OUT GUNNED AND OUT-MANNED

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 270, 27 April 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUT GUNNED AND OUT-MANNED

"I confess that tiie vista of bloodshed appalls mo. It may well appall the Kaiser, lie may accept the terms of the Allies rather than faeo the carnage of 1917. For ilie sake of the innocent million* whose I'ves arc at stake, I pray that the Imperial gambler may make his peace with man, if not witn Clod. lint if lie hardens liis heart, like Pharoah. we mist inarch throng 1 the Red Sea and iln; wilderness of war into tlio Promised [.and.'' Tn these dramatic word>, written In-fore the commencement of the great- offensive now in progress, Mr .lames Douglas • ■mvliiderj a striking article in the "Sunday Pi«torial," in which he visualised the terrific battle l»y which the \llies will seek to enter the promised land (if Pi ace tlii.s spring. "Getmany": prayer for pea-o," sav.s Mr Douglas, "k inspired by fear, and by fear

alone. Of what? Defeat. For iier j almost any kind of peace is preferable j to military defeat, for she could ascribe it to our blockade. Military defeat spells disaster for her dynasty, for her •war lords and for her world prestige. The Germany which would emerge from it would be a different Germany. The German.? werj soundly thrashed on the Somme. Their finest troops were broken by blows which enabled the French to shatter them finally at Verdun. Mr Douglas ventures the opinion that the German army will never recover from the pounding it got between July and November, on the Somme. '.t is, he says, a dying army. It is not fit to fight the grc.'t British Army which is preparing to join with the great French army to do.il its death blow. The fighting recorded during the past few days demonstrates the accuracy of Mr Douglas's prophecy i?.at while the Verdun and Somme battles were greater than any battles in this war of great battles, "they will bo far surpassed in magnitude by the battles of 1917 all along the Western front/' Mr Douglas heard the British artillery on the Somme in September, when the New Zealanders were in the thick jf the terrible conflict. "It was more awe-inspiring than any words could suggest. Compared to it the most violent thunderstorm i« like tho mew of a kitten. It seemed impossible to imagine any increase in its volume.' And then, with this reco'lection in his mind's cye, t ho pictures the battles of this spring:—"The massed guns that the British army will use will make the massed guns of 1916 sound like t>opguns. Tho increase in our gun power will be utterly unimaginable. The Go-mans know what to expect, and they are afraid. The German army .n France and Flanders will be subjected to a steady rain of steel, not for weeks, but, for months. The steel rain will rain every day from dawn till dark. The German army will bo forced to bear what it bore on the Somme multiplied a hundredfold, and it will be slowly pounded to pieces by gunners who are no longer amateurs, but veterans. Its last reserves will be sucked into tho melting rampart. Tho cohesion and discipline of the great German military machine will be destroyed, and the greatest military casastrophe in history will bo witnessed by the world. - ' There arc pessimists who predict a draw in tho Western front. They baso their arguments upon the impregnable strength of the modern defensive against the modern offensive. But Mr Douglas points out that these pessimists overlook the new factor of 1917 — tho superior power of tho British army in men and in munitions. The batt'e of the Somme was not a true offensive. It was a defensive-offensive, undertaken with the object of relieving the pressuro on Verdun, on the Russians, and on the Italians. The 1917 offensive will he carried out by a Britis.i army numberng not. less than two millions in conjunction with the French army. Tt will bo a multiple offensive «»imed, not at a short thirty mile sector of the German lire, but at tho wholo German line, witli the fixed determination to destroy the German masses where they stand. As to tactics, the writer's prediction—now bein.'i verified —was that the new tactical method employed by General Nivelle at Verdun will be adopted. He says:— "The losses sustained by the attacking troops will bo reduced to the lowest possble figure, for it will he a battl A of big gun« in which the British and i the French will posses.; a crushing superiority. The Gc::nans will strain every nerve to mass gun against gun, but they cannot overtake the lend already established by the Allies. It Is too great, and it is increasing too rapidly. They will be out-gunned, outmunitioned, and out-manned. And they will lo pitting a half-beaten, old, and war-weary German army against ;i fresh, young, and vigorous British armv."