TOPICS OF THE . DAY.
THE WAY OVER.
"LIVER since the battle of the Marne we have never Ail hesitated to believe that we were winning the war. We need hardly say, therefore, that we agree most heartily with General Smuts's confident prediction that, whether it comes soon or late, our victory is certain. The only question that admits of a doubtful answer is the kind of victory we shall win. We might, for example, win a victory which would make it quite impossible for the Germans to argue by means of some ingenious circumlocution that they were really the winners, and which still would not be decisive enough to place the future of the world in perfect security. There are degrees of victory even when one side has found it desirable, prudent, or even necessary to retire from the conflict. Time, as we have said over and over again, is an important element in our problem. This would be true if there were no other reason for the assertion than that the supplies of the whole world are gradually reaching a state of exhaustion. It is necessary, therefore, even while assenting to General Smuts's admirably reasoned and vigorous description of the situation is the most " intellectual " survey we hive had from one in authority for a long time—to remember the conditions under which we are conducting the war, and to admit that, as an early conclusion is likely to give us much more valuable results than a conclusion reached later, it is to a corresponding degree worth special efforts.
We must not allow the pendulum of our thoughts to swing
violently from one extreme to the other, after our national habit in war time. It would be difficult to say whether our tendency to underrate or overrate an enemy is the more characteristic. Sometimes we do one, sometimes the other. For the greater part of the Napoleonic Wars Englishmen regarded Bonaparte as an invincible being, and almost up to the end of that gigantic struggle it would have been diffi- cult to persuade most of them that Great Britain would not be invaded and that Napoleon would not really bestride the whole world. For many years English children could be paralysed into terrified quiescence by the threat that Bona- parte would carry them off. For years Wellington was a General who inspired popular mistrust, and even when he was preparing victory behind the lines of Torres Vedras, public opinion, impatient of delay; could not perceive that he was doing anything but ignobly wasting time. Yet all the
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while, thanks largely of course to the invisible pressure of Nelson's Fleet, the doom of Napoleon was being gradually spilt out. if we overrated our enemy then, we began the Crimean War by a ridiculous underestimate of the Russian power. Readers of Kingsley's Trey Years Ago will remember how exactly he described popular feeling in the words of that amiable butterfly Lord Scoutbush : I'd get out to the East away front this depot work, and if there is no fighting there, as every one says there will not be, I'd go into a marching regiment and see service." This digression is only to empha- size the point that, though we are beating the Germans, we must. not rest content with a certainty while the possibility exists of making the certainty doubly certain and doubly valuable. We must not underestimate the difficulties that remain. On some of the conditions under which we are trying to solve our problem General Smuts did not touch. He always scrupulously avoids all questions of home politics, and probably that was the reason why he did not remind his interviewer that a race is being run between victory and the depletion of our food supplies. He did not allude to the depredations of German submarines, which, if they wear at the moment a more favourable aspect, are still very serious. Lord Rhondda, while combating the imagined danger of " social unrest owing to high prices," is of course replacing one danger by another. Lower prices will mean higher consumption, and the danger seems to us to be greater than ever that the narrow margin between sufficiency and want lnay after all disappear. The remedy for this difficulty lies in the hands, or rather in the mouths, of the people themselves, and so splendid is the spirit of the nation that we are not at all inclined to take a pessimistic view. Nevertheless the danger is real, and it is one of the chief reasons why we should speed up the conduct of the war with more determination than ever before.
If it be true, as General Smuts says, that the strategy of extremely limited objectives is the only right strategy—if, in a word, machinery has proved its supremacy over human bodily endurance and courage—we must at the very least regard it as possible that at the present rate of progress the German! Will require some time yet to reach the conviction that they are beaten. They can always refer to their war maps and
tell themselves that our physical gains are insigmfitant. From the moral point of view that would be quite wrong, but we have to deal with German minds on the principles on
which they are known to act. If the power of machinery, then, is the last word in modern war, we have to think out our problem more than ever in terms of machinery. In what
way in particular might machinery help us to reach an early rather than a late victory ? We think that though machinery
has presented to us an almost impenetrable barrier, it also supplies its own antidote. We believe that this is to be found in the development of our air-power, and that machinery can be beaten by machinery on conditions which were un- dreamt of before this war. In all previous wars the way of victory was either the " way round ' or the " way through." A General's object was to turn the flank of the enemy by creeping round one or both of his wings, or else to try to break through the enemy's line and crumple up the divided armies in turn. But what do we see now We see the enemy's line resting on the North Sea at one end and on the Adriatic at the other. By land, at all events, there is no way round. The way through is blocked up by the impene- trable barrier. of machinery already mentioned. There remains the " way over " by means of aeroplanes, which have neither to go round nor through, but only to leap the enemy's line like a new kind of nightmare-cavalry whose jumps are measured not by feet but by miles.
