TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME. DURING the past week there has been a good deal of steady progress in the British movement on the Somme. The enemy have been driven back, not of course on as wide a front as that with which we began the battle, but on one of three or four miles. That as we proceeded our advance should be slower in certain sections of the line was inevitable, 'and was no doubt fully expected by the Commander-in-Chief. The most advanced front is bound to taper and assume in places somewhat the form of a wedge. But this fact does not in the least impair the importance of the " push," either in whole or in part. Since the well-marked advance in the early part of the week, the Germans, as they were bound to do, have been engaged in furious counter-attacks on our forward positions in which their losses have been extremely heavy ; but here, though they made for a time a small and sensational gain, or rather re-gain, in the Delville Wood, the net result of their counter-attacking has not been very great, indeed has not been great at all. The wonder is that their counter- attacks have not been more successful than they have been.
The reason for this should be clear to any one who stops to think the matter out. What is the immediate position of troops that have gained a thousand yards or s o of the enemy's trench after a desperate struggle In the first place, it is necessary to remember that the men are for the time physically exhausted by the effort of taking the trench. Next, they find themselves in works the whole design and intention of which was protection from attacks coming from the British side. This means that what was the back of the trench is now its front, and that it is almost open to attack. For example, there is no proper parapet, but only a parados, which is a very different thing and not designed to fire from. There is no firing-step, and no other conveniences for shelter and defence. The dug-outs face the wrong way, though this in the case of the elaborate underground burrows of the Germans does not, we admit, very much matter. In any case, the trench can only be made fit to hold by a great deal of hard work, which exhausted men cannot be blamed if they find it difficult to undertake. Difficult or not, however, they are bound to attempt it at once. Next, though the efforts made to bring up supplies of food and ammunition have done every possible credit to the Staffs and the commands behind the firing line, the distances and the enemy's artillery have made the job not only extremely arduous but extremely slow. Further, reinforcement and supply are impeded by the first necessity of getting back the wounded. A communication trench does not easily bear two streams of traffic, one forwards and one backwards, and naturally the wounded must have precedence.
Though only very sketchily, we have said enough to show the kind of conditions under which a trench wrested from the enemy is held for, say, the first forty-eight hours. Now con- sider the position of the enemy. They are physically far better off. They are in trenches which look the right way and require no special work to make them habitable in the military sense. Instead of having run away from their supplies of food and ammunition, they have actually fallen back upon them. Therefore it is easier, not harder, to supply the troops with food, ammunition, and fresh men than it was when they were in the lost trenches. Provided, then, that their moral is not broken, they are in a very good position for launching a counter-attack. They are able to fall upon us when we are in a state of hurry and confusion, and when they have only one thing to think about—i.e., the attack. Getting into a new trench may be compared to a family settling into a new house. When they are engaged in that adventure the last thing they want is to receive visitors, especially if the visitors have bombs in their hands, are sup- ported by machine guns, and require, as the housewife would say, to be attended to at every moment. Other things being equal, the counter-attack upon newly gained trenches from a strong position has a fifty per cent. advantage at the very least. The French, being a logical people, early noticed this fact, and may be said to have put their money upon it. They have deliberately preferred counter-attacking to holding on to trenches, because the counter-attack is certain to take the enemy at a disadvantage. We must not, then, be surprised if a counter-attack on outlying and detached points succeeds, but rather be surprised when, as has been the rule in the battle of the Somme, it fails. The normal stages of an advance in trench warfare may be said to consist of advances, slight retreats, new advances, new fallings back, in which the assailants if they are doing well only gain " painful inches," and have to be content to know, on looking back after three weeks or a month, that the balance is on the whole in their favour. The battle of Verdun affords an exact illustration of what we mean. Owing to powerful concentrations during the last winter, to the provision of strong artillery forces and other material, and to great masses of men, the Germans have been able to make what, when one looks back at it, is a considerable advance ; but it has taken them over five months to make it and the sacrifice of life has been appalling. No doubt they gained a considerable strip of territory on their first rush forward ; but if that is written off, and the ground measured from the point reached after the first five days of battle, it will be seen to be geographically a poor record. If the matter is looked into in detail, it will further be noted that again and again advances have been thrown back by counter-attacks, because the counter-attackers have been able to catch their enemies, we will not say napping, but in the confusion of settling in, and of drawing their supplies from places too far behind for military comfort.
