The Daily News. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1916. DRIVING BACK THE ENEMY.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1916. DRIVING BACK THE ENEMY.

The value of the victories on the Somme cannot be measured by the extent of the ground captured. The significant feature is that positions the Germans spent nearly two years upon, endeavoring to make them impregnable, have been forced -by the efficiency of the Anglo-French artillery and the intrepidity of the soldiers. If positions of such super-strength can be forced on the Somme, any similar positions elsewhere can also be forced. The enemy, no doubt, will be able to retire to other prepared positions, hut his best work has been put into the main frontal fortifications, and the task of the Allies on the Somme will probably be as difficult from now onward as it has 'been. There arc two military theories of 'what must take place within a somewhat shorter or somewhat longer period. Either the enemy's present lines will sag until they -break up at last at several points, enabling the Allies to roll up the enemy' 9 forces section by section, and 90 make an end. Or the Central Empires will try to prolong the struggle by a fighting retreat and by making successive stands on shortening lines, which would be served, of course, with increasing railway efficiency. This latter event might, or might not, retard the issue, but could in no event change it. Let us look at these two theories of the enemy's fate. Suppose, first, that he will not retreat, or cannot retreat without risk of speedier disaster, and elects to fight it out like grim death more or less where he stands, West and East. As his casualties increase and his power to reinforce rapidly diminishes until it is extinguished, his present lines ■would become as a whole thinner, more rigid, more brittle. The pressure upon them, V.ipuld ! increase. Any threatened sectors could only be temporarily strengthened by denuding others in a fatal manner certain to be detected. The Allies would effect a total rupture of the enemy's front at some point, when there would be no hostile man-power to fill the breach, and would drive clean through. Before this took place the enemy's lines would have come to an awkward conformation. Other broad ruptures would speedily follow. The long-deferred day of the Allies' cavalry might come at last and in a great destruction the enemy might 'be requited for all. That is a perfectly thinkable end of trench warfare within the next twelve months. It would miean a cataclysm. It would be the debacle of the enemy; the crash of the Central Empires. But though this is by no means inconceivable, and it would be the sequel most to be preferred, we are not yet to assume that it is the inevitable process of victory. 'Some writers, on the other hand, deny that the enemy can conduct any lighting retreat on shortening lines. They think the mechanical dilliculties would be too great. They think, also, that the moral effect on the German nation and forces would be too disastrous, since the whole monstrous fabric of deception and self-deception would have collapsed and there would be no prospect but doom. About this we are by no means so sure. That wonders in retreat .can 'he wrought has been proved by the Allies in the present war. The Germans failing back would have an incomparable railway system behind them. If the enemy lingered too long after his lines had been steadily pushed back pretty far by such operations as ire at pres-

cut being carried on in, Picardy, general retreat wilhoiit general destruction might indeed prove impossible. Tim Central Empires have in.irkcu out, no doubt, reai'ivard positions in the East, mid are employing hordes of laborers to fortify still further the courses of (he Xiemen, the Bug, the lower Vistula and the. passes of the eastern Carpathians. But, if need be, this system or any system like it will be turned through the Balkans from the south' by the stronger co-operation of all the Allies. The doom of Turkey and Austria will so restrict the chief enemy's resources as to ensure that (lermnnv shall lie beaten to the earth. According to the London Observer, the Allies ouglit to stand on Herman soil well within the next twelve months, and the British nation will expect that such eloquent and stern words as were used by the (Premier and Mr. BonarLaw shall be inflexibly fulfilled. Never has been committed so frightful a crime against the human race as this war, in which pan-flermanisin planned to wade to world-dominion through a wide sea of blood and tears.