Let us not exaggerate. We do not imagine for a moment that victory will be won without infantry—" the queen of the battlefield "—and without enormous resources of artillery, which in the scale of military values has taken a higher place than ever. All we mean is that aeroplanes—and many prudent and thoughtful minds are of this opinion—may be just the determining factor which would give us an early rather than a late victory. It might be argued, as we believe some people are already arguing, that if aeroplanes are to do the work of cavalry, existing cavalry should be dispensed with as obsolete. We do not accept that argument. We remember only too well the numerous disillusionments that have resulted from generalizing from particular sets of circum- stances. In any case, the fact that many most able and distinguished Generals would oppose such a suggestion is enough to rule it out from our counsels altogether during the war. We want no bitter conflicts on technical subjects. We want nothing but unity and common effort. The kind of work that aeroplanes in vast numbers might do is only faintly suggested in Sir Douglas Haig's recent despatch from Head- quarters describing how a single member of the Royal Flying Corps descended to an altitude of a hundred feet far behind the German lines and sprayed with his machine-gun a marching column of German troops two thousand strong. The growth of skill in flying during the past year has exceeded the ex- pectations of even wild enthusiasts, and we shall not be guilty of boasting in saying that our flying men have displayed an aptitude for the navigation of the air that is unrivalled, and is the counterpart of the British instinct for seamanship. In a speech at Hammersmith last week Lord Montagu of Beaulieu said that he had received information as to the extraordinary efforts of the Germans to develop their air- power. The whole staff of the various Zeppelin works, which must amount to many thousands of very highly skilled workmen, had been diverted front the construction of Zeppelins to the construction of aeroplanes. He said, more- over, that the Germans were steadily practising flying by night. We believe that our own Government are very much alive to the intense importance of air-power, and that they cannot be accused of sleeping while priceless days are passing. But they have shown so marked a tendency to depend upon public opinion as their guide and master that nothing but good can come of every attempt to awaken opinion as to the importance of constructing as many aeroplanes as possible during the next few weeks or months. As Lord Montagu pointed out, the wastage in aeroplanes is enormous. The average life of an aeroplane—a fact which the public do not recognize—is to be reckoned not in months or weeks but hours.
Nor must it be forgotten that the exact value of our air- power will be expressed not only by the numbers of aeroplanes but by their quality. An aeroplane is as complicated and delicate a piece of mechanism as a watch. Every part has to be fitted with the most scrupulous care, and if the quality of any part of the material used falls below the standard, the trustworthiness and the fighting or scouting value of the machine are enormously impaired. If it be found necessary to keep more skilled workmen away from the front for the purpose of aeroplane construction, we earnestly hope that no prejudices, no unwillingness to acknowledge previous mistakes, and, above all, no excessive readiness to be awed by a popular outcry, will prevent the Government from taking whatever steps their expert advisers demand. A man who is really essential for skilled production at home must not be sent to the front merely because he is admittedly young and strong and has all the makings of a dashing soldier, or because some group of newspapers raises a clamour about favouritism and privilege. The only privilege for any man to-day is to do the utmost that is in him to help to win the war on the lines which the Government judge to be the best. But though the logical conclusion of General Smuts's argument is that the further production of machinery cannot be safely or wholly left to hands that grow old or become nerveless, it is also true that in the construction of aeroplanes there is a vast opening for the labour of women. Already the greater part of the handling of the fabric for planes is done by women, and in this respect the increase of work in the future could be met by women, and not so well met by anybody else. This of course might mean more trouble through the " dilution " of labour; but if any such trouble should threaten, we hope that the Government will remember that they can safely rely upon the whole-hearted determination of working men— proved over and over again—to win the war. The appeal has only to be made in strong and plain language to succeed. What never succeeds is an attempt to explain that things are not what they are, and that sacrifices are the last things required.
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