TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BED-ROCK OF WAR.
THE week has been a good one on the Western front. Both we and the. French have made advances which, if not very great in themselves, when added together and joined to the advances made in previous weeks, show a very considerable amount of attrition in our favour. What is more important is that our new gains are distinctly promising for the future. For example, we are slowly and surely making our way round Thiepval. The last telegrams on Thursday indicate that our position to the south of the village has been improved by the capture of another two hundred yards of German trench. There are, of course, many slips between the cup and the lip, but in view of the local circumstances it is difficult to see how the Germans can much longer avoid the dilemma of either abandoning the position at Thiepval or running the most serious risk of being cut off.
But though the position in the West is as far as it goes suite satisfactory, the Secretary of State for War was quite right to remind the British people that they have not broken the German lines and not accomplished anything which will oblige the Germans to carry out more than local retirements, not done anything, in fact, which makes the enemy's position in Belgium precarious. Mr. Lloyd George was equally wise in hinting, as ho very plainly did hint, that the hardest part of the war is yet to come, the part which will require most coolness, courage, and above all endurance on the part of the Nation. But while we endorse this warning to the full, it must not be supposed that we have any fear of the country shaming us through want of heart. The British people are tuned to an heroic measure and will not fail, be the final agony of the war never so acute. Our women and old men, our boys and our girls will hold their line at home as firmly as the younger men abroad. But though we are absolutely convinced of this we do not forget that the making and the maintaining of war by a nation" demands an art" just as much as does the conduct of ordinary life. It is not enough merely to have a brave spirit. To make full use of that spirit and to get full advantage out of it communities need to be instructed and advised, need to learn how to meet and endure unbowed the buffetings of fate. They may sincerely mean to back up their soldiers and most of all the man who has supreme command in the field, for on him rests an Atlas weight of responsibility. Yet it may well be that when a moment of great and special stress comes, they will not know how to make that support effective. They may, unless they are forewarned, get bewildered and listen to the shrill voices of false advisers and so impede, not help, where help is most needed.
We can best explain what we mean as to the risk and danger of publio support failing our commanders in the field at the critical moment, by saying something of the nature of the war in its present stage. We are fighting and are bound to fight in the West under conditions supremely difficult for the attacking force. As a rule in war the bowling has a great advantage over the batting, but it happens that the newest fashion in combat has given a great temporary advantage to the defence. To break a trench line which rests like that of the Germans on the sea and on a neutral country is a task demanding almost , superhuman efforts, and yet it must be attempted and accom- plished unless we wish the war to drag on for another three years, drag on until attrition has done its dire work, and done it, alas, on us and our Allies almost as much as on our enemies. We have come down to the bed-rock of war, that bed-rock -which is much more quickly and easily reached in sea than in land fighting. On land elaborate systems of strategy and tactics and the innumerable possibilities of attack and defence somewhat obscure the elemental fact so visible at sea, that in the last resort you will not win in war unless you find out the enemy's forces, bring them to action and destroy them. That is the necessary, the essential, thing. But this means first, last and all the time that you have got to go where the enemy's armies are. It is no use to say that they are in an impregnable place, and that it would be much wiser to fight them somewhere else, and to try to devise schemes for that purpose. There may be cases, and the present is one of them, in which there is no possibility of forcing the enemy to fight on your ground, and where in order to beat him you must engage him in his so-called impregnable fortress. To smash him you have got to fight tactically at a disadvantage. Here is the situation with which Sir Douglas Haig is faced. His gallant and most able predecessor was, during the greater part of his command, in the position now occupied by the Germans. He was on the defensive and holding the British line against the Germans, and magnificent was the way in which he accomplished his duty. In spite of the smallness of his force and the want of munitions, he resisted the furious hammer-strokes of the Germans even when they outnumbered him by five to one. But though it is we who now have the superiority in men and in munitions, a far harder task is upon Sir Douglas Haig. He has, not, of course, by one action or in one month, but by a series of actions, and by a persistent prosecution of the war, to destroy in their trenches that portion of the German Army to which the British are opposed. And this may prove, nay, is almost bound`to prove, not merely a very slow process but one involving a terrible loss of life, and a loss of life which, owing to its concentration on small plots of ground, will necessarily offer a spectacle tragic beyond previous human experience.
When this point is reached will be the time when the Com- mander-in-Chief will want the support of public opinion here, and when we shall every one of us want to steel our nerves to a degree of endurance far beyond anything which we have been called upon to exercise up till now. No one, of course, wants to see, and no one with the present Commander-in-Chief in authority is ever likely to see, men sacrificed wantonly, or butchered because the supreme command has not taken the trouble to devise means for making our assaults as little bloody as possible. We must not forget, however, that if we are to beat the Germans we are bound to make great and terrible sacrifices. We must also not forget that at the moment when those great sacrifices are being made we are more than likely to find that the nerves of a certain number of people will give way and that there will be fierce and angry calls to stop the useless expenditure of life—to find someone who will perform the operation with less loss of blood and less infliction of agony. Then will come the moment when the best part of the nation must see to it that the awful surgery of war shall not be judged by the amount of blood that is shed or by the pain inflicted, but by the results. To leave an operation half- performed from so-called humanitarian reasons may be the cruellest as well as the most foolish of acts. General Grant was called a butcher, and very possibly was not as careful as he ought to have been of his men, but in any case Mr. Lincoln and his Government, in spite of the criticisms that were brought against their Commander-in-Chief because of his alleged reckless waste of human life, supported him, and he won the war. We may hope that such accusations will never be brought against Sir Douglas Haig—they have certainly not been brought yet, and as far as we can see there is not the slightest indication that they aregoinff to be brought. But if they are brought, let the British ° people take instant warning and let them remember that their duty is not to flinch, not to embarrass the Commander-in-Chief by cries of "This slaughter is more than we can endure," but to make up their minds to see the thing through whatever it costs in tears, in blood, in human anguish. Let them remember also that the last pull on the rope is always the hardest pull of all, the pull which tends to cut the fingers to the bone, But only a fool throws all his previous efforts away because he cannot endure the pain.
Previous page
