The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 1916. THE VERDUN FAILURE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 42, 24 May 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 1916. THE VERDUN FAILURE.

Early in March, Mr John Buchan, a well-known writer, and one to whose

expressions of opinion some weight is attached, stated that the next three months would see the beginning ol the final stage of the war, though he frankly admitted that while lie had not the slightest fragment of doubt as to how the final stage was going to end, “but,” be said: “I do not think it will he a very sudden or brilliant end. 1 think we may have a long and desperate struggle before we win tno only kind of victory that will content us ,' the only kind of victory that will give us peace with security and lion-

our.” In this great war of nations. Mr Buchan explained there arc three factors that count, the first being numbers, the second economic strength and the third the moral—the lighting quality of the combatants. In respect of numbers, that is to say the forces of trained and disciplined men, he believed the Allies had a manifest superiority now. On the western front they outnumbered the enemy, and this is home out hv the smashing the («et-

mans have received at every point on that line. On the eastern Iront, Russia had vast reserves, and though the shortage of equipment had prevented her from utilising ail her lorees m the field he thought she had a reasonable superiority in tramed men. This prediction has been entirely home* out. ]/; ‘ding .with tin* (ierinan strength, Mr Buchan said: “Of first-class new troops. (Jerniany has only the classes of l!)l(j and 1917, perhaps OOO.Ot.H) in all, and these slie hail already begun to use at Verdun, and has p'otribly used in the Bnkowina. She can keep up her held strength only by n ing t hese, and by bringing in men who are cither too old or too feeble for ord nary. military service. R-member tint she has to keep an enormous number of troops on lines of communication

j and for transport, and for her produc- ; tion of munitions at home. Hie result jis that all her famous regular corps are enormously diluted with poor j material. 1 shall never forget the difference between the Prussian Guards whom we took at Loos in September and the same Prussian Guards after the first battle of A pres. Germany is. thus in this position. She can still provide good armies of assault, as she ha,H been doing at Verdun, hut if that offensive fails she cannot replace it with anything like the same quality of material. Again, all her normal line of battle* lias been weakened in quality. She can still put up a stubborn defensive, but it is behind the shelter of her great machine. If that machine is

met by an equal or a stronger machine and the issue is decided, as of old, by the human factor, then that human factor is not equal to the Allies’—not nearly equal to the Allies’.” Touch* ing on economics, Mr Buchan concludes that Germany is bankrupt and desperate, but he does not fully explain his reasons for this assumption. The end of the war, lie further says, will only come by the utter defeat of the German armies in the field, though that defeat might, be many miles from the* German frontier. In common with other publicists, Mr Buchan predicted disaster and the great weakening of Germany by failure at Verdun—and to-day we know that thanks to France’s splendid showing—it' has boon utter and costly failure to the enemy. “If,” lie says,- “we are not betrayed into a premature offensive ourselves, our own blow, when the time comes to deliver it, may lie decisive. I think there is a very good chance that the next three months will see..the crisis of the war. It will bo a desperate and costly struggle. We

may son on Germany’s side, a dozen new devices, and we may see many local and temporary successes; but T believe that nothing can alter the main factors. We -have the men. With care and self-denial we can preserve our economic strength. And, above all things, we have the moral, the spirit of the defensive, the spirit that wins battles.”