HUNDRED MILES OF FRONT

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 8 March 1917, Page 2

HUNDRED MILES OF FRONT

BRITISH STRENGTH IN FRANCE NEARLY 2,000,000. Reuter’s special correspondent at the British headquarters in the field in the course of a despatch dated Janaury 2, writes;— “I doubt whether any other people than the Germans fully realise the magnitude of the British legions in France. Of course, the French High Command know the exact figures, but the French people as a whole appear to me to have but the vaguest idea of the true measure of our effort. They gauge proportions by length of front held, which in the absence of more definite data is not an unreasonable method of calculation. “But it is a fallacy which I think, in the interests of mutual encouragement, should be dispelled, to argue that, because the Western front is roughly about 400 miles long, and the British arc occupying something like one-quarter of this line, their share in the struggle is expressed by this ratio. It is a question of density of men, not. of mileage; of the number of enemy divisions held in one particular area by the concentration there, and not of the total in kilometres to which these might be stretched out. ‘For although the Western front may be 400 miles long, it is quite conceivable that the war will be won upon a line less than one-tenth of this length. From the Yser to the extreme right of our line we now have massed anything between one million and three-quarters and two million troops of all arms, a dominant factor indeed to keep steadfastly in mind _ among the confusion of ‘reasons’ which are being associated with the current epidemic of peace talk.” j