THE TURNING POINT.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1916, Page 6

THE TURNING POINT.

- POSITION IN THE WEST. STRENGTH OF THE ALLIES, ■ GUNS CHANGE SITUATION. '•'-Munition?, and still more munitions," declared Sir John French lust March; and to-day the munitions are here (writes the official Australian co>'rospondent at British headquarters in France in Decesiber last. When the; Allies stopped, the German flood on this front more .than a year ago, they achieved a miracle by opposing a thin line of men against an overwhelmingly greater number of enemy troops supported by incalculably superior guns. The German host had the advantage in every contrivance of war, from the machine-gun to heavy artillery. He failed, but for months afterwards his advantage in numbers of men and equipment was cleur, and his offensive pronounced. We hung on by matching.men against machines. The agony of those first winter months can .never be told. Our force was precariously weak and without reserves, and the mu.i waded knee and waist-deep in the frozen mud and water of the ditehe* which were graced by the name of trenches. The shells travelled nearly all the .way—from east to west. Our men prayed for quiet; every gun .we fired brought an avenging avalanche of shells from the enemy

THE POSITION REVERSED. To-day the position is reserved. The grim song of tlie shells is now from west to east. Behind our trendies the guns boom ceaselessly, and the Herman reply is feeble. If the enemy fires a few rounds he gets them back many times over. We are lio longer fighting his machines with men, but meeting his machine with a superior machine. An officer to-day pointed to a slight depression behind a little ridge close to the firing line. The area indicated cove.ed perhaps 100 acres, a nd but for a wrecked farmhouse seemed innocent .of war. 'ln that little hollow," he said, "there are SO or'7o guns. Great, isn't it!" His eyes sparkled with satisfaction. Soon afterwards the enemy fired some shrapnel at a British working party who had exposed themselves. Immediately the British guns were bellowing all around us. The Flanders fields of December are almost as bare as our inland country in a season of drought, but we saw neither guns nor men. The concealment was perfect. There came no more German shrapnel. "That is the new order of things," continued tlie officer. "Every time he opens his mouth offensively we batter the face off lank" CHEERFULNESS OF TROOPS. In the trenches spirits rise with the arrival of each new battery, and as additional machine-guns .are carried to their positions. Not that tlie British soldier in the trendies ever appeared deprosfod. Experience here goes to establish that if you want to make a young Anglo-Saxon grow more and more cheerful you -must plunge him deeper and deeper into slime and danger. The more unspeakable the trenches tlie more frequent the laughter. Perhaps it is bluff, but if so it is sustained and convincing bluff, and its value is to be measured by the value of having the Channel ports in the hands of the Allies and not in the possession of the enemy. The single disappointment about tlie front now is the state of the trenches. Yon had hoped that after a year'.", experience, and with the wealth and resources of Britain and France to draw upon, the trendies might have been.made tolerably dry and warm. But long before you reach the front line you realise how hopeless it is to expect to find anything but an irregular jumble of ditches, with crumbling sides and bottoms deep v/itli slush.

PROGRESS WILL BE SLOW. One must be guarded when writing about the growing spirit of confidence which now distinguishes the Western armies of the Allies. Shells nre not everything. It has been reported that the French fired off six million shells in three weeks during the great Champagne offensive last September, and the result was the capture of some 30,000 German prisoners and a few square miles of territory. The German line was dented, but it was as a wall of lead might be dented with a heavy steel hammer. The gain was inappreciable either in Champagne or in the British line at Loos. Nor is there sure and early victory in the growing preponderance of men upon our side. We shall probably wait a long time yet before we are able to smash through the enemy trenches over a wide front, and compel a general withdrawal or a decisive fight in the open. The power to break the front trend], and after that the supporting trenches, to the depth of a mile or two at any chosen part of the line, does not mean that the Germans are in any immediate danger of being forced to return across the Rhine. Unfortunately, as the successful infantry rush triumphantly from one shattered enemy trench to another, fearlessly bombing and bayoneting as they go, they also rush beyond the shelter of their artillery, and there comes a stage when they are automatically arrested by batteries and reserve machine : giin defences of the enemy. There must then be a halt, not only for the offensive artillery to come up, but a far longer halt while the guns find their objective, and as the attacking infantry can only be pushed forward after trenches have been demolished and barbed-wire cut away, the gun practice must be extremely precise, and so the range-finding must necessarily be very slow. GERMANY'S LOSSES. But still the feeling along our front becomes mor e confident from day to day.. And every soldier knows why. The German is failing on paper and in the field. On paper it can easily be shown that the enemy began with so many millions, that his casualties—reckoning with exactitude by the casualties of the allies and his own official lists—have been so many, and his numbers to-day are so< many. This kind of calculation might not seem satisfactory at a time when Germany is embarking fresh enterprises in other fields, Hut fortunately it does not stand alone. Unhappily for the Germans, the paper calculation is more than oorne out by the daily evidence of the battle-front. The enemy holds altogether some 1500 miles of front, and as our guns increase !so do his casualties. He suffers losses, counting killed and wounded and prisoners and sick, of at least 10 men per mile per day—that is, 16,000 casualties a day, or 105,000 a week. Give him all the best of the calculation, and say he loses a

cdly does on this Western front, our own casualties fall' far below his, while wo ean bear losses bettor than he. The feeling here is not one of excitement, but one of quiet confidence that in the fullness of time, next year or the year after, the Ormans will, despite their doubtful recruits in the Balkans and elsewhere, become so thin on their line that we shall be able to break them. And once we burst through on a front of some 15 to 20 miles, the decision will have been made and the war practically finished.