SUPER-OPTIMISM.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 July 1919, Page 11

SUPER-OPTIMISM.

HELPING THE GERMANS. BRITAIN'S TRAGIC MISTAKES. AFTER-WAR REVELATIONS. Mr. Phillip Gibbs, the war correspondent, now free to speak, is speaking out with some force. To the New York Times (through the McClure Newspaper Syndicate) he has given some remarkable statements relative to the conduct of the war from Britain's side of it. Over-confidence is a natural failing of the British, and Mr. Gibbs is plain in saying so. "Nearly always in those first three years of war our general!? were over-confident and our men uplifted by an optimism due to a faith in their own courage," he writes. "This faith among the men was the quality by which, after many frightful battles and fearful losses, they did at last smash their way to victory. Without the supreme conviction in success they could never have attempted ,the things they did nor recovered from the disasters that befell them.

"In my humble opinion, some of our generals should have tempered their own optimism—due to the same racial qualities as that of their men—by more caution and a closer knowledge of the enemy's strength, because in many cases the British troops were called upon to attempt the impossible, and to make a sacrifice of life on account of overwhelming hazards. Criticism, however, ia easy now. We were an army of amateurs fighting the strongest professional army in the world, and our generals and their staff's had to learn by many bitter lessons, and our men had to suffer while they were learning."

AT BLOODY LOOS. Mr. Gibbs describes, September 25, 1915, as "one of our earliest battles, and one of our worst." When the assault began at dawn the Scots went forward to the music of their pipes, screaming the charge under heavy shell fire, and the London boys, not to be outdone by this music, went over the top playing mouth-organs to the music hall song of "Hulloa, Hulloa, It's a Different Girl Again"; one company actually dribbled a football all the way to Loos to show their contempt for death. The battle began with success, as far as concerned the Scots of the 15th Division and the Londoners of the 47th. The Londoners on the right were- also successful and kept pace with the Scots, fighting gallantly under frightful fire, and against the desperate defence of the enemy. Some parties of the Scots with Londoners among them went on to the mining village of St. Auguste, on tho outskirts of Loos, but none of that gallant band ever came back.

GAS IX THE GOLLIES. Tragic things had happened on the left and on the right. On the left the Ist Division had prepared to assault behind a wave of poison gas, and tfie heavy vapor rolled into gullies, and then was swirled back to their own lines, so that numbers of men were gassed, and fell choking and gasping for breath. The 7th and 9th Divisions attacking the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the quarries near Hoilach had severe and costly fighting before gaining their first objective, but being checked and partly thrown back at the Aid of the day. On the right the French had 'attacked with magnificent courage and swept through Souchez to the lower slopes of Vimy Ridge, but after heavy losses the French failed to carry the heights- By that failure all failed.

BLACK THINGS HAPPEN. After that black things happened on the British battlefront. The assaulting divisions, how on Hill 70, came under heavy German counter-attacks by heavy divisions of the enemy's reserves, and they were weak in numbers after their hard fighting. They looked back in vain for the supporting troops, hut no battalions came to their relief. Two divisions were on their way, the 21st and the 24th, but owing to a faulty time-table they had started late, and were far back from the firing line. They Ijecame hopelessly ..tangled up in traffic on the roads, and were exhausted by long marching and by hunger long before they reached their place on the battlefield. Tlun they took their own transport and cookers too far forward into a murderous place called Philisophe, and all their waggons were smashed to pieces by shell fire.

PALL BACK IN DISORDER."' These two divisions had never fought before; the officers were inexperienced, and had no knowledge of the ground, and when that evening the men were brought up to the support of the forward troops under heavy fire and against a fierce German counter-attack, they became confused [and demoralised. Many of their officers behaved with the greatest gallantry,'and led forward small bodies of men, who fought and died, but the mass of them fell back in disorder.

It was ,the fault of leadership and not of courage, because afterwards these two divisions did heroic things in many great battles, but this battle of Loos was for them a black tragedy. It continued for several days, and the Guards were thrown in to recapture Hill 70 and a black slag heap called Fosse 8, but they were cut to pieces by the German fire, and had to fall back. They did so as though on parade, with perfect and glorious discipline, but their losses were dreadful, and the battle of Loos failed in its objective.

