THE SECOND YEAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1916, Page 3

THE SECOND YEAR.

OF THE WORLD WAR,

A REVIEW. Times), The British declaration of war against Germany took place on August 4. The outlook for the Allies was black'enough twelve months ago. Russia was or the joint of evacuating Warsaw, and her armies were in general retreat along the whole front. Her supplies of munitions had broken down, her industries had been left undeveloped for the purposes of the war, treachery had been revealed in high places, and civil and military administrations alike were losing the confidence of the people, Only the great heart of the fighting man could save the situation for her, and during the next month or two the Russian soldier was to prove himself even greater in the days of disaster than in the days of success. In that long and arduous retreat from the Vistula to the marshes of the Pripet, the Russians turned again and again on their enemies. Whole divisions were without the support of guns, and brigades of artillery were without shells. There were thousands of seldiers lacking •.•ifles, new troops hastily rushed to the front to be there equipped, it was hoped, with weapons collected on the field of battle. "The breast of the soldier is our only weapon," was the poignant comment of a Russian publicist at this time. But by the end of September, when the Czar was in command, the retreat had virtually ended, and the Russian armies were still unshattered. On the Dvina, among the many waters of the upper Nicmen, along the Styr and the Sereth, they had come to a halt, and were settling down to a bitter defensive fight for positions in which to spend the winter. CENTRAL POWERS' 'PLAN. The plan of the Central Powers had been to bring the Russian armies to general action and to crush them, but the masterly retreat had deprived them of the expected triumph, and though the Kaiser was able to claim that the Russians had been paralysed his words were an admission of the failure of the great scheme for bringing the war to a close. To an extent the Russians were supported late in September by tho- opening of an Allied offensive in the western theatre. The British, contribution to this effort, though large in itself, was small compared with the French preparation. It was in Champagne that the real attempt was made to break through the German defence, and weeks were spent in the concentration of guns and men and supplies. As we know, the capacity of the British to maintain an offensive was severely limited, not so

much by a shortage of men, though our new armies were still, in the main, in the training camps at home, but in guns and shells. Consequently our attack, which was surprisingly effective in the opening stages, lacked weight, and its full results could not be reaped. But there was no deficiency in the French plan. It had men, guns and munitfins, and high hopes were built on its development. In the end an advance was achieved on a front of perhaps fifteen miles, but it attained no great depth and it served actually to prove the ex ■ traordinary strength of the enemy's de j fence. Still, it immediately drew German troops from the eastern theatre compelled the Central Powers to divert their attention from the Russian front and established the fact that with patience and persistence, and above all with an increased power in artillery and an adequate supply of munitions the enemy's line could be rupturcdj THE BALKANS. ! Foiled in the main offensive again'.. Russia, the Centra! Powers now turned their surplus energies to a new enterprise, which had been some little time in preparation. In July Bulgaria had definitely agreed to associate lierse 1 * i with the enemy, and towards the enu of September it became evident that the Teutonic General Staff proposed to open the road through Serbia to Constantinople, where the Turks were calling loudly for help against the British campaign at tiie Dardanelles. The story of the tragic campaign in Serbia is familiar to the reader. The failure of the Allied diplomacy in the Balkans, the refusal to allow Serbia to strike before the Bulgarian mobilisation was complete, the weak handling of Greece—these are episodes on which one does »ot care to dwell. Serbia was powerless against the combined attacks of Germans, Austrian.? and Bulgarians, and the most the Allies could do was to aid • ;he fugitives in Albania and establish defensive lines excluding the Central Powers from access to Salonika. Our position in the Balkan area had never been strong. The attack on the Dardanelles, commenced with inadequate I -rees, had languished, and an attempt to conquer the strait by a new offensive ■arly in August ended in failure. Therc■fter the Allies had no course open but h abandon a fruitless and costly enteririse, and at the end of the year the .ositions so dearly won and so heroicily held oh the peninsula of Gallipoli .ere evacuated, closing a campaign .hat, failure as it was, provided in the jalhint deeds of ths Australasians a ever-to-be-forgotten demonstration oi \Hish unity, AN UNPROMISING OUTLOOK.

