IS VICTORY IN SIGHT?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 191, 14 July 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

IS VICTORY IN SIGHT?

By EDMUND DANE, Author of "The Battle of the Rivers," "The Battles in Flanders," etc.

X Germany's recent operations have been increasingly governed I" by the political motive of breaking up the Entente by causing j! popular panic. This reached its climax on land in the attack t;;< on Verdun, and at sea in the submarine campaign which drew X -no distinction between belligerents and neutrals. But the .!;;! political motive and the relegation of military aims to a second & place in obliging the Germans to keep up a tactical offensive Si have involved them in much heavier losses. Though that .>£ offensive has failed to bring about the political results hoped -£ for, the German Government is faced with the necessity of 1z keeping it up to the very last, both to hide the dangerous § thinning of their forces, and because of the situation in Gerf. many and of the feeling among their troops. When they are & reduced to a tactical defensive it will be the breaking point.

Prussian militarism is not going to triumph. Its defeat is now beyond a -question. I wil] ask the reader to consider the broad evidences (writes Edmund Dane in the "War Budget" of April 13). First, the enemy's operations have become in a more marked degree political. We so;, 1 this both on land and at sea. In any war, the primary object being to destroy the opposing forces, it is evident that a Government which judges itself strong enough to achieve that object will go about it in the most direct manner possible; its operations will be influenced by military, not by political, aims. In contrast, when the operations of a belligerent are controlled not by the hope of destroying the opposing forces, and therefore bf dictating peace sword in hand, but by the effect they may liavo on general opinion in the belligerent's own country as well as abroad, those operations are what I here describe as political. They imply, if course, that the hope of destroying the opposing forces and of dictating peace has had to be given up. The first decided evidence of this appeared in the German thrust against Russia. The primary aim was the destruction of the Entente: destruction of the Russian armies secondary. And the evidence became in the Balkan campaign still more marked. It became even yet more striking when the enemy concentrated the main Turkish forces against the British on the Tigris, and, because of the effect which disaster to the British Expedition might, it was assumed, exercise on opinion in India, deliberately ran the risk of letting the Russians in from the Caucasus. The evidence appeared once more in the demonstrations against Egypt, valueless from any military standpoint, considered valuable from the alarm they might set up. They were valueless from any military standpoint because the Germans and Turks never had the means to cope with the difficulties. POLITICS RUN MAD. Far more striking than any of these 'examples was the thrust at Verdun. For that operation there was. on military grounds, only one justification, and that was the well-known axiom that at the end of a campaign a beaten enemy may be driven by a. frontal attack even from the strongest position. Mark—a beaten enemy. Did the German Government assume that the French were a beaten enemy ! J We cannot imagine it for a moment. But the German Government had repeatedly asserted that they were, and having asserted it so often, had to act as if it "r/elicved what it said. The attack on Yprcs in October and November, 1914. had a military purpose, and one to the of supreme consequence. The attack upon Verdun in February and March, 1916, had not, since even had it succeeded it could have led as a military event to nothing. It could only have led, and no doubt it was hoped it would lead, to results which were apolitical—that is. to panic on one side and to renewed confidence on the other. HUNS' DIVE TO CONQUER. Again take the war at sea, and the Zepju-'m raids. The primary objectdestruction of the British fleet—being out of the question, the Germans fell back upon qeoonrpEshing ithetir purpose by indirect means —the submarine blockade, which, despite the fleet, was to reduce Great Britain to isolation, and in that way to cancel out the flee.t. That was a military object right enough had it been carried out with any regard to the laws of civile-

fare. Departure from those laws indicated the enemy's sense of it« difficulty. Tiie element of panic-mongering was brought in. The new submarine campaign is frankly and mainly panicmongering. It treats neutrals exactly as belligerents. In a word, it is policial, but in this instance is a concession to German opinion. Zeppe'in raids began remarkably enough with the anti-Russian thrust, and have continued to be attempts to destroy civilian kfe and civilian property. Their military effect has been nil. ' The last touch was put upon all this by the torpedoing of the Russian hospital ship, Portugal, while at anchor in harbour. None of these things are war. They are massacre. FALL IX MARK AND MEN. The British oioekade is only one element in the matter. Germany and Austria have found themselves compelled to enrol as nearly as possible hi millions of men. That is roughly i"> per cent, of the total population, and three-fifths of the total adult male population. The remaining two-fifths consist of lads between 15 and 17, men of 50, and upwards ("w and upwards in the case oi Austria), and those in between wno aro physically quit.' unlit. Now, what does that mean!' It means an aim -t total failure of industry. There is no u&e siying it does not, localise it does and iuii-1. Unless German and Austrian industries can lie carried on without labour, they have been <.rippled in proportion to the withdrawal of labour. The labour of women has no doubt been drawn upon io the fullest extent in both countries, ■hut the work of women cannot make up for such a sweep, even if women bad not their own work to do in the world in any ca-e. No nation can turn that work >n a wholesale fashion and for any length of time into another channel without disaster to its children. And this stilts of tilings is reflected in th'' i.-it! in value of tin- German mark and the Austrian krone. The fall expn-ses want. IRRETRIEVABLE WASTE. Rut. urg.'d by political influences, arid relegating military aims to the second place, the Germans have, during by far the greater part of the time. tarried on the struggle reckloss'y, and are carrying it on now even more recklessly. They have incurred in com o(|iience far heavier hr-sets than their opponents. It is they who have for the most part kept up the tactic of attack. The political purposes in view could not have Ixjon served if they had not. I do not on the point of losses attach a conclusive value in figures. 1 regard them as an index, though when they nic carefully compiled a useful indvx. T\.n conclusive proof :s quite "llfjjer n( It is the fact that we everyV'f»' fnd the enemy relying upon

mazes of deliberate entrenchments, masses of entanglements and barbed wire, and multiplication of machine guns.

