WAR SLAUGHTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 166, 16 July 1931, Page 7

WAR SLAUGHTER.

SOMME REFLECTIONS

LONDON. Julv 10.

I "It was fearful slaughter, and marked the greatest lose sustained by the British Army in a single day," says General Sir Hubert Gough, commenting in the "Evening News" on the anniversary of the opening of the battle of the Somme in 1016, in which he commanded the army. He recalls that the British loss was 60,000 killed, wounded and taken prisoner, but emphasises vital points to be remembered. The battle, says General Gough, was fought to relieve the pressure on Verdun, and proved thereby another instance of British faithfulness to her Allies, whom the Britisher did not let down, even when calls for help were necessitated by bad French generalship. Secondly, if the attack had succeeded the British would have seized Bapaume, enabling General Rawlinson to lead on a victorious army and roll up the enemy. Moreover, although the British were originallv repulsed, by November the German army had been shaken to its foundations, robbed of belief in its impregnability and forced to recognise that it was fighting a formidable, perhaps unconquerable, enemy. Finally, the Somme Battle taught the British much. They were infinitely more efficient at the end of 1916 than at the beginning.