The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1939. ALLIES’ MILITARY TACTICS.

Evening Star, Issue 23369, 12 September 1939, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1939. ALLIES’ MILITARY TACTICS.

If it is possible to gain any comfort whatever from the war conditions in Europe it is to be had from the thought that General Gamelin, the Allies’ Commauder-in-Chief on the western front, has no intention of battering impatiently at the Siegfried Line before ho has massed a depth of reserves sufficient to press homo any initial advantage that may be gained in the first great assault. Evidently both the French and the British are resolved on putting into immediate practice the lessons learned in the previous Great War, and are not willing to sacrifice ' lives needlessly in badly-prepared battles. A message from Paris published to 7 day attributes this policy to General Gamelin himself. In 1916 the British push on the Somme, in which the New Zealand Division played its part manfully, is said to have relieved the pressure on the French at Verdun, but it was more difficult to understand what good purpose was served by the prolonged agony of Passchendaele, which came in the autumn of the following year. The people of the democracies will want to hear no more ill-tidings of that kind. In France, and most likely in Northern Europe generally, the weather usually breaks in late September and October, with the result that it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the mobility of field artillery and various types of transport necessary to a successful campaign. How the uncertain tricks of the European autumn will affect the projected attack of the Allies on Germany’s west wall remains to be seen. The enemy’s fortifications are reported to bo not so much a massive front line as a series of strong points running back deeply their own terrain so as to provide places whore reorganisation after,. ; a ,;r,etreat can be carried out and an counterattack prepared. General l Gamelin, having taken all this into consideration, is apparently preparing to launch an offensive on a scale large enough to enable his troops to break clear of the west wall altogether. The -deeper the incision into German territory the greater will be the Allied advantage, and the more sharply will the German people be made to realise that they aye involved in the catastrophe of war. We can but hope that the Generalissimo is right when ho refers to the Siegfried Line as “ marmalade.”

The news from Poland is a little brighter to-day. Perhaps the defenders of that gallant country will yet be able to repeat the tactics of the Germans themselves after the battle of the Marne in the autumn of 1914, when they fell back to the Aisne and took possession of the trenches on which they started construction during their period of advance. After the Marne these fortifications were pressed forward with feverish haste. Peasants and French prisoners were compelled to work on them, and very rapidly a great defensive system was created. It was then that the battle of " the Aisno developed into the stalemate of trench warfare. If the Poles can create this kind of stalemate in the east it would bo of obvious advantage to their Allies in the west. At any rate, the stiffening of the Polish defence makes good reading, and gives rise to the hope that, after all, the retreat hitherto has been in some measure “ according to plan,” a phrase that, in the past has attracted more than a modicum of suspicion. Possibly the claim of the Poles that they have been falling back on their natural line of defence has some basis, as may also a report that forty-five divisions which have not yet been used are behind the lines waiting to execute the General Staff’s plans. A review of the Nazi campaign so far indicates that Hitler hastened his onslaught on the unfortunate smaller nation in the attempt to strike a decisive blow before the coming of tho rains, ■which would most certainly have impeded the progress of his mechanised units. Tho increasing Franco-British pressure on the western front, however, must have had something to do with’ tho sturdier resistance now being put up by tho Poles. At the moment tin position is quite satisfactory from the Allied democracies’ point of view. If the “ status quo ” in the alignment of Powers can be preserved it may be said with confidence that the first blow at Hitlerism will be struck successfully.