THE NEXT CAMPAIGN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 65, 16 March 1918, Page 13

THE NEXT CAMPAIGN.

WHERE WILL GERMANY STRIKE? WESTERN OFFENSIVE POSSIBLE BUT TTNMKEIiT. PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS. (By FRANK H.. SIMONDS, the wellknown American Military Critic.) - The campaign of 1918 opens with certain very clearly marked problems in all minds. _ By reason of the Russian collapse and the Italian disaster, the Germans have regained the offensive, the initiative. Theirs is now the opportunity and the power to strike. For their enemies the riddle is now: Where ■will the next German biow fall In the West, in Salonika, in Asia? In addition, there is the problem of the Italian campaign. To attack now would mean for the Allies huge losses, with relatively small possibility of a supreme success. It would risk exhaustion without commensurate promise of victory. On the other hand, to wait, to accept the defensive. is to enable the United States to bring up its forces, of which no large portion can be effective in 191 S. but perhaps a million wHI be ready to take part in the campaign of 1019. Hence the Allies, since the submarine warfare does not threaten them with famine or defeat in the next sixteen months, are bound to accept the defensive, and let Germany risk exhaustion by the attack. . WHERE WILL SHE STRIKE? Now, as the situation stands to-day. Germany has the men and the material for an attack. But she cannot wait. No great new ally is getting ready behind her guns, as we are preparing behind the French and British armies.

But where will she strike? This is' the question which is filling the press of the world to-day. Will she strike in I Asia Minor to regain Bagdad and Jeru-j salem, restore her dream of a Berlin-! Byzantium-Bagdad railway, her' old sally-port against British Ejypt and the Suez Canal, which a Turkish Pales-; tine supplied? Will she attack the hete-i rogeneous force now defending Salonika i and offering the sole European obstacle to the completion of Mitteleuropa, ' walling off this vast Teutonic creation from the Aegean and from the natural outlet of the Central Empire at the; south? I

-.WESTERN OFFENSIVE UNLIKELY. Or Trill the Germans make cne more colossal effort in the West? The Germans have announced their forthcoming attack is to be made in the West. They have heralded it with brass band and a blare of trumpets; but their attack upon Verdun, upon Russia in April, 1915, upon Italy, all these were surprises so far as German publicity was concerned. If Germany contemplated an attack in the West, would she talk about it, giving her foes due warning, the chance to make the last preparation and search their own fronts ret once! iJIKS-β-f or Tsome-cnre weak point? '. It seems to mc, and -this is the concln-! sion I find -in-most, of the- European' journals, that a German offensive in the West i 3 unlikely. It is iby no means inconceivable; it may come; "it will come' ii the Germans are actually in possession of information, naturally "lacking in our own case, which would lead than to believe that either the British or French armies are breaking down in moral, as were the Italian before the recent disaster; but, accepting- the possibility, it remains plain that the great weight of chance is against such a venture. Western offensive can come, it seems to mc, only if the German situation—l mean economic, not military —is so desperate that the Germane feel that they must risk everything on one more bid for a. quick decision. In that case they will attack in the West, because nowhere else can a decision be had. .Victory in the war, if it is to come on the field of battle, must come somewhere between the North Sea and Switzerland, and if Germany feele that she must risk all on one more bid for a decision under conditions far less advantageous than on the other occasions she will attack in the West, and we shall see the greatest conflict of the •war unfold within the next two or three months. MINOR GOAL PROBABLE. On the other hand, if Germany hopes simply to last the war out, if she hopes to win it as Frederick the Great won his most terrible struggle, by wearing- out his foes, as Louie XTV saved his territory in the War of the Spanish Succession, she is most likely to seek to break the nerve of her opponents by aiming at victories in indecisive fields, which, despite the fact that they are minor, will impress the world, and because of local circumstances can be won with a minimum of cost to herself. Such an operation was the attack upon Rumania a year ago. The recent Italian affair is an equally good illustration of this strategy. ALLIES MUST WAIT. If the Germans can wait six months, if their economic, political and industrial condition enables the high command to pursue a strategy purely concerned with military considerations, then it seems to mc they are bound to make their first campaigns .in Macedonia and in Asia, with an intensification of pressure upon Italy, if they do not push her behind the Adige before the spring campaign opens. Thereafter, if the Allies should yield to the obvious temptation, and French and British troops are sent to Italy and to Salonika, if British troops are withdrawn from Flanders for Egypt and Palestine, then the Germans can launch their great western offensive. Meantime they can threaten this great blow, using if as a political rather than a military weapon, holding it over the heads of their western foes, and thus possibly contributing to the discussion of peace. If the Allies hold fast to the west, and take their losses in the east, Germany, having launched no western offensive, can still Beck a peace by negotiation with the coming of the winter, using the successes she may have attained, perhaps at Salonika, perhaps at Bagdad, probably in Northern Italy, as arguments to prove that she is invincible. And in all this time the Allies will hardly be in a position to make a really great offensive in the west, because the United States will not yet be able to supply the troops necessary to insure a decisive advantage in numbers. If this German peace bid fails, then the advantage will pass for all the period of the war to the enemies of Germany, because our reserves of men are well nigli unlimited, and by the spring of 1919, thanks to a million American troops, Germany will be outmanned on the western front, and we and our allies will he.in a position to launch and maintain an offensive which will bring Germany to terms,

DOMESTIC POLITICS ANOTHER MATTER. The campaign of 1918, as I see it, promises to be one In wliich the Germans will have the • offensive, and ■■ thus the opportunity to strike where they choose. I believe they will strike, not in the West, and Immediately, but that, while continuing their pressure upon Italy, they will open their operations with an offensive against the British in Mesopotamia, and possibly in Palestine, using Turkish troops, and when spring comes direct another attack, this time upon Salonika, employing mainly Bulgarian troops. As the Austrians will supply most of the man power for the Italian' campaign, this will leave the Germans with practically all taeir man power in hand for use on the Western front, if they choose; but I do not believe they will use it there unless the economic and industrial situation within Germany is such that they cannot endure another ten months of war, or the Allies make such a general dissipation of their forces thus weakening their Western front, that the Germans see a cliance for a decision in the West. If they do, they will take it. In all this discussion I have left out any examination of the domestic political conditions of Britain, France and Italy. If the people of any one of these nations become war weary the Germans will profit. On the other hand, a collapse -of the German or Austrian publics would be similarly advantageous to the Allies. But these are not, immediately, military considerations, and it is with the military considerations that I have endeavoured to deal.