THE SALONICA PROBLEM.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 276, 18 May 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE SALONICA PROBLEM.

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY ONE WHO HAS BEEN WITH THE SALONICA FORCES FROM THE OUTSET AND IS WELL WORTHY OF CAREFUL CONSIDERATION.

VTA PS are fascinating tilings, but at time.-) they are dangerous. Smallscale maps ;tre especially perilous.

When it is used to illustrate discussions of the art of war, little map of a big country is one of the moot deadly things imaginable. It leads people to imagine vain things, to plan impossible tasks, and to make themselves ridiculous in various fashions when the impossible is not accomplished. I venture to think that if large-stale maps of Macedonia were plentiful in England the truth about the Saloniea expedition would have lieen realised long ago. Out in that unpleasant country one used to read the English papers week after week, and note with amazement a very general assumption that it' General Sarrail chose to do so he could march his armies home by way of Vienna, and pract'cally end the war himself. I remember when the batch of papers come out announcing in flaring headlines "Salonika Offensive Begun."

One looked from those headlines to the relentless hills around —looked, and marvelled.

It was not possible to understand how people, otherwise sane, could write so airily about the prospects of our alleged offensive. It was a great mystery, and remained a mystery till I came home and realised that to get a really big map of Macedonia is very difficult in England. Most of the who have been writing so glibly h.ave perforce contented themselves wtih little maps, miserable little frauds which make no mention of such a river, say. as the Gahka, which ignore a; mountain of the eminence of Kotos, which represent the Seres road as a track proceeding happily across an unruffled plain. And of course, if you think Macedonia i« liko that you mav be excused for wondering why General Sarrail is not winn'ng tho war himself. MONOTONOUS LIFE. Unhappily the country is not remotely liko that placid picture. I have l>elore mo a map drawn to the scale 1:200,0()0, so that one inch represents, roughly, three and one-fifth miles. It is ont a large scale, as military maps go, and it is not a particularly adequate map. Looking at it in the light of my own knowledge of the country, I can see that all sorts of vital details liavo been left out. But it Is a. mizp of contour lines and river beds; it does hint in the broadest faslron at the intolerable difficulties of transport in such a country: it does suggest the incessant adventures of the Seres road along the fifty odd miles which lie l>etween Saloniea and the crossing of tho Struma. And it suggests the difficulty of dislodging p.ll enemy who holds those great mountains which are the walls of Macedonia ... It seems reasonable to suppose that if Mich maps could be bought in the shops in England a> great deal of pernicious nonsense wuold never have been written, and long before th's there would have been a general (I>niand for reconsideration of the whole of the Saloniea adventure.

Life in the Saloniea Armv is not exhilarating. Before the landing at that town of miti trots one had Heard that some sort of a war was going 011 in the neighbourhood, and there was a ei'tain pleasureablo excitement. But the weeks and th > month" went by. and it did not seem possible to find tho war. Eyes that marked the far bursting of i. shell and ears that recorded the dull thud of distant explosions—these testified that the war was aetuallv going on, and sometimes r> Hun would come over, flying very high and tiirowing things at r.s, but for the rest 't was chiefly a matter of making re-ids and d'ggitig trenches and Vvirning how to do without things that had seemed necessary at other times.

That doing without desirable things is the conclusion of the whole matter so far ps Macedonia is concerted. For the nrobloin : s the same as th.n.t of obtaining things wli'ch are really necessary. Because th? problem is so acute wo were held toour unthreatened linos,

concerning ourselves with navvying when we desired to l>e pushing Bulgars off adjacent mountains. I remember coming one day to a hill just beside the. sixty-fourth kilometre (forty miles out) on the Seres road and sitting there for a long time considering things. If the leader writers -and military experts of England could journey out along that road to that hill and sit tbene for ;■ couple of hours they might arrive at tho beginning of wisdom. Down below, very far liolow, was the broad level of the Sturma pla'ii, dotted with little toy-shop villages. Beyond it rose the wall of great mountains. running north -and south. Seres to the south and Demir to the north were reminders of the part that Grece hc.s played in this business, and there was the misty pass whicn hides Fort Rupel. Running east and west from the pass was that other wall of the BeLt Sitza —mountains wli'ch nnko modern armies look foolish. But I was com ernod with more intimate, immediate things than this huge | skeleton of a battle-ground. Beside mo on the road motor-lorries and motor ambulances were running to and fro. i ! HEART-BREAKING HILLS. j i Transport is the life of tne modern army. Without transport it cannot get ammunition for its guns or food for its j stomach. Every shell that is fired has to be carried to the battery at the cost of much toil and labour of men and ma- , chines. Every day's rations must be I brought in the same fashion. You can--1 not give the soldier his ammunition and n day's foed and .-end li'ni out to live on the ■ ountiy. You mast take him j ills food every day. If he chances to be in sharp action you must be ready to give him at least two hundred rounds of ammunition to take the place of that which he has expended. You must 1m? ready, too, to take the soldier himself away if he should bo wounded and lie broken on the field. You may put your army in the field, but unless you can fetch and earn- for it on the largest scale it its defeated before the enemy appeans. And liehind ine lay the troubled mile« of the Sees road. Everything requ'red yth e men established down there on the plain had to '"ome bv that road fifty miles from Saloniea. Every t'n of bully beef as well as every shell, every biscuit and every revolver cartridge, must be j dragged up here by the sweating, I grunting lorries. They must be brought up and down hills which would break the heart of any ordinary motorist, over a surface that would bring everlasting disgrace on any road authority wh'ch allowed it to stand for even the meanest of the lanes within its jurisdiction. Inches deep .with dust in summer, swimming with mud in winter, the Seres road threads between and up and down and across the great hills. And it is the only way by which supplies can be brought up to the troops which occupy a considerable portion of the Struma front and to all the units stationed along the road. Every mile of advance 011 that front, every fresh battalion flung into the line, meant a.n . increase of a difficulty which was almost insurmountable as it stood. I have written of this road because it is well to deal only with the thing one knows best, but the problem is the problem of the whole Macedonian campaign. Thero is. to he sure, the railway which will take supplies within measureable distance of the Doir-;n front, but elsewhere the roads must be used. It is irue that th> armv toils unceasingly to improve those roads, but the (ountrv i-: one where flood and tempest wage constant war with the engineer. Tt wiis hard to find answer? to all the quest : on-s that floods my mind. In the meantime I was only awn-re .that the moss desired n- here most urgently as a change from bully beef, but that even if T saw one I must lie careful how T set to work, for I had not so very much revolver ammunition, and goodness only knew when I .should get any more.