Juring the second half of 1915, more'fer, the outlook in the other theatres '.vas unpromising. The best efforts of the Italians achieved small progress, and as yet they had not been called on to endure a heavy enemy offensive. In Mesopotamia events in August were marching favorably, and a small, brilliantly conducted campaign was giving British control of the lower Tigris and Eup' r.'.tcs. By the end of September the initial plan had been completed and the expedition might well have rested on its successes. But for reasons which are still the subject of controversy, an advance was made on Bagdad with a weak column. The Tr.rks were defeated eighteen miles from that city, but the British had suffered so heavily and the Turks were so strongly reinfcr.ed that a retreat down the Tigris was inevitable. Reaching Kut-cl-Amara, General Townshend entrenched

to await support, but he was closely invested, and all efforts to give him relief railed. At the end of April of .this year his resources were at an end, and he surrendered with about 9000 men, ON THE SEA. The year 1915 was thus an unsatisfactory one for the Allies in the field, but it is to be observed that they had come

through its shocks with smaller loss than neutral and impartial critics had been inclined to prophesy. On the sea the Allied supremacy was undisputed, and apart from tho enemy's submarine campaign against merchantmen, the naval warfare was confined on the one hand to the blockade of the Central Powers, and on the other to a police of attrition that left the Allied slreiigUi undiminished. The naval history of the period is still obscure, because tiie authorities have pursued a steady policy of secrecy in regard to their operations. We know, however, that the German plan persistently oll'ended neutrals and produced such trifling results at so large a cost that its continuation was bitterly criticised by German publicists themselves. From our side, we could view the situation on the seas with confidence and satisfaction, because while the seas were closed to the enemy they were open to the Allies, and that fact rendered possible the maintenance of the resistance to the schemes of the Central Powers for an indefinite period.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916. The campaign of 1910 again opened unsatisfactorily for the Allies. Towards the end of February the Germans revealed the tremendous force of the offensive they had prepared in the western theatre, and, launching a series of crushing attacks oh the Frem«h lines around Verdun, they threatened to break through, to force the passage of the Mouse and to accomplish in France what they had achieved in the previous year in Galieia and Poland. But. though the French gave ground under the weight of the first assaults, they were far from beaten, and in a few days they settled down to a long and bitter defensive struggle. It was on February 21 that the storm burst in its full fury. On June 22 the Germans penetrated Henry village, reaching the last of the main defensive lines covering Verdun. Within a few days thereafter the Allies were opening their counteroffensive on the Soinine, and we may therefore estimate that the struggle for Verdun raged uninterruptedly for four months. One cannot withhold the tribute that is due to the dash and determination of the German so'dier in the offensive. It is true that the way was prepared for him by th" wonderful concentration of field and heavy guns, but he advanced to the assault with marvellous discipline, storm*l hills, fortifications and entrenchments and faced Intrepidly the utmost concentration oi the defenders' fire. And yet, when we survey this astounding struggle, the impression it makes from the outset, the impression that deepens as the story of each day is told, comes rather from the, magnificent devotion of the defenders. To our mind, there is nothing finer in the history of the war, and we can recall from the h'story of wars past nothing grander than the defence of Verdun. Correspondents have told us of the spirit of exaltation that possessed the French, of theu readiness to die for their count'.') - —of their unshaken confidence, their heroic industry, their eager competition for the posts of danger. ''There is no phrase, there is no sentence that describes Verdun in these days," exclaims a French witness; "but there is a word. Verdun—it is France!'' For in the defence/ of Ve'.'dun the spirit of all France, the new France, found its lilting expression.

