Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1920.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 December 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1920.

THE CRISIS OF THE WAR. It was mentioned in the cable news this week that a London paper was publishing a series of articles narrating how at Lord Milner’s instance Marshal Foch was chosod on 20th. March, 1918, to the supreme command on the western front, after there had been a protracted discussion at what is described as ■ ‘the most momentous gathering during the war,” We all know how the wa|r had dragged on from 1914 to 1917. In December of the latter year winter threw a pall over the western front, and there was a pause till March, 1918. On March 21st., 1918, a general offensive began by the Germans, striking at the heart of the Allied front. The memory of Easter week of 1918 will not be easily forgotten, for the enemy over-ran the Allies, gained substantial success, and made their famous drive towards Paris, which they actually began to bombard at long range. The critics tell us that twice the Germans cnme within an ace of winning the war on the western front The first occasion was in September, 1914, when Von. Kluck made his famous reckless march across the front of the British army near Paris. This enemy move was defeated by the French attacking tho German “flank and the first victory of the Marne was recorded to the relief and delight of France and England. Again” in March, 1918, the Germans very nearly beat us. The massed attack at St. Quentin completely defeated not so much the overwhelmed Fifth Army, as the British High Command. The enemy drove through and onward straight for Amiens to cut the Allied line in two by separating the British and French forces. He so nearly won Amiens—he was stopped at last just east of it—that if he had prosecuted that advantage and pushed again with heavy force there instead of on the Lys in Flanders it seems highly probable that lie might have accomplished his object. Certainly ho would have done so, if he had reached Amiens in his first effort. That he did not do so was due not to British G.H.Q. It was due in th e first place to the devotion of Gough’s hopelessly outnumbered men, to the self-sacrifice of certain British infantry which has never had its due need therein of recognition; and, in the second place to the magnificent stand of several Australian brigades at Dernaneourt and Villers Bretonneux, where the Ancre and the Somme rivers junction a few miles beyond Amiens. When Goughte army was iat length smashed and overrun after four days of terrible fighting only the newly-arrived Australians barred the enemy’s way into A wiens. His capture of Amiens must have meant the loss of the remaining Homme valley to the sea and the cut-' j ting off of the British around the Channel ports from the French, Gough’s de- ! feat on March 21st. 24th. was for gome time the subject of bitter criticism by some Australians and others; but the Australian Corps may thank its lucky star that it was not holding a third or a half of Gough’s extended line at •St.' Quentin as a British corps was when the attack broke. It would have either been wiped out where it stood or have done what Gough’s men did—retreated, fighting day and night, without food,. ammunition, supplies, or any support whatever. In the dense mist of March 21st., at dawn, after massed German artillery had cut lanes of fire I far miles deep through thie British position and filled every dip in that j undulating country with mustard gas, ! forty German divisions flung themselves | at fourteen, which was all Gough had. Twenty threo divisions alone fell upon three or four of Gouigh’s Our line : was so thin that it was held only by outposts, and in the mist before the attack the outposts kept touch only by visiting patrols. Nevertheless Gough's men lost no more than the forward battle zone (a few thousand yards) in the fighting throughout the day. The full story is gradually coming out. By the fourth day the crisis was at its height. The Fifth Army had had no. sleep, no orders but to die its slowest, hardly any food, any reinforcements by as much as one man. Late in the fourth day one British division arrived to help it. An analogy would be one garden hose on a big city fire.- Why wore there no reserves? Till 1 now there has never been any satisfactory answer to that question. The inference has been tlie worse because G.H.Q early announced, what is the truth, that it had definite information for some weeks ahead of where the German attack would fall. The fact, known to war correspondents at the time was that Gough’s divisions in the

I front line at St Quentin refused, on being i discreetly asked, to admit any arariety. What those divisional staffs must have endured' in suspense in the waiting can only be imagined; they knew well* enough they and their men were about , to be sacrificed for some reason, good i or bad; they could only do what was j expected of them by “bucking up” , their troops to the highest possible pitch. Only two days before tho avalanche the 47th. London Division was playing < football hard, just .behind tho doomed line, and its officers said cheerily; “Yes we expect an attack, but the Hun will never get through herc.”lt seemed a demented attitude at the tiiffe, a blank swearing that black was white, but it may be written down for heroism of some much maligned divisional ! staffs. Who left that army in such a I position knowing what was coming? A 1 writer in “Blackwood’s discloses that , the ifault lay with British G.H.Q., ' which not only refused to sanction the Council’s plan for a unified command and a reserve army which would have | countered the German blow in good time ! but delayed the signification of that refusal for so long (the whole month of February) aB to imperil the chances 1 I of forming any plan at all. We know , that several of Haig’s highest staff officers at G.H.Q. resigned at the end of March, affirming (as was said at the time) that if anyone had to resign they 5 would rather go than see their chief go. 1 j St. Quentin was, as “Blackwood’s” wri- ' ter says, “the greatest defeat we have j ever suffered in our history.” Yet the blame was not wholly Haig’s, or, if it 1 j were, then Petain (commanding the I French field armies) was his willing j tool, for Petain “intrigued” with Haig to defeat the plan of the Supreme Coun- • ' cil and Foch for a general reserve and

a unified command. Tho fitting comment of a French military critic (we take the , English writer’ s text) is: “There was need of this extreme peril and the crushing force of this blow to open men’s eyes and to silence certain vanities.” We owe our liberty to-day chiefly to two great men—Marshal Foch and Sir Henry Wilson, and now comes the information through the cables that Lord Milner was the instigator of it all, for the extremities of March 1918, disclosed the absolute necessity for a unified command, and so tlie choice fell happily on Marshal Foch who proved most worthy the high responsibility placed upon him.