BATTLE OF DESTINY

Taranaki Daily News, 30 May 1918, Page 7

BATTLE OF DESTINY

THE GREAT RETREAT. RECOIL i RUCTION OF THE ALLIED LINES. BRITISH SOLDIERS' UNDAUNTED COURAGE. A STIRRING STORY. London, March 31. The signs are good, hut it is still the supromo ordeal. North of the Sommo the British Army, adamant to assault for the last low days, is solidly set in its new positions. South of the Somme the wide abnormal salient created by the enemy's advance is still in slow flux with the Germans slightly enlarging its boundaries up to yesterday by piecemeal progress on all the roads converging from that side towards Amiens. Too much straightened on the narrow Beetor of that thrust the invader must seek broader scone by knicking ivith all his might left or right or both ways. He is in a far moro dubious position than ii week ago he expected. The firs; gigantic, plan for a complete strategical break-through has failed. He will renew it- Ho may even raise Mb bid for victory. But he is now faced and environed Ibv large and equal forces, The chances in favor of the Allies ought soon t,o he tatter than ever, By consent of General Hnig, as cf General Petain, the Allies have at last done the sane tiling for unity of direction. That great loader, General Foeh, is now acting as Generalissimo in single command against Hindeulburg. SWEEPING WAR AND UPROOTED ARMIES.

There has been no such story sinee war was. When the history of this war is written, whether with the severe lucidity and concision of Thucydides, the ordered splendour of Gibbon, the weight and passion of Treitsehke, or by some stern, remorseless realist, as different from all these as are they from each other, the present vast conilict will demand more space and power as it will give more scope to genius, than any phase since the beginning. Upon a scale many times magnified it asserts an ascendency over human imagination like the march towards Moscow or the Volkerschlacht of Leipzig over a hundred years ago. And this not only 'by reason of the growing mas? of the, whole grapple, its immeasurable issues, and the further prospect of unparalleled contest with shifting or turning fortunes, but because the entire character of the war is altered, fransfonned, and crammed every day wiJi new drama, giving an amazing aspect to old scenes. Great past example as was the sheer measure of the light last week it is far greater now, and the forces which will contest the rival decision are yet only rising to their maximum. On each side more hundreds of thousands of troops, with their batteries, have been sucked into the vortex of flame and smoke. There or hard by some two millions of men more are fighting or ready, wh'le with drone and rattle the air squadrons play their machine-guns and their bombs against the earth-creatures. No longer reckonin.-; progress as before by dull yards the fighting has travelled and swept over forty miles of landscape, over hill, river, ,and plain far away from our line as it stood in front of Camibrai, St Quentin, and La Fere, where the battle opened. The dead wilderness of the old Somme battlefields has awakened again to the thunder of the armies. Strange things, but not these arc the strangest. If it is not yet by any means a war of movements in the sense that the Germans desired—as ■the Allies in their turn may desire before the end—for nearly a week it wan a moving war. Armies had been uprooted from their fixed lines, and habitations, wrenched out of the habits of years, and with all their columns, batteries, baggage, and endless transport had been launched across the country like, tidal rivers of human traffic. Witnesses astonished by this change from deadlock to mobility, as from frost to flow, have likened it to the breaking of ifce ice in northern seas, or to the melting of the snows in mountain land-:, or to the busting of dams and letting out of waters. It is always this latter impression that seizes. Hindenburg's battering strokes failed in the north to shatter the solid retaining vail of Sir Julian Byng's glorious Third Army. German success in breaching our trench system on the south in front of St. Quentin let. loose such a flood-iburst of moving war as the world had not yet ccen. When Armageddon came suddenly to this climax the centre of action was nearly a hundred miles from the English Channel. To-day that centre in little more than sixty miles from the coast. The ground that in touring j days was within a short mctor-run from Boulogne or Abbeville, Dieppe or Rouen, ; s the cockpit, of all fate. THE GERMAN SCHEME FOR A DOUBLE SEDAN. First for the German plan. Even a week ago we could not be sure about I the shape and merit of the design. We ■ new know. The enemy had formed his greatest project, devoting to it all the thoroughness of his science, his labor, and the formidable energy of his temperament, shrinking from no sacrifice and no audacity. Like all very great things the plan was very simple. Hindenburg and Ludendor'ff after full study had resolved that the prospects of the attempt to break clean through were worth the bloody price. They thought '.t might be done swiftly, and that the carnage of their men would be limited to a few days. Loss itself might be saved by such a method, wliereas the cost, of less resolute efforts, dribbled out through months, miirht amount in the loner run to a larger total. The design, therefore, was to fall snddenlv, with overwhelming odds, upon the British Third and Fifth Armies—stretching from Arras and the Scarpe to where they joined up with the French at the Oisc, The aim was to tear clean out at the centre the very heart of the Allied forces as a whole. The Germans conceived and realised the towering machine

