Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star THURSDAY, JULY 31st., 1919. A YEAR OLD STORY.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1919, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star THURSDAY, JULY 31st., 1919. A YEAR OLD STORY.

I Many stories relating to the war will byears old before they are revealed and something that was a mystery is made clear and manifest to all. The full story can be revealed only by instalments. There is so much to tell, that descending to details, vohimes* will b? required to supply the information tin public would desire. Bit by bit the inside story of the war is being given out, and the latest volume of Buchan’s - “History of the War” deals with the brilliant naval raids on Zcebrugge and Ostend, the Austrian offensive against Italy in 1918, and the operations on the AVestern front from the great Gemini offensive in*thc spring to Foch’s counter stroke at the second battle of the Marne, which once and for all determined the issue of the war. Perhaps the most interesting chapters are those relating to the dark days of the retreat , •of tile Fifth Army, about which there . I have been so many ugly rumours, it [has been whispered that there was .1 failure of leadership, and a lack of resolution on the part of the rank and file. • buPMr Buchan disposes effectually of those suggestions. He declares that the Fifth Army was set a task utterly be- t yond its powers and made a most heroic and stubborn resistance. The wonder | is not that it gave ground, but that t j held so long, and when the full history of tlie war comes to be written its re- . lirement will be regarded as not unworthy to rank with the retreat from Mens. Tn the spring of 1918 the Germans had their Western armies largely nnnncntod by troops from the Russian rout; they had, unknown to llie Allied

commands, developed a new offensive tactic, that of “infiltration,” which die existing defences had not been organised to meet. In the angle of the La Fere salient, Ludendorff had an ideal “jumping-off” place, because, although the Allies would he aware of ally concentration they eoud not know on which side of the salient the blow would fall, and the ultimate surprise was made more effective by the heavy fog which covered the earlier stages of the attack. The Allies, on the other hand, were dangerously weak in man-power; France could make no further effort; the Americans were neither trained nor in full force in France; the British line was thin, the Fifth Army, indeed, had alone to hold a front of over forty-one miles. When the offensive was launched the German superiority in numbers soon became apparent. In the first attack six-ty-four German divisions engaged thir-ty-two British (those of the Fifth and Third Armies). This ratio of two to one eoptinued to well into April, when, ns the result of the summary abandonment of the policy of keeping a force in Britain to repel an invasion 355,000 men had been sent across to France. Clearly no army could hold its ground fighting continuously day after day in circumstances of such extreme disadvantage. “The cause of the defeat,” Air Buchan declares, as his considered judgment, “was not any blunder on the part of the British High Command. Sir Douglas Haig, with the troops at his disposal could not have done otherwise than lie did. ... As for Sir Hu-

bert Gough, who suffered most in lepute, there was no single flaw in ais conduct of the retirement. The cause of the defeat was simply that a long front had been imposed upon gir Douglas Haig without sufficient men wherewith to hold it. There were troops to spare in Britain, and beyond doubt had these troops been available befoVe March 21st the German thrust would have been parried at the start. It is a futile business to apportion blame amid the infinite accidents of war; but it is very certain that whatever discredit attached to the retreit from St Quentin, it did not fall upon the British soldier.”