TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GREAT BATTLE.
SINCE our last issue by far the greatest battle of the war has developed—a battle to which, for significance and size, history affords no parallel. This battle is being fought with such intensity and with such an exhausting use of men and munitions that we cannot suppose that there will be a prolonged crisis. Within a short time we shall probably know whether the Germans have failed or have won the decision they seek. The whole conception of the battle is a characteristic product of the German military mind. When the battle is over the military situation will be radically changed. For good or for ill, we shall look upon entirely new issues. We shall know either that Germany has lost her gambler's throw—for such her present enterprise is— and that we can deal with her during the rest of the war with confidence and deliberation, or we shall know that we have got to begin the war, as it were, all over again. In the second event, which we do not however seriously expect, we shall have to reconstruct our fortunes in the same spirit in which we undertook the task of turning ourselves into a military nation in 1914. We are imagining such a prospect only for the purpose of showing that we cannot, whatever happens, contemplate such a possibility as losing the war and sur- rendering to Germany. That would be not only to sign away the freedom of the world, which is our trust, and divert the course of civilization, but to lose our national security. It cannot be made too clear that we are fighting not only for honour and right but for our own safety. Let us remember that even if the very worst should happen, we should not be in a worse case than Britain has been in two or three times before. Take, for example, the British plight in 1807, when Alexander of Russia suddenly made friends with Napoleon, and Great Britain was left alone to face the ogre. Britain had then very little military strength, and she fought Napoleon with her one instrument, naval power. Neverthe- less she won gloriously in the end. If Englishmen lost their belief in " the ultimate decency of things," they would have lost the faith that has always borne them upwards and for- wards. But they have not lost it. They are filled with it ; and it will sustain the hand that fires the rifle and throws the bomb as well as the hand that increases the output of our munition factories. It is desirable, nevertheless, for a moment to contemplate the worst things that could possibly happen in order to enjoy by comparison the very cheerful view we may fairly take of the much less bad things that have happened.
The German effort was intended to be one of those shatter- ing blows that must succeed quickly or not at fall. Every day of little progress for the Germans is a day lost. " Diem perdidi ! " Marshal von Hindenburg might well exclaim with Titus at the end of every day's fighting that has not revealed a clear prospect of a break through. On the seventh day of this terrific battle—we write on Wednesday—the Allies can say with a deep and reverent thankfulness and with an ever- growing hope that the British and French line has nowhere been broken. Every temporary break in the line has been quickly repaired, and the loss of ground matters little or nothing compared with the fact that the British and French Armies have not been separated, and that the whole line, though it bends, never disintegrates. Indeed, the elasticity of a retiring line is one of the highest tests of military training, and the British infantry have proved that they have this wonderful elasticity in an incomparable degree. German militarism must win now in order to survive. In this battle Kaiserism stands to win everything or nothing. It is not enough for the Germans to gain a good deal of ground. They must destroy the British Army or fail in their purpose. It is because on the seventh day of this fearful conflict the Germans are no nearer to achieving their end than they were on the first day that we say the nation may be of good cheer.
The German attack was spread over a front of 1301114) fifty miles stretching from the Scarpe down to the junction of the British and French Armies. Across this line the Germans have thrown nearly ninety divisions. Over seventy divisions have already been identified by our men. The German plan was to keep their men fresh by continually passing new troops through the lines of those who were exhausted or shattered in front. The delivery of the blow was in one sense no surprise at all. For some days our own Staff had been expecting it, and had known where it would fall. What was a surprise, at all events to the majority of the nation, was the enormous numbers of men and guns that the Germans had at their disposal. On March 7th Mr. Boner Law, who no doubt was speaking the mind of the War Cabinet, and we have no thought of blaming him individually, said not merely that he was sceptical about a German attack, but that if such an attack were made we should meet the Germans practically on equal terms in the matter of men. In the event it has turned out that the Germans were able to attack us in the proportion of three to one, and on certain parts of the line even in the proportion of six or eight to one. All the men and guns that gave our enemy this overwhelming superiority were, of course, brought from the Russian front. The object of the German Staff seems to have been twofold. First it was to separate the French and British Armies by driving a wedge between them through the valley of the Oise, and secondly, by breaking through our line further north and converging on the southern advance, to envelop the whole British army in the Somme district. If the second part of the purpose looked like succeeding, Amiens would be in danger of falling, and we should have to face seriously the prospect we mentioned above of beginning the war all over again. The coast towns would be m such danger that we might have to make our base once more in the West of France. But thanks to the British infantry, such melancholy thoughts may be put away. The most critical hours in the battle occurred on Friday week, when for a short time the Germans actually did break through our defences where we joined the French line, and threatened to separate us from our Allies. The manner in which the British infantry restored its fortunes under unceasing and frightfully heavy pressure from the enemy was a miracle of fighting. It could not have been done with the numbers at our disposal, however, if the French Commander-in-Chief had not manoeuvred his troops with exceptional skill and promptitude.