irig ambition of attacking with these immense masses on a front sixty mii«a

wide—quite unlike the unpromising narrowness of previous British offensives when we were in a greater relative superiority than the enemy is now. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, under the eye of their Kaiser, meant to sweep away our armies linking up with the French, to surround main bodies of our troops within the wide loop of the Upper Somme—turning that loop into a strategical noose —to pour through tluvn in the uninterrupted movement of open warfare, to separate irreparably the British from the French, and so to envelop fviul crush them both. The enemy counted to reach both the nea and Paris in tlioso operations, font his object, of course, was the destruction of armies, not the attainment of positions. Of Midi destruction the Channel coast, Paris, all Northern France would be the automatic prizes. With the Kaiser, in nominal command, the war would be won in this spring of 11HS by a victory dwarfing all recorded military achievement. This colossal scheme was apparently to work out as a triple movement of turning and penetration—enveloping both wings of the wide British front attack, and piercing its centre. In most of their plans for breaking through the Germans have sought to strike at the awkward angles of rivers or mountain ranges at the back of the Allies. So it was on the Dunajetz, on the Meuse in the first days of the Verdun campaign, on the Isonzo. All experience gamed in these attacks was carefully collated for use in France. In this case the British between Bapaume and La Fere were in a position with some obvious disadvantages. Some of them may be stated. Behind our forces was the broad devastated belt undoubtedly created by the Germans originally with a view to some such ultimate offensive as has now taken place. Behind a large part of that belt again was the tricky line of the Somme —with its canalised upper course—running south and west from St. Quentin to Ham then presently flowing north to Peronnc then bending sharply westward towards Amiens. Our communications over a wide part of this area were necessarily far inferior to the German. On our extreme right, where we hinged on to the French—a point for that reason certo attract the enemy—we were furthest from our real bases.

Add to tins that up to the very breaking of the storm the Allies, in spite of the improvement in co-operation by the work of the Versailles Council, were still under divided commands. In this situation was much, indeed, to tempt the Boche. He hoped, therefore, as we have said, to do in the first two days what he never accomplished. On one side, the Arras wing, to break through from the Arras region and round by Bapaume and north of it towards Albert and Amiens, cutting off the larger part of the Third Army. This while simultaneously on the other side, driving straight through across the Somme by 'Peronne on its northern angb and by Ham on its southern, and joining behind that river to cut off most of out forces in the loop. The Crown Prince and Prince Rupprecht. of Bavaria would thus bring off a sort of doiible Sedan under the immediate eye of the Kaiser, .to be proclaimed all conquering at last as a result of work by Hindenburg and Ludendorn eclipsing the fauie of Foltke and Roon. NUMBERS, SPEED AND LEADERSHIP. The plan was matched by the thoroughness applied to means of execution. For seven Weeks at least preparation went on night and day. There was rail-way-making, road-making, bridge-build-ing. As for man-power, over a million men, or half the whole German force in France, were to be staked, if need be, on the main issue without regard to risks elsewhere in the West. As for gunpower, not only was German artillery accumulated by addition from the East, and Austrian howitzers requisitioned, but heavy machine-guns slung on horses were brought from the Balkans. Next, strong brain and ruthless nerve were bent, to the master-problem of keeping up the speed and weight of the drive after the first blow. For the mobility of man-power and gun-power alike the utmost was done—far more than by any other belligerent in this war. With iron rations for forty-eight hours, the first storming divisions were to be launched out. Fresh divisions would follow wave after wave, passing through—by the so-called "leap-frog-ging" process—the tired troops in advance. The human wreckage of broken battalions were to be left for two or three days where they were to be left for two or three days where they lay, while new divisions of assault poured over and over dead and wounded. Gas shells were to be rained on our Vtteries. Swarms of machine-guns were to go . ward with the assaulting troops. Trench mortara were to be moved up with them. German fieldImtteries were to gallop into action at the first possible moment, regardless of the danger of being blown to atoms. By special motor transport and a special railway organisation even the heavy pieces were to move forward with more celerity than ever before, in this war. So much for weight and mobility in and gun-power. Next for the vital element of leadership. The Army-Commands and CorpsCommands were changed and freshened : with the usual- German freedom and common sense in that particular. General Otto von Below, of Isonsso fame, led the attack from the Arras sector towards Bapaume and the northern roads to Amiens. General von iler Marwitz, the excellent cavalry leader who screened Kluck and delayed us on the Marns, and has been since distinguished in the Fnst, led towards Peronne. The Crown Prince's right-hand man, and the German soldier to whom most success was to fall, was the captor of Riga, Gerferal Oskar von Hutier. ->ith these were, a number of other men who have been given their chance in the latter phases of the war, and are now celebrated for vigor and successes. OUR ARMY'S IMMORTAL PRAISE. Knowing all that we know now, it may seem a miracle that planning and preparation of this kind failed to overwhelm us as was meant. How was it foiled? It was foiled by something more wonderful still—bv the heroic, unconquerable spirit, endurance, and individual resource of the British army, and by swift competence in emergency on the part of its leaders. Let us not cant. Besides brilliant handling and glorious valor, there must have been some local personal failure perhaps, to an extent unexpected. There was in consequence and in proportion .heavy misfortune and dire jeopardy. !'n some cases, we dare say, commands have been already changed. But no r j»a ever be too great for our men, foi Sir Army as a whole, for that jesting, gpperturbably, indomitable infantry, fight-

ing day and night without sleep or rest, for their officers under a fearful strain on brain and nerve, for the gunners, the Tanks, the airmen. While our annals last their praise can never die. It is ordered retreat that the quality of an army to the core. From that test the reputation of our Army has emerged triumphant. Never was the enemy so much impressed and even staggered by its military fibre. Our men met the novel emergencies of moving warfare in a manner that confounded German expectations, and , «oon sobered Ludendorff's note. They thwarted the whole main design of the "Kaiser-battle." Against overwhelming odds in ceaseless combat day and Might they remained not only undaunted and unbroken, but more than ever conildent and resolved. (To' be continued.)