TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL.
"WHAT we write to-day may possibly be rendered void and of no effect by a telegram of to-morrow. With this reserve, we may deal with the military situation in the Balkans, which has certainly grown a good deal clearer since we wrote last week. Speaking generally, it is a tale of an anvil and a hammer. Adrianople is the anvil. The field army of the Turks is the hammer, lying some- where outside Adrianople to the south, but whether to the south-east or south-west no one not on the spot for the moment knows. The object of the Turks is clearly to get the Bulgarian army on to the anvil and then to smash it to atoms by the blows of the hammer. The Turks, that is, are making the proper use of a great fortified position. Such positions are of no more value by themselves than an anvil is of value by itself in breaking a bar of steel. Indeed, they are usually a source of danger and waste if they are merely left to be invested by an enemy. When, however, they retain the enemy at a fixed point and offer that resist- ance which makes the blow from the hammer effective, they are of the greatest possible use. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that the blows from a field army levelled against another field army with plenty of space in which to manoeuvre and to fall back are generally inconclusive. Witness the blows levelled by the Japanese against the Russians in Manchuria. The Japanese always beat their enemy in the general engagements, but as there was no anvil on which to break the Russian army, the Japanese victories did not annihilate.
But though Turkish strategy looks so well on paper and is so sound in theory, the public must not run away with the idea that it is certain to be successful. If the Bulgarians are quick enough, well enough led, and determined enough, and also are strong enough in numbers, they may not only surround the anvil of Adrianople, but with their own field army push back the Turkish field army till the hammer is useless because it cannot reach the anvil. This was in effect what happened at Ladysmith. The Boers not only surrounded Ladysmith and besieged it, but they had sufficient force and were sufficiently favoured by the ground and by the commander opposed to them to be able to keep Sir Iledvers Buller from breaking them on the anvil. On the map it looked as if he ought to have been able to pulverize them. As a matter of fact the Boers held him off out of reach of the anvil while they besieged Ladysmith. It was only because of pressure in another part of the theatre of war that the siege of Ladysmith was raised. It is conceiv- able that something of this kind may happen at Adrianople. The Bulgarians are now pouring down through the mountain passes, in the centre, on the west and on' the east, where the fortress of Kirk Kilisse, stands like a kind of huge outwork of Adrianople, and it is very possible that by the time these pages are in our readers' bands they may have actually invested Adrianople with its vast circle of star forts and outworks. Then will come the question whether they are strong enough to push the hammer out of reach of the anvil. Here a great deal will depend upon the quickness of the Turks and whether they can get at the Bulgarians before the Bulgarians have had time to dig themselves in and to throw up entrench- ments which will face south as well as well as north and offer line of firm resistance to the Turks. If they can do this the tables may, as it were, be partly turned upon the Turks, and they may be exposed to the loss of men and, what is almost worse, to the loss of time, involved in carrying entrenchments. It is, of course, possible that the Turks may be helped by sorties from Adrianople and its out- works. If they are, there will no doubt be a magnificent "mix-up," and we.shall not only see the besiegers besieged, but the Bulgarians may also be,in difficulties in regard to the lines of communication, by which they are fed and replenished with ammunition. On the whole, how- ever, it is more likely that the situation will be as we have said—like that at Ladysmith. Adrianople will not be able to do much more than hold its own, i.e., will not be able to help the Turkish field army. All, in fact, will depend upon whether the Turks win or lose their battle of Colenso and the subsequent attempts to break through the lines and make a junction with the besieged force. But obviously this does not exhaust the possibilities. It is quite conceivable that though the Bulgarians may be very hard pressed, the Turks will not be able to win their Colenso. In that case the Turks will no doubt make a counter-stroke, and try to relieve the pressure on Adrianople by attacking the Bulgarians in another direction, say by the Strums Valley. But this, of course, is a game that two can play at. The Bulgarians may conceivably be able to move down the Strums Valley to Serres and cut the railway line between Salonika and Constantinople, and then move to attack the Turkish field army, the hammer of our metaphor, in the rear. In truth everything, or almost everything, depends upon mobility. No doubt it is true that only numbers can annihilate, but quickness of move- ment is the equivalent of numbers. Therefore we may safely say that when the moral of two armies is about equal, which is the case with the Bulgarians and the Turks, the army which moves quickest will do best.
Though the military critics are no doubt right in thinking that the essential feature of the war is to be found in the actions outside Adrianople, it must not be supposed that the other movements are entirely unimportant. No doubt if the Turks were to win a -victory over the Bulgarians so rapid and so signal that they would be able to occupy Sofia in the course of the next fortnight, nothing else would matter very much. They could pick up the rest of the pieces at their leisure. There seems, however, very little prob- ability of any such signal victory taking place. The best that the friends of the Turks can hope for is that they will slowly drive the Bulgarians back, though in doing so the Turkish army would almost certainly be very severely punished. It is far more likely, then, that events will, even if the Bulgarians are not successful, move somewhat slowly round Adrianople, and that the struggle will be long and bitter even if it ultimately inclines in favour of the Turks. In that case considerable successes on the part of the Montenegrins, the Servians, and the Greeks, coupled with a general rising in Macedonia, might be of no small importance. In other words, if the Turks were to lose hold of the greater part of Macedonia and Epirus, and a considerable part of Albania, even victory at Adrianople would not settle matters absolutely in their favour.
Such speculations, however, had perhaps better be reserved for a future occasion. All that we can feel sure of at the present time is that the Turks are trying the strategy of the hammer and the anvil, and that the Bulgarians, who are, of course, perfectly well aware of the Turkish plans, are trying to show that an anvil is no good whatever without a hammer to strike on it, and a hammer of very little good if it cannot reach the anvil.
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