So much for what we may call the mechanical side of the fighting. What is to be said on its moral side ? In the case of our troops it can only be described as a revelation. Our men have advanced with an elan and a spirit to which the history of war affords no parallel. It is a commonplace of esoteric military history that there is a very seamy side to those glories of the assault upon which the ordinary describer of battles loves to dwell. We hear of the rush of the charge, of the cheers, of the officers pressing forward to lead their men and of the men following them to the death. What we seldom hear about is what Milton called the " raw edge of war," of the ten or fifteen per cent. or more of stragglers who fail to go on—men who do not show anything which can be reasonably called " cowardice in face of the enemy," but who seize with great alacrity various forms of excuse, legitimate or semi-legitimate, for not advancing. One man shows himself too eager to assist a wounded comrade to the rear, another man sets his face in the wrong direction because of a comparatively trivial wound, or at any rate a wound which would not stop the advance of a man of hardihood and enterprise. Yet another man, or section of men, takes the excuse of some exceptional difficulties of the ground not to push forward. Finally, there are those who too easily give way to physical exhaustion, who let themselves be overcome by the weariness which attacks all soldiers before such weariness is strictly due. In a word, even the most gallant, well-pressed, and successful of advances has, as a rule, an appreciable stream of stragglers behind it. General Sherman—or was it General Sheridan ?—who had the happi- ness to command exceedingly brave and determined soldiers, records somewhere that it was to him always a very trying experience to come from behind upon a body of infantry advancing to the attack. You require, he suggests, all your moral courage not to be depressed by the sight of stragglers facing the wrong way, by men speaking of the impossibilities of keeping on, and of the awful carnage that is going on " up there." Slightly wounded men readily represent this or that company or battalion or brigade as having been " utterly wiped out," and paint in lurid colours the awful obstacles met by the advancing troops. It is only, says the American commander, when you get close up and see the eighty per cent. of stalwarts who are busy driving the enemy before them that you get rid of the disagreeable impression of disaster formed by going through the inevitable line of stragglers.
Now the amazing, the absolutely unique thing about the battle of the Somme is that there has been literally no " raw edge " to these assaults on fortified positions. the testimony of the correspondents, of the officers, and of the men on this point is in agreement. When one heard it at the beginning of the battle one was delighted, but expected to learn later that it was a picturesque way of emphasizing the great gallantry of our troops. Now, however, that the chroniclers at the front have had time to give us a calm and detailed moral appreciation of the advance, we hear exactly the same story. A correspondent of the Times in a deeply interesting review of the operations published in Thursday's issue brings out this fact in a passage which deserves the maximum of publicity. He tells us that he has read the reports of battalions, brigades, divisions, corps, and has listened to accounts of the fight from men who were in it, and from those who watched from behind, and then comes his comment : " Without exception, everywhere it has been the same story : ' There were no stragglers ' ; There was absolutely not a straggler ' ; ' Not one straggler—None-- None—None ! " Think what that means when the, advance was through shells bursting so thickly that they made almost a solid wall. Those watching from behind, he tells us, saw whole waves of men disappear simultaneously behind a bank of smoke and tossing earth, " while beyond the ground was swept with machine-gun, and rifle fire from, it might be, only fifty yards away. . . . The only men who failed to reach their ultimate objective were the men who fell on the way." When a monument is erected at Mametz or Contalmaison to commemorate the battle of the Somme, it might bear upon it one line, and one line only : " There were no stragglers."
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