FRANCE AND RUMANIA.
THE French infantry, gunners, and airmen won bri- 1• perishable renown for their arms on December 15th before Verdun. We shall not attempt, in any detailed appli- cations, the language of eulogy. Their glorious achievement is its own eulogy. The French know now that they are a winning Army. The joy of every generous-hearted school- boy in the story when Tom Brown beat the Slogger, for all its youthful freshness, was but a pale image of what theFrench before Verdun must feel. Four French divisions -beat, and in one part of the field routed, five German divisions. They took 11,387 prisoners, including 284 officers, 115 guns, 107 machine guns, and 44 bomb-throwers. After the victory French advanced patrols were able to destroy German guns quite unhindered by the enemy. All this, be it remembered, happened between ten in the morning and sunset. The ha.rVest of battle would have been great if it had taken weeks to gather it, but that it should have been completed in a few hours proves the waning spirit of the Germans better than any single incident in the war so far. The French accom- plished their work on ground deep in mud and water. If this success could be won in such circumstances, may we not have high hopes indeed for the summer when the accumu- lations of material during the winter will be at the disposal of all the Allies to make use of on firm and clean ground / . On October 24th, when Douaumont was retaken, the interior line of forts round Verdun passed back into French possession. The obj ect of the plan of battle on December 15th was to recapture the points of observation on the heights between the Meuse and the Plain of the Woevre. Much more than this object was achieved. Among other things, the proof is clear that it is no longer a hopeless undertaking to attack on a short front. The local enterprise against an enemy whose spirit begins to fail him (as it does at Verdun, though we should beware of assuming that the same thing is true on the Somme) may open out all kinds of unexpected opportunities. The attack of December 15th was on a front of a little over five miles, and nearly everywhere the Germans were driven back about two miles. The position at Verdun is now almost as it was when the Germans began their costly and, as the event has proved, heart-breaking attacks upon Verdun last February. From a particularly good account of the battle by the Times correspondent we learn that the French bombardment, which had lasted for several days, was greatly helped by the airmen. On December 15th not a single German airman was seen by the correspondent. The French airmen were not only extraordinarily efficient in signalling is the artillery, they pursued the retreating Germans like cavalry of the air, using their machine I. uns. In one • place a force of Germans was cut off beyond the Cate du Poivre, and here a French airman flew low along the mob of desperate, routed men pouring machine-gun fire into their ranks. It seems that the French, who have brought their fighting to an unparalleled scientific perfection, are no slaves of a formula. They fit their methods to the conditions: We have heard of them hitherto capturing trenches by the-inex- pensive expedient of waiting till the trenches were battered down into dust or pulp. Patrols would ascertain whether any living being still -stirred in them, and when it was kn wn that resistance was at an end the lines of infantry would move forward to the occupation with hardly any loss of life. But on December 15th the French infantry kept pace, as it were, with the barrage. That impenetrable curtain of fire moved inexorably forward, faster than any one had dared to hope, and just behind it came. the French infantry. The plan was right. Victory was in the air, and speed on this occasion was the essence of the manoeuvre to overwhelm the Germans. General Nivelle in fine put the crown on one of the French methods. We imagine that in this delicate adjustmt nt of science to the conditions, the temper and special experience of the troops is one of the important factors of the problem. There is no absolute rule. It is th part of military genius—of the instinct for war—to understand and to choose. The German barrage seems to have been imperfectly placed and timed, and the failure of the Germans in the air is a sufficient explanation.
From France we turn to Rumania. Our belief is that the worst is over, and the worst was never anything like as bad as our professional fainthearts invited us to think. How long will people go on believing that the Germans can perform miracles which lie beyond the range of all other nations ? Surely it ought to be plain by now that whatever else they are the Germans are not supermen. If they had been super- men they would have smashed us by land in the first year of the war when we were unprepared. In the case of Rumania it seems to be supposed that the Germans can actually launch a serious military undertaking without appreciably weakening themselves elsewhere ; that they eau keep open new- long lines of communication by a mere effort of the will ; and that, having occupied a great many fresh towns and villages, they are somehow nearer to winning the war. Napoleon called the occupation of towns, so long as the enemy's army remained unbeaten, an " empty honour." His authority is good enough for us. The German army rushed across Wallachia partly in search of food and oil, and partly to make an histrionic demonstration on the eve of trying to get peace terms. The fact is, however, that they have found little food; and as for the oilfields, these have probably been put out of working order for the present. Moreover, this breathless rush has by no means been managed without a wastage of men. It has been said that the Germans have lost as many as two hundred thousand—not killed, of course, but removed from the active list. That is highly probable. But if it be true, or even approximately true, the German army in Rumania is nearly " run down." What happened to the phalanxes in Russia in 1915 is being repeated now. The German attack on the important Rumanian granary of Braila has become a slow business as speed is reckoned in this Rumanian affair. The 9th German Army approaching from the west is thirty miles away checked by the Russians Mackensen's Southern Army is about twenty-five miles away. The German army in the Dobrudja stretches along a line which ends at Cerna, twenty miles south-east of Braila. Very likely Braila will fall, as it is an unfortified town in an open plain. But the point is that every day the Rumanians are removing the great supplies of food which were stored there, while the remaining Rumanians in the Dobrudja are also falling back in 'safety. The real attempt of the enemy to smash the combined Russian and Rumanian force will have to be made, if at all, along the line of the river Sereth. There the left wing of the Allies will rest on the Danube and the marshes, which in winter are as great an obstacle to an advance as the sea itself. The right wing will rest on the foothills of the mountains where the Transylvanian Alps join the Carpathians. It is a short line across the narrowest part of the neck of Rumania. Even if the Rumanians have been too hard hit to hold it alone, we shall be surprised if the Russians cannot do so. Meanwhile the Rumanians will have a breathing-space to recover and refit after the excellent manner of the inextinguishable little Serbian Army
Previous page
