From the Marne to the Poizeres.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 215, 6 October 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

From the Marne to the Poizeres.

Though it is only natural that the general public should lay great stress upon the importance of the present offensive movements ot the Allies in the west, it is well to remember that such events should be viewed in their proper perspective. This is a point emphas.sed by the military critic, Mr. Hilaire Be Hoc, in a recent issue of " Land and Water". In a general review of the whole situation, Mr. Belloc corrects the false perspective of the average man, and tells just how the beginnings of the end occurred long back in the early days of the battles of the Maine and Ypres. He also analyses the fight for Verdun, and allocates to it the proper place in the one great story o£ German defeat. At the moment in which tlie«e Ine.s are written the third critical phase of the war is opening. The first was the initial phase which concluded with the Marne and the Battle of Ypres, and decided the simple truth that if no iurtlier political factors came in upon tin? enemy's side, or endeavour eaino in to weaken the Alliance against bun by fatigue or quarrel, he would inevitably lose the war. This initial phase will certainly appear to the future historian the nio.-t import.int of all. It is not the. dramatic final actions which perhaps, when they come, will quito ellipse all the rest, for vividness and for decision, certa nly in the lone; swaying of the trench lines during tlie central period, but this initial phase which will arrest his pen, and upon it will he made turn the whole nature >f the great war.

AN EXPERT'S CRITICAL SUMMING UP. CRITICAL PHASE AT HAND. ,J HOW THE WAR HAS RUN- ? : < SITUATION REVIEWED. By HILAIRi: BELLOC.

His reasons for dcvng so will be that lie will have as the contemporary public cannot fully have, though it gains rapidly in construction, a conspectus of the farces at work. He will appro date the fact that the Central Empires combined were, in August, 1914, humanly certain of victory, and of rapid victory at that. They were overwhelmingly more numerous. They had chosen their own moment. They had prepared and they possessed the equipnientfor the munitionment of modern war upon a scale far superior that of their opponents. That they failed was due to a strategic blunder of the first class, a blunder comparable to Erl.on'a blunder two days l>efore Waterloo. They total!,' misconceived the proportionate grouping of the French lines between th? Yosges and Paris, and they suffered the defeat of the Maine. There still remained to them the opportunity occupying the ports of the Channel when they had rallied after their defeat for turning the far inferior Allied ijno by the open gap that was Vft. They blundered again, or. at any rato. they delayed, then when they tried to force tii." gate they l-»t the battle of Ypres and the first phase of I he war was over. A COMPLETE MISCALCULATION. They lost the battle of Ypres from foniplete miscalculation of the strength (if the modern defensive, coupled Avith Ib-> characteristic ignorance of the type of soldier they had to meet. For th.» 'Hi-cess at Ypres was not. merely th» result of a blind formula "the strength of the modern defensive," it was much more the result of certain moral quali-

ties in tiie defending force, which enabled them to exhaust the enemy's attack at a moment when they were still small in number and still in process of organisation. Tho second critical moment of tin war was the beginning of last Summer. There had by that time clearly appeared to all the belligerents what not one of them guessed when the war broke out, the character which moucrn trench warfare would exhibit. Everyone had l>eon caught short ,'n heavy munitionment, but the unexpected accident turned greatly to the profit of the enemy because he had, for totally different reasons, provided himself with a much larger proportion < f heavy pieces and with the machinery for their munitionment. This end of the Spring or beginning of Summer last year is critical because upon its fortunes would depend the duration 01.o 1 . the war. The enemy took advantage of the immense disproportion between nis K>wer of munitionment and that of tin ussians. He still had advantage >n this matter over the Western Allies (though he has since lost it, for those who say that tho curve of Ivs increasing munitionment is steeper than thai. of the Western Allies at the present moment are ill-informed) but lie hal a much greater advantage of course over long industrialised Russia. He seized that advantage, broke the Russian lines at Dunajetz and proceeded throughout the Summer of 1915 to advance through Poland, forcing salient after salient upon the Russians, in tin hope of achieving a decision againsc them, of obtaining a separate pea'ro from them or, alternatively, leaving them negligible for the rest of tha war, and then coming back in full force next year against the West. He failed to achieve h.is end. But he had forestalled any offensive against himself and he had prolonged the war greatly to his moral and political advantage, for though the numbers in the West would also increase against him and the power of munitionment in the West also increase, yet ho might gamble upon the effect of time in wearying his opponents and in affecting, what is always somewhat imperfect, the co-or-dination of the separate Allied forces und their commands.

A POLITICAL VICTORY

Relying upon such factors ho purwd his efforts throughout the Autumn and obtained, when his assault upon Russia was exhausted, the first grave political change in his own favour, the adhesion of a neutral — Bulgaria. He overran Serbia and Montenegro, for a moment threatening the general communications of the British Empire, was baulked in thrs by the counter-stroke at Salonika and then almost with the opening of the next year decided upon a certain effort ift. the West, which was his last hope, but which offered him the chance of very considerable results. He deo"ded to mass against a particular sector of the western line just such striking forces as had been his work seven months before upon the Dunajetz. With this difference, however, that the striking force he wru ref,dv t'y launch in this last attempt was stronger by far in heavy artillery and its munitionment than anything he had yet been able to put forward. The sector which he chose for this last great effort was the sector of. Verdun. The French line here made a pronounced salient, which lay before a flooded river. Ho conceived' n° repetition of Fritdlar.d upon a great modern scale. By crushing in the Frencii salient aag ; nst the river, ho would break that portion of the French line entirely. A great army would bfc thrust upon a flooded valley, across which it had no adequate communications. There would be in the deteat such a congestion as would give everything beyond the river into hi : s hands—men, guns, and material. And from that success would immediately result ; n the rupture of the Allied line at this point, and a decision in the \\ est. We all know what followed. . . But a month was to pass before things were certarn, and it was not until the last spasm of April 9 that the result was clear. By that date the defensive battle of the sector of Verdun was won. and it was clear that the French line would never be brokea.

