Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY, NOV, 25th, 1919.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 November 1919, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY, NOV, 25th, 1919.

REVIEWING THE WAR.. The war is getting into history. The exploits of the New Zealanders in the first great campaign and at Gallipoli will be issued shortly in book form. Jp the larger field of action the last volume ,0/ My John Buchan’s “History of the War” is po\y put of the press. The story has been a long one, but it well stands retelling. The struggle wap so vast, its eddies so far-reaching that it is difficult as yet to. see it in proper perspective; Mr Buchan endeavours to reduce it to simplest elements. He regards the first battle of £he Marne as the turning point in the way, >yhieh determined its future character and dictated its strategy. When Germany failed in her original design, to deliver a coup de grace to France before Russia could gather strength she hastily revised her plans. She fell back inside impregnable defences, and being, as she thought self-sufficient and wholly J disciplined, set hprtelf to wear down the spirit of her foes. The war became the-siege of a gigantic fortress, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, and from the North Sea to the Euphrates. There were attacks by the besiegers and sallies by the besieged, Imt the war was essentially static; the former could not break the ' fortifications, the tatter could not pierce 1 ■the encircling ring. With the defection of Russia the position was changed. The . defenders could not throw their whole weight against the beleaguring armies I on the west worn and thinned by their I

• \ 1 orts. But the blow* if struck at all, ist be struck swiftly, for the weary lies were being steadily reinforced by nerica. Germany staked all on a last row; in March, 1918, Germany came t of her trenches to give open battle, was for her “a battle without a morw,” the last act of the mighty drama which the curtain was rung down a ar ago. The Germans and their friends have limed that they were never beaten in e field, but that their defeat was le to the collapse of the home front, lis is, a distinction without a' differice. From August onwards the Allies id been driving them back with heavy sses; from September the shadow of a tr more terrible Sedan brooded over the erman High Command. In the last ifee months of fighting the British lone took almost 200,000 prisoners; by November retreat had become headlong ight. It is true that the armistice 3und the German, armies still in beig, but to Mr Buchan’s mind . their alue was merely nominal. There were o battered, demoralised, and exhausted hat any attempt to prolong the resistnee would have been hopeless. How. iver, even if Germany’s boast he adnitted, it is impossible to regard the lome front separately from the battle 'ront—-the one is an integral part o: >he other. Where the whole strengtl )f the nation is organised for war th< noral of the civilian is just as import int as that of the soldier. Germany’ jollapse showed that as a nation sh lacked the stamina and fibre of her op ponent s . France, her population ble< white and much of her richest territor in the occupation of the enemy, wa indomitable even in the darkest houi Belgium and Servia, bereft of thei country, their Governments in exil< never dreamed of submission. It ri mained for Germany to throw up th sponge before ■ even she was invadet The Allies were sustained through thic and thin by the conviction that the were fighting in a just cause; German had no such conviction, and consequen ly lacked the inspiration to endurano It is a signal illustration of the mai ner in whicl>' the “imponderabilia count. Mr Buchan does not refuse Germai her due. She began the war with j the odds in her favour, and she mai the most of her advantages. Her a mies displayed, both, individually and the mass, remarkable valour and res lution. “She showed beyond doubt higher average of talent in subordina commands than any, of the natio allied against her. Her blunders 1 in statesmanship and in the suprei military direction. United herself, a with complaisant colleagues, sl}e h io face a loose alliance of proud a: independent democracies. A little sh might have increased the looseness its bounds till it dissolved, but Germai by her maladroitness, welded it 1 gether.” The Allies, on the other ha entered' the struggle under a liea handicap. Their task was to hold t enemy until they could marshal th own forces. They made repeat blunders, but although it is easy enou to detect these, it is less easy to s how they could have been avoided at f time. Only the imminence of deft taught them the necessity of a unifi 'command. They exaggerated the pov of Russia, and utterly failed to app ciate the strength of the forces of dis tegration. They under-estimated f power of Germany and of the defensi in modern warfare. It is now admitl that their various attacks in the W in 1915 were costly mistakes; they w< not prepared either in men or n terial for ambitious objectives. It tc them long to realise the possibilities their command of the sea, and* tli were too slow to declare the blookai and, when it was declared, to make effective. Yet, “let it not be said tl they ‘muddled through’ to victory. S' cess was never won by such a ro£ 'While (they muddled they stuck fasl One figure alone among the co mandors in the field on either si stands out in the full .heroic proportio: Germany produced many competent s diers, but no great ones. Hindenbu had some of the indefinable magneti that makes a great leader. Macke he had driving power. Her best were F kenhayn and -Ludendorff, for they alo had some inkling of the art as oppos to the mere science of war. Agi and again success was frustrated, i by patent blunders, bub by certain w rowness of outlook and .jyopdenness method. “Ludendorff was a great i gapiser and master of detail, but he h not the synoptic view of a battlefii and that insight into the heart of a sil atjon which lias belonged to the gr« captains of history.” This was p sessed by Foch, who, by whatever star ard he is judged, must take rank amo. the dozen greatest of the world’s s diers. He had admirable colleague notably, Sir Douglas Haig, who me than any man made Foch’s concept! possible. Sir Douglas Haig “had n the great Frenchman’s gift of strateg but he had the scarcely less valual power of creating the weapons for t strategist to use. He was a master tlic art of training troops, the greate Britain has seep since Sir John Moor Under Ins guidance the British Arn produced most of the main tactic developments of the war.” But Foi had those higher qualities which trap mute capacity into supremacy. “1 had a genius for war, the rarest of h man talents. In the splendid compai of the historic French captains he wi stand ajnopg the foremost, behind, hi not far behind, the greatest of all. Yet when all is said and done the hoi

of the war was the ordinary man. “Victory was won loss by genius in the few than by faithfulness in the many; then victory was ■ won not only over their enemies, but over thernselves.,,

Western line, with trenches, houses, rests all complete in miniature. By • c •essing a button the instructor mates I c little puff of smoke rise to denote | here a British shell has fallen, or in- j icates the position of *an enemy bat- ) ery by tiny red flashes. The stu- , jnt has immediately to report the praise locality by reference to his own piared map. Again, when he is being < night gunnery, he is put opposite a i inematograph screen and provided with n ingenious device for sighting. As a plane flashes into view on the screen he rings the sight to bear, and the appaatus records the accuracy of his aim >n the screen. If his shot is a sucessful one he has the thrill of seeing ;he ’pl,ane toppling down the white icreen into oblivion of outer darkness. '.n his bombing course he ascends the I gallery and sees far below an unrolling j panorama of the country—a long sheet • if canvas painted with rivers towns and ammunition dumps to scale, with his suppositious altitude. He is told to bomb a certain bridge; as it passes beneath him, he manipulates his apparatus and the pltoco where bis imaginary bomb falls is shown by the sudden illumination of an electric bulb under the canvas. No wonder the air service is so popular. Of course there is drudgery, and to spare, , but every stage of the training posssses some of the oltorapAmtioj? of s* fascinatuiG! came.