tho enemy allows a few niore days to pass without setting his shock troops in motion the present interval between one active phase of .the offensive and another will be the longest since he opened his initial drive towards' Amiens, in March. Twentyseven clays in which he attempted no major action elapsed between the termination of his westward tb'rust into the Lys salient and his attack on tho Chenrin des Dames. Yesterday was the twenty-fifth day since he was brought definitely to a standstill on the Montdidier-Noyon front. There are substantial reasons, however, for regarding the present pause as more significant than that which followed his ineffectual effort in April to reach Hazebrouck and Bethunc.' In particular, with half, or rather more than half, of the season of good campaigning weatly. , ffono, the enemy is bound to attain increased importance to obtaining cumulative effect in his offensive blows—that is to say, to making one attack as far as possible pave thefor and facilitate another. Should tho present pause lengthen out to the longest of the. campaign, fairly convincing evidence will be afforded that tho enemy has abandoned all hope of destroying the stability of the Allied line by a series of _ heavy Mows, delivered in tho quickest possible succession. There is already suggestive evidence that ho no longer hopes to gain his end by this method. It is so much the more likely that the attack which is generally believed to be imminent will he one of maximum violence and intensity. Apart from the likelihood that the enemy is illpleased with the results achieved in his divergent blows on different sections of the front, , and is disturbed at finding his task becoming more difficult, instead of easier, as he proceeds, it is* evident that the one thing which will justify his present delay and compensate its disadvantages is a scale of preparation which will cn-iblc him to exceed and surpass his past efforts.

In view of these considerations, M. Marcel Htitin's'prediction that the enemy will attack within eight days, on a front of more than twenty-five miles, must he set down as in some respects a conservative estimate of possibilities. The expectation now raised, on the grounds touched upon and others, is that the enemy's next blow will bo a culminating effort into which he will throw all available forces. Taking this course, he may easily attack on a front of considerably more than twenty-five miles, since, unless his strength h now much below that in which ho opened his offensive in March, a front of about twenty-five miles would hardly afford him scope in which to bring the maximum forces at his disposal rapidly to bear. It has been stated, apparently on sound information, that in his drive on Amiens, and again in Tfie thrus , -- which produced the Lys salient, the enemy employed all the men and guns it was possible to brin" into the battle area in a given time. On this point an English military writer observed recently:— "When nimours aro circulated that very much larger forces are likely to bo employed next time on tta same sectors, the existence of a limit or maximum is apparently forgotten. Yon employ, let us say, 10,000 men to the mile. According to some, it should be perfectly easy, if you have the forces, to increase that total per mile to 20,000. You have merely to double the depth of your assaulting columns. Yes, but supplies and the transport of munitions,have to be doubled also, and the troops in front have to be supplied as well as the troops in the rear. How is it to bo done when 10,000 men per mile represent the extent to which roads and railways can be utilised? It is simply the old problem of squeezing a quart into a pint pot. And if despite such an attempt there be I a check, the confusion becomes worse confounded. The confusion is bad enough in all conscience with' the ' }0,000. It staggers imagination to picture the effects with the hypothetical 20,000." These remarks serve to emphasise the point that tli» expectation of an enemy offensive of maximum power and violence practically Hssumes that it will be delivered on an exceptionally long front.

No recent prediction has been made in regard to tho. area in which the enemy blow is likely to fall, but the considerations winch make it likely that' the enemy will engage in a maximum effort equally suggest that lie is' likely to select the 'most direct route possible to the most important objective in siprht. It is hardly in doubt thn.t this objective is Amiens, and although the very facts which suggest a renewed »t----tempt on Amiens may supply (bo German command with a reason for choosing an alternative, it obviously has strong motives for ordering ail attack on Mm direct approaches to Amiens, or on one or other of tlio flanking sectors on north and south where any considerable progress l>y the German armies would nlako the defence by the Allies of the -ositiony dircdly covering Amiens ciifiicult, if not impossible.

The fact' is emphasised in one of to-day's messages that apart from

its bearing on the Macedonian campaign as a whole, the Allied advance in Albania has an important bearing 011 the naval position in the Adriatic. The northward advance of the Allies threatens Durazzo, a port which is of great value to the enemy as a submarine base. Tl:c Allies are still about forty miles from Durazzo, but they arc less than twcnt.v-Tivo miles , distant from the road by which it is in touch with the interior country, and in recent fighting- they have covered an equal distance in tho space of about a week. A glance at the map will show the importance* of Durazzo to the enemy. Being only about eighty miles north of the Strait of Otranto, it is admirably placed as a base for submarines and surface torpedo craft employed in raiding the Allied communications in the Adriatic narrows. Driven out of Durazzo, the A'nstrians would have no good haw south ofCattaro, which i? on. the Montenegrin coast about a hundred miles north of Durazzo. The capture of the latter place would therefore tend in an important degree to restrict the Austrian naval forces to the Northern Adriatic, and correspondingly lighten Allied naval responsibilities.