ITALY INVADED. But if the Allies could regard the position at Verdun with increasing confidence, they had shocks still to endure. In May came the great Austrian surge o\er the Italian border, threatening a burst out on to the Venetian plains, and for a fortnight the position on the | northern frontier was critical in the 1 extreme. The flood was held at length, j.nd gradually the Italians have forced die defensive works northwards. At Jie moment they are energetically attacking the Austrians south of the irontier, steadily closing once more the passes by which such another invasion might be attempted, but the effect ol the Austrian offensive is still being felt by the Allies, because beyond any doubt die enemy anticipated the Italian movement in the general Allied plan, and so deprived the assault on the Central Powers of the support that had been expected on the southern front. AUSTRIANS TOO LATE

The Austrians, however, had left their blow too late, and before they could drive it home they were themselves called upon to withstand such assaults as they had not endured since the early stages of the war. With the beginning of June the reorganised Russian armies were on the move. In March they had been tried in a series of local actions on the northern sectors, and now in the south a general offensive was opened along the whole front from Kolki, on the Styr, to the Roumanian border. West of Lutsk a breach was made in the enemy's lines, and the Russians swept through, jarrjing Lutsk, as they advanced, until they threatened Kovel itself. On the lower Strypa, again> they forced the passage of tho river at the main bridgehead. And on the Pruth they struck to such purpose that Czornowitz fell into their ■hands, and they were able to over-run the Bukowina, send their scouts and patrols along the Carpathian foothills [and march west with their main force until they captured the rail junction of Kolomea. The movements thus initiated are still in progress, and we need not summarise their results further, , THE ALLIED OFFENSIVE. In the western theatre the Allied offensive came later, for it was not until the end of June that the British and French launched their attack, the immediate effect of which, as we lave seen, was to relieve the pressure on Verdun. Already substantial successes have been achieved. The Allied offensive in the west has its particular interest for Australasians, because the men from Australia and New Zealand are bearing their part in it. GERMAN NAVY'S SORTIE. The purpose of the German naval sortie at the end of May is still in doubt. Possibly it was not more than a sortie, an attempt to inllic-t damage on the blockading fleet without itself ii). curing undue loss. If that was the pur. pose it proved a perilous and expensive adventure for the Germans, because although the High Seas Fleet was abi* to hammer the advanced guard, so to speak, of the Grand Fleet, it was caught in the process, was held by masterly and heroic tactics, and escaped complete annihilation only through mist and the fa!.' of night. A'day later, when the blockading fieet was still steaming with scarcely diminished power over the seas, the German lleet was bottled in harbor, battered, out of action and beached for vepairs,

BRITAIN'S TRIALS. There*remain only minor episodes to he considered, and these need not long detain us. For Britain, of course, there came at Easter an extremely tragic, distraction, in the outbreak of a rebellion in Ireland. As a, military movement it wa a inconsiderable and it was soon suppressed, but the political importance was far greater, and the effect is likely to be felt long after tile war has ended. In the first week iu June Britain suffered a heavy personal loss, when tne Hampshire, which was carrying Lord Kitchener to Russia, struck a mine and sank. Lord Kitchener's great work of building the British armies was almost completed, and the fact that he was going on a mission to Russia was the best evidence that his activities were to be given scope in new directions. Events like these, however large they may have bulked in our imaginations at the time, have little affected the course of the war, and consequently their place in such a survey as this is comparatively unimportant.

LOOKING FORWARD. Our inclination at the present juncture, of course, is rather to look forward than to look back. We are in midst of a period of intense activity, in which the Allies are putting the strength oi the Ceutral 'Powers to a sustained test, and the temptation is to dwell on the history that is in the making and not on the history that has been made. Within the past two mantis a vast change has come over the situa tion. On the sea the Germans have discovered by tragic experience the might of the' British fleet. The Russians are hammering Glerman and Austrian armies in the eastern theatre, hammering so persisently and to such effect that the collapse of the Austrians al least is within the range of imagination. . In the west the French and British are subjecting the German lines to unexampled pressure, and on both the main fronts the Allies show no approach to the exhaustion of their capacity to attack. Bulgaria and Turkey are apparently powerless to move in support of theii hard-pressed allies. Italy, fighting under extraordinary difficulties of terrain, is yet bravely bearing her share of the burden of the offensive. And all the while the block-

/.do of the Central Powers is being drawn relentlessly tighter. It is a very different situation from that which we had to contemplate a j-ear ago, and we find in it abundant reason for hope and faith. We are not among those who seek in defiance of the facts for an excuse to prophesy the early triumph of the Allies, but we believe that the tide has at length turned in, our favor and that, be the struggle long or short, we shall be moving always towards victory.