WAS WILHELM RIGHT?

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 54, 6 March 1915, Page 4

WAS WILHELM RIGHT?

Gorman Wilhelm’s ability as a General is very seldom admitted, but one wellknown military authority, in a leading London journal, endeavours to prove that in one instance at least the Emperor was right and Count von Aloltke was wrong. He puts the matter thus: “Whether the ‘Handelsblad’ has any authority or not for its statement that Count Moltke resigned the office of Chief of the General Staff owing to

a difference of opinion with the Emperor as to the best way of breaking through the Allies’ line, there seems to be no doubt that Count Moltke favored an attack being made from the Verdun region, while the Emperor insisted on his plan of an attack from Flanders. He was present within close proximity of the lighting line on both occasions when he ordered the assaults on the Ypres position, lirst on the last day of October, and again on November J Ith, and he and no one else is responsible for the failure of the attempts, it has been suggested that his reasons for the northern attack were political, while Count Moltke’s reason for the southern attack were military, but there is really no evidence to show that this assumption is correct, or that the Emperor had any other motive in view than to defeat the British Army, and cut it off from its communications with its sea base. Unless he had deceived himself to the same extent as he has deceived his unfortunate subjects,, he must have known that politics count for nothing in war, while success in the field counts for everything. It was on no wildgoose chase to get to Calais that lie hurled his Guard against the British Army at Ypres, but because ho wanted' to defeat Sir John French, , and roll 1 back the left wing of the Allied Armies. With all respect to Count Moltke, who has not seen anything of war before this campaign, the Emperor was right, and he was wrong. We have only to glance at the large scale War Office map (7.89 miles to an inch), and mark out the <l5O mile battle line, extending from the North Sea to the neutral territory of Switzerland, to see how dangerous a situation would have been created for the German armies if Count Moltke’s strategy had been approved. Breaking the enemy’s centre was Napoleon’s favorite tactical method of beating his adversary, but tactics and strategy are not on all fours, and with the large numbers of men now concentrated by the Allied commanders, to leave the flanks intact and endeavour to force a way .through the centre of the Allies’ line would have been to have courted the very disaster which General Joffre was preparing to inflict on his enemy if he had committed himself to so erratic a plan of campaign.” But it doesn’t matter anyhow whether Count or Kaiser was the better General: the “contemptible little army” was too many for both of them!