It is quite evident that the Kaiser and the Prussian Junkers mean to fight so long as they have the "men and the material to fight with, and so long as the German public will put up with it. The last factor ought not to be left out of account by any means. Its significance is that they will keep it up until their 16 millions have been reduced to three, or even to two and ahalf.

AUSTRIA'S BLIND ARMY

So far as Austria is concerned a peculiarity of the campaign against the Italians is the extraordinary number of men who have been blinded. I have been assured on reliable authority that the total_ runs into hundreds of thousands. This is due to high exp'osive shel's scattering splinterr of rock in all directions. The labour of six millions of men will produce at the lowest estimate 1000 millions sterling of value per annum. We may quite safely say that after this war Centra] Europe will find its productive capacity and its income cut down in one way and another by fully 2000 millions sterling a year. There has been a lot of talk about trade after the war, and about the Germans getting ready to dump goods and swamp markets. Unless dead men can dump their productions from another world, and the place they have gone to is a paradise of factories and machine shops where they still get up before -six in the morning, most of this talk is just fudge.

THE CELLAR, BATTALION

Those, then, broadly are the reasons why the defeat of Prussian militarism ia now beyond question. And observe how these considerations illuminate what has lately been going on. There is the further lighting round about Verdun. It lias been put down to the enemy's obstinacy and determination. What if the truth is that the enemy cannot help himself? I will take the Malancomt "affair as an illustration. On tha ruins of that village the Germans made on the night of March 30 three assaults, each assault with three brigades, that is with six regiments. A German regiment consists of 3000 men, so that the total infantry employed in each attack would on that footing be 18,000 men, but there can be few regiments now up to full strength. Let us put it at the lower figure. The first two attacks were swept away. There were French batteries both to right and left, and a French battalion had been left in ambush in the cellars of the village. The third attack got home, though only after cruel Jesse*. Of the 36,000 men employed it is quite certain that the larger proportion were killed or wounded. Is it suggested that calculating- determination, however pigheaded, would pay a costly price like that for a position that would have been dear at the less of a battalion? Not a bit of it. The fact beyond doubt is that the order came down to take Malancourt. because the German Government for its own purposes wanted a ''victory" of same sort. The expenditure of ''' cannon-fodder" was a detail. EJECTED FROM THEIR DIGGINGS. Now turn to that affair at St. Eloi where the " fighting Fifth" and the Royal Fusiliers distinguished themselves. Here the Germans were on the defensive under pretty much the conditions already outlined —that is, playing it off with the minimum, and relying on entanglements, sandbags, rama criss-cross of diggings, and machine-guns. They clearly thought it quite, safe, because they had been moiling away at this St. Eloi salient for weeks and months. But all of a sudden and in the middle of the night the criss-cross of diggings blew up beneath tliem, and while those who could were wriggling out of the ruins, the machine-guns were receiving their quietus and the entanglements being flattened out. It shows the game is not fi afo after all, and that the idea of fencing off Central Europe with impregnable lines of Buntzchvitz is an absurdity. Besides there is that factor of demoralisation. The German entrenchment* have become hotbeds of disease, aggravated by hardship and the miserable food. It appears to be a common belief among the German rank and file, that better rations are ordered fur them and would be served out but for corrupt dealing. Not improbably some official countenance may be given to this belief, in order to hide from the army the real state of things in Germany. It is combined with the severe censorship on soldiers' letters. Naturally. In view of the fighting round about Verdun, such fact* seem by no means easy to credit. But that i.-< one reason at any rate for such ruthless sacrifices. The political impression before everything. THE BRAN'S SHARPENED CLAWS. Let us look next to the Eastern front. The -suggestion that recent Hii -.ian activity was the beginning of the "great offensive" was, of course, certain to be put forward by the German Government, because as it wasn't, it. eou'd represent it as having faded. And this, in a comment issued on April I (significant date), they did. They made out that the Russians, attacking with 30 divisions comprising some 500,000 men. achieved "'nothing whatever," and that the effort had been

"strangled not only in the swamps, but in blood." Rather naively the f.tat.nu'iit addel: " It is astonishing to anyone who knows the circumstances tiiat such an undertaking should have been boguu now. It is more than likely that the offomive was entered upon because of our pressure on the Allies on th. l West' rn front." LET KM ATI. COME. In connection with the German attitude towards neutrals—an attitude born of recklessness, as that is born of difficulty—it is noteworthy that, according to a report wh'ch appeared en April 1 in the "Berliner Tageblatt." the Entente had presented to the Dutch Government what amounted to an ultimatum demanding the closing of the frontier to Germany. The truth was that owing to German behaviour —tiio torpedoing of Dutch ships with-

out warning, flagrant acts of war —the frontier had virtually been c'osed ae a common precaution. The ultimatum from the Entfiito was a figment. AVhat had the Entente directly to do with U in anv case?