SIGNIFICANCE OF VERDUN

When this was appreciated upon both sides of the struggle, when the great defensive action of the sector of Verdun was thus conclusively shown to have fallen to the military advantage of the French and the immense loss inflated upon the enemy had been wasted, there was clearly a moment in which he hesitated upon what his next course should be. Circumstances themselves dictated that course—he seems, so far as wo can judge, to have had no option but to undertake n continuance of the offensive actions against the Verdun sector. Not because he now had any hope of there achi,ev:ng a decision, but because it was only there he could continue to attack, and there by his attack he might achieve other political and moral effects what he had failed to achieve as a purely military task. He had not the men, the positions, or the time for moving guns, which, liefore the counter-stroke of tlie Allies should be launched, would enable him to forestall it on any other field. It was an open secret that such a counter-stroke would come in the Summer. The British army was not only rapidly growing in numbers, but had perfected its organisation. The curve of increase in Western niunitionment was very rapidly rising. The losses of th.e French had been now for long far inferior to h : s own. To continue an attack upon the sector of Verdun, though his original battle was lost, was his only course, and be continued it with not one but many motives of action complied, 'lhese mot/vcs may roughly be tabulated as follow :

FIYE MOTIYEB

(1") He had made the name '"Verdun" a familiar symbol in all the belligerent countries and among the Allies, while he had particularly impressed it upon the masses of his own population and nowhere more than upon the rank and file of his army. . . - He calculated upon the moral effect of the name Yerdun, and to put Irs soldiers into the houses of the town, or such houses as lay west of the Mr-use, he v. as prepared to sacrifice his remaining offensive, hoping that such a result would distract opinion from the military problem. (2) He further hoped that tho con-

tinned offensive against the French ivould affect the moral of that people, civilian and even military. (3) He seems also to have been affected by this consideration—of the Western forces opposed to him the most formidable hitherto had been the French. . . Could he prolong the offensive against the French sufficiently to even make them partially exhausted? Though this were done at the expense of his own exhaustion, yet iie could, when he fell back upon the defensive, count upon having to meet an attack mainly of newly-improvised British armies, not with their combined attack, which he had chiefly dreaded. (4) The next consideration was an alternative to, and therefore partly contradictory of, his last. In the alternative of failing to exhaust the French by his attack on Verdun, even at the expen.se of his own exhaustion, he might at least provoke a premature counter-offensive.

This, it is generally believed by competent authorities in France, was the chref military conception in his mind throughout the whole business. It is clear that if you are yourself approaching exhaustion, while your enemy as a whole is increasing in rnunitionment as well as numliers, that the enemy will have marked some day upon which his own superiority will oe ko overwhelming that he will attack without fear for the result. It is equally clear that under such circumstances to compel him to attack before his full strength is developed, especially in munitions ... is to secure a great advantage. + (5) Lastly the enemy certarnly calculated upon a partial exhaustion of munitionment upon the French side. He is here, happily for us, badly handicapped. We know much more accurately how much he can produce than he knows how much we can. Such would seem to be the five ma:n particular motives which, combined, decided him to continue mere mechanical attack after he had lost the battle of Verdun and all hope of achieving a decision at this point. WHY OPERATIONS CONTINUED. But we shall not understand his combination these five motives unless we seize the general truth that an army engaged upon such an offensive operation after it has passed a certain pevnt must in any case continue Whether the action be one of a few hours or a few days or of many weeks the principle is the same. The attacking force before it vs launched must be organised at an expanse of time which is largely proportionate to the magnitude of the operation in view. An offensive action, once designed, is like any other investment. a thing which a man is tempted to continue, even after it has apparently failed, and which he almost invariably does so continue. There is always the temptation not to cut one s losses and somet'mes almost the physical constraint to go on long alter hope has bsen lost. Next consider what may be called the momentum of such a thing, moral and material. You have set a great machine in motion. Everything leads up to this machine in its particular field of action, and in the direction towards which you have directed it. All its supply, all the movements of its various parts —almost infinite in number in such a case —if it is tn that place and that fashion which you have originally presented your effort. Finally, we must add to a complete comprehension of a phenomenon universal in the whole history of war, the elementary truth that continuance is at least the cont'nuance of the known and as exhaustion proceeds a change of plan is a plunge into the unknown, The further exhaustion proceeds the more risky is that unknown. A process which can be represented, not only to those whom one would deceive but even to one's own mind, as a continuous advance, and therefore in some vague sense continuous success. It may produce some unexpected good fortune. To attempt ,i change in the whole plan in the eleventh hour, to attempt with gravely depleted forces a retirement, still more to attempt another attack elsewhere, may be poss"|,le at one critical moment if that moment is exactly chosen. Immediately after such a moment it is increasingly dangerous, and there comes a time when it will l>e necessarily disastrous. The continued attack on \erdun, therefore, simply means that the crisis now approaching as I write —the third critical phase, which may very well be determinant of the war, and which "will almost, certainly give it at any rate its final form is niod fied more and more in our final power by the very fact that the Germans have chosen to continue upon the Meuse, and cannot help continuing upon the Meuse. Meanwhile that phase lias l>een led tip to elsewhere by three closely connected events —the enemy blunder in Italy, the Russian stroke upon the Gal ician border, and the immobility of Hindenburg in the northern part of the eastern lino.