“INVASION IMPOSSIBLE.”

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11644, 10 August 1916, Page 6

“INVASION IMPOSSIBLE.”

RUSSIAN CRITIC’S IDEA OF THE GERMANS’ NAVAL MOVE. M. Dmitrieff, the well-known Russian military crtic, takes an interVestiug view of the naval hattie, says Mr Harold Williams, oor special correspondent in Petrograd. The object of the German fleet in coming out into the North Sea was not, he thinks, to attempt a landing in England. A landing in'" England would onh' have been conceivable at the beginning of the war, when almost all the available British troops were thrown on the Continent. iTheu the Germans, if they could possibly have eluded the vigilance of the British Fleet, might have achieved important results bv landing a comparatively small force of men. Now, however, after the creation of a large British land army, it would be absolutely impossible to transport the requisite landing force, which M. Dmitrieff estimates at about at least 340,000 men, needing 200 transports and at least thirty-eight hours for the passage. Moreover, it cannot be supposed that the German fleet has been so far strengthened during the war as to. be able to hope for a naval victory or to protect her transports and hold her lines of communication. It is obvious that, especially now, when strategical and moral risks of failure are so great, the Germans would not hazard such a dangerous enters prise as a decisive blow"against England. M. Dmitrieff considers that the Germans undertook a naval diversion so as to raise the spectre of German landing in England, and thus prevent the further transfer of English troops to the French front.