THE MILITARY PROBLEM.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 119, 20 May 1916, Page 6

THE MILITARY PROBLEM.

Germany and Austria have ample forces still available to hold up an assault at any given point on either fighting front. But have they still remaining sufficient strength to resist firm pressure by vigorous onslaughts, not at one point, but at every poirit, not on one front only, but on all the fronts. That is the grand problem which we may reasonably expect to see solved during the great campaign of the historic year 1916. The military and strategical view which is entitled to carry most weight in this country, and I believe in France and Russia also, is that the Central Empires ar e not and never have been in a position successfully to encounter a really serious and determined simultaneous general offensive on all fronts. Indeed this is proved almost to demonstation by what happened at the Marne after the Russians had drawn off some’ of the German legions into East Prussia. Three great advantages the Central Empires enjoyed when they launched this war. They alone were adequately prepared for it, they took their victims by surprise, and, increasingly as time went on, all their operations were concerted, simultaneous and joint affairs. Two of these great advantages they have lost for ever. May we not hope that the conference of the Allies at this moment in progress in Paris will deprive them of the third. If we can so arrange our plans that France, Russia, Italy and Great Britain coordinate their operations with reasonable efficiency, it is long odds that by the autumn of 1916 the conclusive defeat of th e Central Empires will at least, if not actually, accomplished, be clearly foreshadowed'* All the omens are good. The Germans have not forestalled us in the ‘West as they hoped to do. It is tolerably certain now what the German plan was when these desperate attacks were launched at Verdun. The Kaiser’s high commanders counted on taking Verdun sooner or later. They probably hoped to attract large French reserves

to the threatened area from other points of the French lines.

AN OMINOUS FAILURE,

In that event they might have sue

ceeded in piercing the two sides of the triangle, of which Verdun is the apex, probably somewhere in Champagne on the north, and across’ the Meuse, on the west. Then they would have attempted, as they did against the Russians at Warsaw, and nearly succeeded, to fling a girdle of bayonets and guns round the French forces concentrated behind Verdun, and thus to have achieved the new Sedan on which they have set their military hopes from the first. There is no saying what might have happened then. Not only has that brilliant coup failed utterly, but the German assaults have not even flattened out the Verdun salient. That was the least the Germans hoped for. Had they attained that end, they counted on a condition of partial military exhaustion and great public demoralisation in the West which would have eiven them an interval in which to turn once more on Russia and com-

-’ete the great drive in the Easf. which was held up towards the end of •ast year, partly by the steady vakur of the Russians, but largely by the implacable nature of the Russian winter. Success in this enterprise

would have enabled the Germans more or less to dictate the term s of an inconclusive peace. But that also has failed, and it is a costly and damaging failure for Germany. Not only has she lost about a quarter cf a million men, but sbe has sustained the most damaging blow to her military prestige since the Kaiser’s legions were hurled back from the Marne and Paris at the outset of the war. Our French Allies have displayed at Verdun, throughout a great crisis, the importance of which they did not underestimate, a splendid calm and indomitable spirit. Now more than ever they feel, commanders, soldiers, and people including even those nervous persons, the politicians, that they have the measure of the Germans. They have shattered the army corps that were concentrated against Verdun and completely mastered the German offensive there, without weakening their lines at any other point. The French did not even call up all their available reserves.