THE GERMAN RETREAT.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 43, 4 June 1917, Page 1

THE GERMAN RETREAT.

MILITARY CRITIC'S COMMENTS. FALSE STRATEGY. Commenting upon the Allied offensive, Major JLhvyer, the South African military critic, says: "I think a conservative estimate of J the situation is to be recommended. Sir Douglas Haig has not let drop a single word to justify us to speak of an advance towards the Rhine, nor has lie mentioned any .synonym for a debacle or an end of all trench warfare.The German critics boast that the ietirement was effected before we had any inkling of it. They claim that by this voluntary retirement, without our knowledge of what was in the wind, tney were able to place a strip of devastated territory between themselves and the Allies which will delay the next blew j but the fallacy of this as a strategic method lies m the assumption that the manoeuvre can be repeated with equal success in the future. Ito first, success was due to weather conditioner which made observation difficult, and to its being carried out somewhat ia advance of time.

"When our spring offensive is ready, and during the summer months, both these conditions will vanish, and the new strategy will lose all its effectiveness. When attempted under altered conditions a few more retirements such as the present one in the Flanders region would mean an evacuation-of the coastline of Belgium, and then what would become of the other valuable strategic conception of starving England by submarine warfare when the base at Zeebrugge was no longer available P

"As for the tall talk of Major Morale about a repetition of the tactics at Tannenberg, the conditions aie ludicrously dissimilar. The approach through tlie Massurian Lakes and bogs was by narrow causeways. There waa no railway system behind the Russian orm«s j they htfd no aircraft reeon* naisanco service to speak of, and HinUmburg was lighting on terrain which was the study of a lifetime. The attitude of relying upon some superior qualities in the commander as n substitute for the inability of troops to stick to the punishment they have been receiving is not a very hopeful frame of mind from a military point of view. This is the one great central faot in the character of the present retreat, It may have been voluntary; it may have caught us by surprise; but it was undertaken because they were beaten in the battle of the Scmme last year, •because their troops regarded with terror the 'blood bath' of the Somme this year, and because their generals knew that their morale was unequal to the strain,"