The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1916. LENGTH OF THE STRUGGLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 October 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1916. LENGTH OF THE STRUGGLE.

The prospects of the war were analysed in a very interesting a'rticle .a few weeks ago by Mr. Prank Simonds, whose general comments on the war, though sometimes based on very incomplete information, have proved to be suggestive and reasonable all through, and the result of his analysis, given in the New York Tribune, is that the war will last well into the year 1018. "The Allies have first by fighting," Mr. Simonds says, "to divest Germany of what she has conquered in this war, .particularly of her conquests from the Danube to the Golden Horn. They have then to rescue Northern France, Belgium and Poland. And Germany as she retreats will shorten lier lines, not impossibly keeping step with her decline of numbers. To suppose that the end the Allies mean to attain can be attained this year or next seems to me unreasonable. To suppose that, knowing or believing that they can attain it, and perceiving what the cost to them will be if they do not attain it, they will stop short of it seems to me equally incredible. And this is why I share the belief that is held in. many quarters abroad, that the war will continue into 1918, that it will be a four-year war, and that it will end inside German frontiers." Both military and economic considerations enter into the discussion. Taking the military situation first, Mr. Simonds anticipates that there may be a contraction of the German front in the western theatre this year, but that there is no probability of the Allies forcing the enemies back to the Antwcvp-Brussels-Meuse line before next summer. There may be a contraction of the enemy's front in the eastern theatre early next year, and in both theatres the contraction is likely to keep pace with the decline of Germany's manpower. Each successive position offers great advantages to a. defending army, and reasonable critics therefore anticipate that when the- enemy has to retreat he will fight a series of long rearguard actions and will have to be driven from each fresh position by heavy and patient hammering. ''Eliminating the possibility of a complete collapse, which is not to be foreseen in any period as short as twelve months," Mr. Simonds proceeds, "Germany should then, taking the military aspect, be able to keep the war on enemy soil not only all of this year, but most if not all of the following. She will, then, not be in a position where she will be compelled by any military situation to make peace on her enemies' terms, even if Austria grows weaker, or is put out of the conflict altogether. She would doubtless be willing to make peace, in such conditions, on any basis that did not require enormous sacrifices." At this point the military problem becomes merged in the economic. "In ber great campaigns Germany has actually wrecked the industrial regions of Belgium, of France and of Paissia. She has literally burned the factories aijd transported the machinery to her home provinces. If peace were to come to-day, Germany would be only one of the great Powers on the Continent who are fighting whose industrial establishment was intact. While Germany put her factories to work to supply the markets of the world, France, Belgium and Poland would have to restore their factories, purchase their machinery and begin again." Mr. Simonds remarks further that Germany is now ir. possession of the wealthiest coa! and iron districts of France and of the prosperous industrial region of 'Poland. These prizes are not to be relinqu,i-bed without a struggle, to .say nothing of the coal and iron and phosuhate districts of Alsace and 'Lorraine which France hopes to recover, and of Silesia, which Mr. Simonds believes the Russians are anxious to annex to the new Poland. Territorially and industrially there are tremendous issues at stake, and Germany will not surrender what she now holds until she is compelled to do so. I It is a detail, operating ! n the same direction, that Britain will demand the surrender of a German merchantman for every commerce ship sunk by the Germans in the war. "To put it baldly," Mr. Simonds resumes, "in two years of war Germany has wrecked the factory and industrial machinery and plants of France and Belgium and of Russian Poland; she has very seriously crippled the shipping resources of her only considerable rival on the seas. In doing all this she lias been able to preserve her machinery intact, and her commercial fleets have not suffered proportionately to the British. Now, if peace came tomorrow, her factories, her plants, her shipping would be, witb relation to world commerce, in a far better position than the? were in August- W d . Like

all the other great nations, she would have incurred a vast debt, but, while she had qrippled their means of paying the debt, she would have preserved hers.

. . . The thing Americans do not perceive with sufficient clarity is that peace now, would be a great German victory, and that it is precisely for these reasons that Germany is again and again bidding for peace on the basis of the 'map of Europe.' If, in addition to escaping invasion and the destruction of her industrial plants and any payment through her shipping for the losses of the British, Germany ;ould retain her hold upon Constantinople, her road to Asia Minor, she would have won the war, even if she acquired not a foot of territory in Belgium, France or even in Poland." Mr. Simonds lias Wins gone much more deeply into the whole peace problem than would be necesasry in a purely military survey, his point being that the mere expulsion of the Germans from the territory of the Allies would not be a victory for the Allies. Peace will have to be declared in German territory. "To suppose that Germany, with so much ot her ambition achieved." lie concludes, "will surrender the vital portion? of it until she has met disasters that compare with Moscow and Lei,psic is preposterous. To suppose that the Allies, now satisfied that they .can destroy the German edifice, will stop now op terms that will ensure the German future, is equally absurd. At the Rhine and the Oder Germany may resign Alsace - Lorraine, Southern Silesia, perhaps Poseu and the 'Prussians, but she is now likely to resign any part of them at the Somme, the Sambre or the Meuse in the west, or along the 'Xiemen, Beresina or Vistula in the east," The military proposition, depending on political and economic considerations as it does, will involve many weary s months of fighting, and that is why Mr. Simonds arrives at the conclusion that the world need expect no cessation of 'hostilities before the year 11)18.