Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1939. AN UNPROMISING ADVENTURE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1939. AN UNPROMISING ADVENTURE.

AT the stage to which they have been carried, the German attacks on the Western Front reported yesterday--one of them in a limited area east of the Moselle a’nd the other on a fighting front of twenty miles east of the Saar —are defined as comparatively minor operations in which the enemy gained no appreciable advantages to set against his fairly considerable losses of mon and material. 11 is admitted that the b rench gave nn a certain amount of the German territory they had occupied, but it seems to lie quite. clear that they did so in battles of manoeuvre between the fortified zones and that they had no difficulty in repelling attacks on the lines, still nearly everywhere in German territory, which they elected to defend. If the Germans have gained any advantage at all in their latest attacks it is probably in easing to some extent the direct pressure on road and railway junctions, mines and industrial establishments exposed to artillery and other attack. Any relief that has been obtained in this way appears to be rather limited. Much important industrial territory on the German side of the frontier remains dangerously exposed to artillery and air attack from France. Whether the Germans are intent upon a serious offensive against the Maginot Line has yet to appear, but apart from concentrations which may be defensive there is no clear evidence that they are contemplating an attempt of the kind. Whether they are contemplating it or not, they evidently have poor enough prospects of profiling from such an effort, and from the enormous expenditure of. lives it would be bound to involve. An assault on the Maginot Line could serve the purpose of the Nazi dictatorship only if it achieved overwhelming success, and resulted, not only in breaching the frontier defences but in the overthrow and decisive defeat of the Allied armies. On that measure of success even the most optimistic of Herr Hitler’s advisers can hardly be prepared to count. There have been a number of suggestions that the Germans may find an opening for damaging attack on the Allies by violating neutral territory north or south of the fortified zones. These neutral territories, however, are protected at almost all points by much more formidable defences than those the German armies broke through in Belgium in 1914. On the south, the Swiss have constructed strong defensive lines and have developed plans under which these lines would be held by a frontier force until the main Swiss army and French reinforcements could come up to stem, an enemy invasion. Relying in part on the flooding, should it become necessary, of a great part of their territory, the Dutch have prepared their own death-trap for an invader. Belgium has constructed defences far stronger t han her 1914 fortress line. Luxembourg is comparatively open territory, but German armies marching through Luxembourg would find themselves eon fronting the strongest section of the Maginot Line. To the fact that hopes too lightly entertained by the Germans of swift success in a lightning war have gone by the board, it has to be added that they are badly placed in nearly all respects to bear the strain of a long and exhausting war. In spite of the extent to which Germany has been militarised by the Nazis, one of her conspicuous weaknesses in the present struggle is in her lack of trained military reserves. Germany had no conscript, training between 1918 and 1935 and it is computed that she lias 7,000,000 men between the ages of 18 and 48 who have received no military training whatsoever. A well-informed writer stated recently that when war broke out Herr Hitler presumably could count upon an army of 3,000,000 men, of whom only two-thirds could be deemed trained men in the French sense of that word. Whatever she may have accomplished by intensive and emergency training in recent months, Germany is far to leeward of the Allies where the training and preparation of all but a comparatively small part of her military forces are concerned. To appearance Germany is at a hopeless disadvantage in land warfare and would only intensify and aggravate that disadvantage by a policy, of active aggression on the ’Western Front. At lhe same time her submarines are being destroyed rapidly, ami at anything but the most immediate view it appears to be well beyond her power to rival the Allied effort in the air. Iler hopes of obtaining effective aid from Russia appear, too, to be fading apace.