The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1917. FRANCES APPEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 105, 3 May 1917, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1917. FRANCES APPEAL.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that toe can da.

That France has Buffered terribly in this war. that her losses are far greater than England's, has always been obvious. French writers said openly that owing to the weakening of France Britain would have to bear a larger part of the burden of defeating Germany, but the British Government must have realised almost from the first that this must be done, and the results of Britain's great effort of military expansion were seen in the lengthening of the British front, and the offensives of 1915. 1910. and 1917. Now France is appealing to America for help, and we are tohl that the American Government is informed by the military mission that the nation is "almost spent." In spite of the dreadful .losses suffered by France, and the fact that men above our own military age are serving in the trenches, this should not be accepted literally. Marshal Joffre stated in the middle of last year that the number of troops at the front was greater than at the beginning of the ■war. Owing to improved tactics and increased artillery power, and the taking over by the British of another section of the front, the rate of drain on the French army since then must have been I less than in the first two years of the I war. There are. no official figures of French losses during the war. As Mr. Belloc says. France has had the courage and the discipline to refuse to publish casualty lists. In October last Mr. Frank Simonds. the American military critic. : estimated the total number of casualties at 2.500.000, as against 4.000.000 for Or- , many, and 1,400.000 for Britain. Mr. Belloc has regarded France as at nearly the same point of exhaustion as Ocr- . many; her classes of young men have been called up a little later thah the corresponding German classes. The Germans have repeatedly said that France was I exhausted—"bled white" was one of llindenburg's expressions—and Mr. Belloc thinks that they over-estimated France's . degree of exhaustion when they counted ' upon the Verdun drive putting the nation out of action. llindenburg's , statement was denied a few months ago I by one of Joffre's staff, who said that whereas France had enlisted 100 soldiers out of 1000 inhabitants, Germany had enlisted 125 to 130, and was thus nearer ! an exhaustion of reserves. It is the French infantry that i* feeling tile drain of nearly three veins of ' war. It is often said that this is a.n artillery war. but the infantryman re- ' mains the foundation of an army, i Though the French guns at Verdun were powerful and brilliantly used, they ' could not Siave kept off the Germans without the help of the indomitable French infantry. It is Hie infantryman who makes the advance after the artillery has done its work, and on whom tilie force of the counter-attack falls. : Although the new tactics have greatly | reduced the casualties in assaulting columns, trie wastage in the infantry is I , steady, and, in the aggregate, heavy. | [The artillery does not suffer at the 6ame rate, especially when, as with the ' 'French, the offensive lies with the army ; to which it belongs. The French pro- , ■bnbly have a surplus of artillerymen if not of guns; hence their offer to provide artillery for American divisions in France. , We Oiave not been 'bold officially i whether the United States has agreed ' to send an army to Europe, and it is ' possible that the first the world will hear , of it will be news that an American divi- , sion is fighting there. But everything j points to an army being sent, o>theirw>!i?e ■ why did Mr. Wilson ask for 500,000 men ' I in addition .to the existing forces, and I. I press for immediate conscription': To j send to France 20,000 men a month' should be !m eagy mattpl . for America,! , » the transport fe available. The French suggestion that they should be sent .at once ds b I marine menace. fo r ~ n ' , ! r aa ""my might be

raised and trained in America for service abroad, and then be unable to

cross the ocean because aIP available tonnage was needed to caTry food to the Allies. Besides, even if troops aTe trained in America, 'they would require addition-al braining in the. war zone before they went into the babble-line, and they might therefore just as well dlo most of their work in France. The proposal tiliait America should at once send this kind of help to France will be immensely popular in America, wiherc France is loved as an ally of the United States in its fight for independence, and as a home of culture and a stronghold of democracy and freedom. Although Britain's cau.c appeals to most Americans and Britain's effort is greatly admired, it is France thiut seems to evoke ■the warmer admiration, the greater enthusiasm. It was a shrewd idea to send over to America as one of tihe representail.il _s of France, Marshal iJoffre, #he outstanding figure in the France of this war, a man win) is a simple democrat as well us n great soldier, who typifies the France of iron patience and indomitable resolve. lie I will not appeal in vain lo a people whose capacity for idealism has been proved on I i many a bloody field.