We have referred to the German conception of the battle as a gambler's throw. But though there can be no doubt that this is a just description, since Germany knows that she must get a decision before the weight of the American Army is felt, and before the final failure of her ' U '-boats is proved, it must not be forgotten that there were several reasons which encouraged the German General Staff to make the attempt. One of these was that the southernmost section of the British line had lately been taken over from the French. Probably the Germans calculated that we had not perfectly established ourselves on this new front. Another obvious reason was that they had followed very closely all the dis- cussions in Great Britain about the new duties of the Versailles Council, and had made deductions. They had read the statements in Parliament about the control of reserves by the Versailles Council, and it is safe to assume that they regarded the time of reorganization as the best possible occasion for them to strike. Whether there has been any delay in the use of our reserves which might in different circumstances have been avoided, we cannot say, nor is it profitable even to speculate on the subject. Enough to know that if our armies in the front line have been able to beat off the terrific German onslaught without the help of our main body of reserves, our hopes for the future may run very high indeed. It is certain that the German Staff have been reinforcing their amies from every part of the Western Front. They have employed their reserves freely.
The fifty miles of front along which the Germans attacked may be divided roughly into two parts, the first extending from the Scarpe down to the end of the Cambrai salient, and the other extending from that point to the neighbourhood of La Fere. The manner in which the first of these sectors held its ground was beyond words amazing. When our men fell back it was only because their line had to conform to the bulge made in the aouthern sector. The losses of the Germans in front of a line of men who held their ground, kept characteristically cool, and preserved perfect fire dis- cipline, must have been enormous. People must indeed be suffering from a wholly unnecessary panic if they imagine that the difficulties which have always beset us in our offensives somehow melt away as harmless obstacles when the Germans are confronted by them, Every time that a bulge is made in the line attacked, the attackers are exposing their flanks to a peculiarly dangerous fire. That was why Sir Douglas Haig in his offensives of last year very wisely abandoned the plan of pushing too far into the German line on a limited front, and resorted to the plan of what might be called blunt-headed advances. By nibbling out a piece of the German line without anywhere making a sharp or arrow-headed salient, he gradually worked his way round important German positions till he isolated them and they were captured ultimately with comparative ease. The problem of the salient cannot possibly become a simple one for the Germans. They must either smash their way through on quite a broad front, roll back both British and French Armies and take them in reverse, or they must lose so many men in salients that their life-blood will ebb away long before they have achieved their purpose. Another fact which has long been familiar in this war, and cannot suddenly be banished now, is that a defensive line which is not taken at the first onset is bound continually to become stronger. The resistance is consolidated as the reserves are brought up and the whole element of surprise is removed. This is only another way of saying what we have said above, that if the German plan does not succeed fairly quickly, it cannot possibly succeed at all. The Germans may well lose the war in winning victories.
It is impossible to leave the subject of this mighty battle without pointing out what a complete justification it is for those who have always insisted upon the almost exclusive importance of the fighting in the West. Critics with nimble and fanciful brains have wondered why our much-trusted military leaders should have gone on plugging away at a forbiddingly deep and dense system of German defences. Why not, they asked, rush troops across the Carso where there are no such labyrinths of trenches as in Flanders and France and• where the broad way -lies open to Vienna ? Why not make Salonika the base of a movement that will take our enemies by surprise in the rear ?—and so on and so forth. In his Paris speech Mr. Lloyd George himself said that we hammered away against an " impenetrable barrier " in the West while Serbia was being swallowed by Germany " because it was no one's business in particular to guard the gates of the Balkans." The answer of experienced soldiers was that you cannot always guard a gate by setting yourself down actually in front of it. You may be able to guard it in many other and better ways. If the gate which it is your duty to keep intact Jies on the other side of a dangerous and poisonous jungle, you could not have much hope of sending enough men safely through that jungle to guard the gate. You must then draw off the forces of the enemy from the gate by giving him plenty to think about elsewhere. You must attack a gate of his nearer to your own home. This may seem a dull, plodding, unimaginative method of procedure to many persons, but it happens to be the result of the experience of all the great strategists of the world. Because you cannot actually stand in front of all the gates you wish to defend, you have not necessarily abandoned your responsibility. You are defending all the gates in the only way in which they can be defended. Of course there is a mean in everything, and the most illuminating exponents of the strategy which has been nick- named " Westernism " in this war have never pretended that you can avoid all military enterprises at a distance. Some military movements at a distance deal with situations which bear closely upon the central strategy of the war. Suppose, for instance, that a dependency of Great Britain threatens to revolt and become a focus of anti-British pro- paganda and a new base for the enemy. Obviously in such a case it is necessary to take military measures in that dependency at whatever distance it may lie from the heart of things. Many causes and effects which are small in them- selves are contributory to the main causes and effects, and cannot therefore be disregarded. The true apostle of " Westernism " objects only to those forms of dissipating our strength which are purely wanton or superfluous. Now that the German attack has developed in all its surprising strength, every one sees clearly enough that the Germans are, and always have been, Westerners in their strategy. They understand that to defeat us they must destroy our armies. Nothing else will suffice. If they captured a large part of the world and left our armies fresh and strong, Germany could never be a victorious country.
It makes one feel sick at heart now to look back and think how strongly we were urged to leave a comparatively weak containing force in France and Flanders and gallivant off to the ends of the earth. What would have happened if these counsels had been followed ? The smashing German blow would undoubtedly have succeeded. The French Army would have been sundered from our own ; our troops in Flanders would have been cut off ; the coast towns would have fallen an easy prey to the Germans, and the French would even now be abandoning Paris. But, thank God ! the outlook is very different. We trust that some day Englishmen will recognize the full extent of their debt to Sir William Robertson. He more than any man, partly because of his position, but also because of his matchless determination and good sense, prevented the handing over- ver to to the Germans—of course with the beat intentions in the world !--of the key of the British Empire.
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