The battle of Loos was: the last big battle commanded by Lord French. "In its large? l aspect it was a dismal failure, but it proved one thing, and that was the superb courage of the private soldier and battalion officers of the assaulting divisions and the splendor of the Guards. The men were great soldiers, and needed only great leadership."

BRAVE CAVALRY EXPLOIT. I Mr. Gibbs also describes how the village of Monchy, on the hill beyond Arras, was attacked and captured by our cavalry. "That was a gallant but a rash adventure," he writes, "and, looking back upon it, I am certain that it was no job for cavalry ,to do. The village of Monchy, on the hill top, was still standing when I saw. it that morning l , with roofs still in the houses and unbroken walls and a white chateau only a little scarred by shellflre. A few hours later it was wiped off the map, and that was when ,the cavalry were in. They were men of the 10th Hussars, the Essex Yeomanry, and the Blues, and I saw them going over Observation Ridge on the way to Monchy, the rush of iplendid bodies of men riding at the gallop in a snowstorm which covered them with a white mantle and crowned iheir gtwl h&ti.

"In the valleys below the hill was a mass of cavalrymen standing by their Stamping to keep themselves warm. While I was there a Orrnan aeroplane flew low above ,them and then whisked back to the enemy's lines. I guessed what would happen, and I guessed right.

SHAMBLES IN THE SNOW . A few minutes later Gorman gams were ranged upon the ground in which all these men and horses were assembled and shells burst among them and the ground was strewn with dead bodies and mangled beasts. But .the assaulting squadrons of cavalry rode on until they topped the ridge and swept round the village of Monchy, while immediately intense shrapnel fire burst over them, so that they were slashed by bullets, and many men and horses fell. But the cavalry made, a dash to the northern side of the village, and the enemy fled from them.

TRAGEDY OF PASSCHENDAELE. "It seems to me now, as it did then, that our men were called upon for to 6 great a sacrifice, and that these battles ought never to have been fought," Mr, Gibbs continues. "Some of the battles were just massacres of young ,'lesli and blood—our flesh and blood —in those infernal swamps.

"One of ,the worst days of all came on October 12, when, in storms of rain, English, Australian, and New Zealand, troops made another desperate attempt to gain the heights of Passchenuaeje. They failed, and were cut down ip swathes by machine-gun fire, and thousands of wounded poured back again ,to the dressing stations and field hospitals These men of ours cursed the weather as the cause of their ill-luck. They' cursed it with deep and lurid oaths, cursed it wet and cursed it cold, by day and by night, by dtickboards and mule .tracks, by shell-holes and swamps. For it was weather which caused their defeat and held them in the mud when they had set their hearts on the heights. It was this mud .that beat them. Man after man said that to me."

"IT WAS THE MUD." '•Fritz couldn't have stopped us," sa'v) an Australian boy, warming his hands and body by a brazier after a night in the cold slime, which was still plastered about him. "It was ,the mud which gave him his chance." "It was the mud that did us in," said an', officer of the sitting up on a .stretcher, and speaking wearily. "We got bogged, and couldn't keep up with the barrage. That gave the German machine-gunners time to get to work on us. It was their luck."

A young Scottish borderer, shivering so that his teeth chattered, spoke hoarsely, and there was no warmth for him except the fire in his eyes. "We had a fearful time," he said, "but it was the spate of mud that kept us back."" "Whenever we got near to Fritz he surrendered or ran," said a young sergeant of the Fast Surreys. ''We should have had him beat with solid ground beneath us, but we all got stuck in the bog, and he came out of his blockhouses and machine-gunned us as ive tried to get across the shell-holes, all filled like young ponds, and sniped u» when we could not drag one leg after another."

Those were some of otir bad battles. But through them all shines out the valor of the British soldier, grim, enduring, patient, refusing to surrender the courage of his soul to the devils of despair, and going on to the end of his job, even though his goal were death.