BRITAIN'S SHARE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 243, 19 January 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

BRITAIN'S SHARE.

THE WILL TO CONQUER. A FRENCH TRIBUTE. 1 recall a conversation I had this time last, year with Mr. Lloyd George in s country liotlsc (soys M~. Pichon, formerly French Minister of Foroign Affairs). He envisaged without prejudice or illusion the military situation, estimated the. probable duration of the war, foresaw that it would evolve slowly at the cost of enormous sacrifices, and that it would be only in 1917, in the Spring, or more probably the Summer, that it would approach a conclusion.

His calculation was based on a comparison of the respective l>elligerent forces, tho Allies' insufficiency in necessary material, the time it would take to procure or produce it, tfto German suce:sses over the Russians in Poland, the repairing ol tactical mistakes, the building up of tiro British Army, etc. His reasoning was, as usual, clear and vigorous, supported by facts put forward in the figurative speech that s customary with him. and convincing as a syllogism. Maybe 1 found his arguments so perfect because they corresponded to my own thoughts. The event has, in any case, completely justified everything lie said.

We are now a year's distance from that time. As Mr. Lloyd George himself declared a few weeks ago_. we aro to-day on an eminence from which we can distinguish in the dim distance the goal to be reached; thero are still many valleys to cross, many crests to he carried by assault, but what is now happening gives us absolute confidence as to what is going to happen. That the Allies will win no one, in short, regards now as doubtful. Nor is it loss so to the Germans, whoso eyes are opening little by little to the light, and the haughtiest and most obstinate of whom can hardly henceforth have any false notions of their coming fat?. FIRST STAGE IN A PLAN OF VICTORY. Decisive events have happened since that day on which I had the conversation that I have recalled," with the present War Minister of tlfo British Government—the Russian victories on the Eastern front, the Italian victories on the Austrian front, Roumania's intervention. the victories of the British and French armios cn the Somme. This time it is not a matter of fleeting successes without serious consequence as ift the sporadic offensives of la.st year, nor of attacks directed against an infinitesimal part of tho enemy lines; it is tho first stage in the execution of a methodic plan, drawn up in concert among our Army chiefs, and being resolutely carried out from the North Sea to the Carpathians, and from the Belgian front to tho Polish front—a plan which cannot fail to succeed because it is hacked up by an overwhelming superiority in means of action.

For its undertaking it was necessary to have such effectives, guns, engines of war and munitions that the resistance of the German troops .and the strategy of the Prussian General Staff would be powerless against them; that ,was the task to which Great Britain particularly applied herself, and it is specially from tills point of view that slia has the right to claim "a capital t,'iaro in the decisiv; work that is being accomplished. Everything has been said that could bo said about the services rendered by tho British Government and people to the cause of liberty and civilisation which they are defending against German barbarism. I have had occasion, as far as I myself am concerned, to declare repeatedly in a hundrecP*rtic!es, speeches, and lectures, what humanity owes to the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and colonies for the results achieved on iand and sea for more than two years against the most ignoble enemy the world has ever known. Save for England's intervention, the German enterprise would have succeeded; the small States woip.d have disappeared politically from Die map ot Europe; some of them would have disappeared even geographically; France and Russia would not have been ablo to maintain successfully an unequal struggle against a military Power formidably weaponed and equipped, organised during the course of a halfcentury for this very war, and shrinking from no atrocity in order to realise its designs of death and destruction. All this is contested by nobody, and in a general sense one may say that the evidence "'leaps to the eye."

PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF THE BRITISH ARMY.

From a more special point of view the present fighting on the Somme is an incomparable manifestation of th? force of will, strength, and tenacity of a nation which was in no way prepared for stic-h ;:n effort, and which is giving tho olUest theoreticians and professed ,pnat<t|itioners of war a lesson of ail amazing kind. Without going back to the datj when, in his theatrical extravagance. the Kaiser jested al>out "General French's contemptible little army, wo may take our minds lvack a fow months, and ask ourselves haw tlu> English army has grown from the formation of troops and officers, recruited by tho voluntary system and afterwards by conscription, and to what extent it has been able to hold its own against the best-traiiu'd army in Europe. The German Generals and the newspapersthrough which the Wilhelmstrassc vents its spite and Jiatied against- England did not fail to mr.'.ke mockery of " Kitchener'n Army," and to treat it, if not as a negligible quantity (110, they did not go quite that far), easier to clcwl with than tho others. They pretended to bo very little concerned about it.

Read t-o-d ay tiie communiques in which the Kaiser's (ienc-ral Headquarters is forced to admit t!f.> English victories. Tim tone lias changed I ike that of Heir Von Bt'thmann-Ho'.lweg; it lias become many stops lower. Not merely is the British Army no longer negligible, or pretty nearly negligible; it lias become an object of fear; not men ly has its improved character not rendered it incapable of nf.">suring itself against tlit* best-instructed and best commanded troops in the world; it is inflicting reverses upon them which plunge their baders into stupefaction. They try to explain away this singular phenomenon by pleading the gigantic amount of munitions ct war that is being ii*cd against them, the product of the war industry of the entire \v#rld. They arv being overwhelmed under the fire i f the big gi;'i. the millions <:f shells and projectiles of all kinds, that are (h • iivating their r inks and anniliiiat ng tlieir strongest field -works, they are tumbling back and surrender itiL r and falling in thousands mid. r tins hiil. and t!iey :ire realising that their final di stiny will not be slow in its fulCdm< nt. T1 lis. then.is the most striking illun<rati n of Britain's power: it. is her decisive contribution to the inevitable eonc'usion of the war. (Ir.at Britain hns siKn-rded in forn'ing an Army, drawn from the Mother Country and the Di 'uininns nnd Colonies; she his efp'ipp'd and trained it. triven it a modern organisation, provided it with vtillery, and given it a iari-h supp'v of cvoiy nrm nnd every kind of munition - a wrnlth <f war material tJiat is a

guarantee of its triumph. All this she has done in le*s than two years. How much time wo w t-tcd, England and alas! France too, after the thunderbolt of 1914, before wo knew what ought to be done, and, when we did at l«ngth know, before we made up our minds to do it! Ah, if Germany had but realised, as Mr. Lloyd George snid last August in the Houso of Commons —had she only known our apathy and distress! Fortunately <,ho acted as if sho was unaware of the true state of affaiis.

And to-day the evil been cured. Croat Britain's arsenals and those of France and of our AVes, and those of the countries with whi.-h ihe British Fleet has kept open our communications, are furnishing us with everything that is required for victory. Henceforth we can defy the arvenals find factories of Germany. As for our armies, they are worthy of one another. They are equal in courage, determination, and heroism. No non-success can depress their spirit: their will to win is unshakable. Enthusiasm is theirs; they hurl themselves eagerly upon the enemy, who can neither hold ground nor pompute the number of their dead and the prisoners left in our hands! Surely, it all speaks for itself; yet it is but the commencement. Such is Great Britain's share in the Great War. If you in London gladly proclaim the military virtues of Fram« and the new glory she has won. no less do we in Paris ha . the example of the allied and friendly nation, which, by a phenomenon unique in the world's history, has succeeded in raising herself in a few short months to a height of organisation, strength, and energv from which she now dominates that Power whose national trade was war and which had given centuries to making herself certain of her invincibilitv.