GERMAN STRATEGY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 28, 3 February 1915, Page 7

GERMAN STRATEGY.

RUSHING TO RUIN. Id the last issue of “Life” the following appears: —German strategy, in brief, has had in succession three objectives—(l) Paris, (2) Calys, (.3) Warsaw—and each represents a defeat. If all three had been gained, the war would still have gone on. The entry of the German troops into Paris would have been a dramatic spectacle, yet it would not have decided the whole fortune of the war. The capture of Warsaw, again, would be an enormous gain to German prestige, but it certainly would not have meant defeat to Russia. What Germany would have gained by the capture of Calais is beyond the wit of man to guess. The invasion of England at the moment when Berlin is threatened on the East by Russia and on the West by France, and while Great Britain, with Lord Kitchener at the War O/lice, has an army nearly 1,00(1,000 strong in the shaping, would have been for Germany itself the most lunatic of adventures. But if Fagland were to be invaded, Calais offers no facilities for the embarkation of an invading army. Vet the Kaiser has striven more passionately to reach Calais than even to reach Paris or Warsaw. He told his battalions again and again, “You must reach Calais or die.” Success in this venture, German newspapers declared, was for Germany a matter of life and death. The lives expended in the effort to reach Calais exceed in number the total .German loss in the war of 1870. But the campaign of 1870 was for German armies a magnificent triumph ; it created the German Empire of to-day. The result of the attempt to reach Calais is written in characters of defeat over the whole flat and muddy landscape, sown thick with German graves, where for so many days the Kaiser flung his docile masses on the trenches held by British

and Belgians, and Hung them in vain. Germany, in brief, is suffering visible defeat. The mere arithmetic of the slaughter, it may be added, proves that the war must be short. The total German loss in killed, wounded, a, id missing is certainly not less than two millions; and as the war has lasted five months, this represents a loss of 1000 men for every twentyfour hours since the war began. Now, according to the experts, after allowing for the enormous numbers required for transport service, in the maintenance of communications, etc., Germany has not put more than four millions into the firing line, and of these four millions two millions are killed, wounded or missing. Their places have been, in part, filled by lads below the military age, or hold by old men beyond that age; but these are not equal in lighting value to the splendid battalions that pushed back the French to the Marne. Another five mouths of war on the same scale of slaughter, and Germany will be, in a military sense, bankrupt.