The Press. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1918. The Surrender of Turkey.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16359, 2 November 1918, Page 8

The Press. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1918. The Surrender of Turkey.

Although the surrender of Turkey has been expected for some time—it became inevitable when the collapse of Bulgaria ■was added to the offensive in Syria and Mesopotamia—the full and official statement that was made public yesterday came as a welcome surprise. In his message to the Governor-General, the Secretary of State for the Colonies says that it is not possible yet to publish the full terms of the armistice. But the details that it is permissible to publish are veTy stimulating—the, opening of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, the free passage of the Fleet to the Black Sea, the occupation of all the forts, and the immediate repatriation of all prisoners. This is splendid news— it amounts to unconditional surrender. Since the capitulation of Bulgaria the Turks have amounted to very little in the war, and the surrender does not immediately affect the military situation on the Western Front. A considerable body of troops will be set free for operations elsewhere, although not so many as some people may suppose, for Bulgaria and Turkey must be very carefully policed until the war is over. There will also be a substantial easing of the shipping situation, for the armies of Syria, Salonica, and Mesopotamia madb a very large demand upon British tonnage. The great value of the Turkish surrender is the moral effect it will produce in Germany and Austria, and its tonic effect upon both the political and the military policy of the Entente. It has also, especially for the people of New Zealand and Australia, a great sentimental interest. It was against the Turks that our men first went into action, and the conquest of Palestine and Syria has been largely an Australasian achievement. Above all, it was in. the heroic but fruitless attempt to force a passage through Gallipoli to Constantinople that our men won their first and fadeless laurels

as soldiers equal to the best in all history. Mr Massey has suggested to the Imperial Government that the garrisoning of the forts might be allotted to the Anzacs. This is an admirable suggestion. and we trust that it may be found possible to give effect to it.-The{-e may bo practical difficulties in the way of its adoption, but we may be sure that the Imperial authorities will do their best to overcomo them. t Wo in. this country have never forgotten that in the landing on Gallipoli and tho fighting there the Anzacs were not the only troops engaged. The honours of that adventure are shared by the incomparable 29th Division, and these must share any place of honour with the Anzacs. The real utility of the collapse of Bulgaria and Turkey is its indication that in both those countries tho irresistible power of the Entente is recognised and admitted. They havo surrendered quite as much through the conviction that Germany is done for as through the feeling that they could not effectively continue resistance on their own account. This will be realised as clearly in Gormany as elsewhere. Morej over, although, as we hcive said, the wiping out of Germany's Eastern allies will not immediately affect the Western front, it will do so ultimately if Germany fights on. The south-eastern flank of Austria is now exposed to an unhindered and irresistible assault, and Austria, already broken up, must surrender. The Black Sea is open, enabling the Allies to reconstitute the Russian front. Thus Germany will be encircled for the first time, with no buffer neutrals to protect her, except Switzerland. The Turkish. collapse is thus a decisive event in the war. But it is a subject for rejoicing on other grounds, too. For the first time a League of the Powers will hold tho Ottoman Turk in its grip as a subject for correction, and we shall see justice and freedom established in th© lands which groaned under the Ottoman Turk in the now-ended day of a European Concert interested in preserving tho integrity of the Ottoman Empire and the vilely-abused powers of the Porte. Nor is this all. For with tho downfall of Turkey disappears for ever the dreams of German empire in the East. "Berlin to Bagdad," and "Hamburg to Herat," are now no more than tho names of German schemes which, have become impossible for over. o

The Eve of Defeat. We dare say that a good many people, while rejoicing over the collapse of Turkey and. the effect it will have upon the course of the war, may feel a little doubtful of an early end of the war as they read of stout German resistance on the Western front and of "bitter-end-ism" in the German Press. They hear Hindenburg muttering that the army and navy will take some beating, and they may pay more attention to him than to Haase's fiery yells for a proletarian resistance to the Prussians. But Haase is here far safer to back than Hindenburg. For over three months the enemy has been playing a great game of bluff —lxis retreats were "victorious withdrawals," our halts in the march forward wero "failures," our expectation, that the Dual Alliance would break up was due to hopeless ignorance, our claims that the submarine policy was in vain were simple lies, and so on. Since July the enemy has been conscious of the coming of defeat. The first paralysing moment of realisation was the issue of the Austrian Peace Note in the early part of September. WTien that Note appeared it was treated, very rightly, as suspect, but it has since become clear that the Austrian Government acted on its own account and that the German Government began to realise that the game was up. There commenced at once a campaign to raise the waning moral of the German people, and the world heard such significant things as the Kaiser's extraordinary speech, at Essen, the Crown Prince's voluble explanations that by "victory" he understood the prevention of the annihilation of Germany and that Germany had to fight a defensive war, Hindenburg's long and excited manifesto concerning the wicked Allies' policy of dropping thousands of "poisonous" leaflets over the German lines, and von Frey-tag-Loringhoven's invitation to the German people to fight "a victorious de- " fence to a finish." The German Government knew, in fact, that the people were despondent and resentful to an alarming degree. Since then Austria has fallen to pieces, Bulgaria and Turkey have surrendered, King Albert has established himself in Bruges, and Foch has hammered his way through the 'Hunding-Brunnhilde line and keeps on battering tho German armies. The German people's moral must have disappeared even beyond the point of supporting a war of defence or of caring what measure of humiliation may be the price of peace. Of course the Prussians may strive to mako a final stand. They are desperate, so desperate that nothing that happens can make their case worse, and they will not shrink from involving the people in ruin if they think there is oven the smallest chance of averting complete defeat. There are signs that they are still hopeful of avoiding unconditional surrender, for they are telling the people that the army is not yet beaten and that no settlement can be accepted which admits military defeat. We shall soon see whether the German people, fooled, deceived, and brought to the verge of ruin, and increasingly conscious of their account against the Prussians and against militarism, will care whether the defeat of the army is admitted or not. It will be surprising if their attitude is not determined by the consideration that the prestige of the army is precious only to the cause of the Prussianifim that they have abandoned as

the sonrce of all thoir woes. Nothing can save the situation for Germany now but a big German victory in the field or the sea. and Foch and our Navy will attend to that. .

When Bulgaria surrendered we dis-1 cussed the difficulties which would stand in the way of either the "Eastern" or "Western" strategists claiming the event as a triumph for their special theory. The surrender of Turkey raises the point afresh. On September 13th last a brief cable message quoted Colonel Repington as emphasising tho need for concentration qji the Western front as moie important than the prosecution of Eastern adventures. There was nothing in the cable messages to indicate tho ground for Colonel Repington's concern, and we conjectured that i\lr Sidebotham was "going the pace with his 'Eastern' views in 'The Times.' " The newspapers which arrived by the mail yesterday show that this is exactly what had happened. Mr Sidebotham, in "The Times" of September 11th, had indeed pressed the case for "reconstituting the Western front" in a vigorous and clever article, which was attacked by Colonel Repington, General Maurice, and the "Spectator." The "Westerners" insisted that the forces available for France and Flanders should not be weakened on any grounds. Mr Sidebotham insisted that Germany could hold in the West, and would seek "to repeat the history of last year and insure herself in tho East." "Germany," he said, "must be*defeated ultimately in France. But that defeat may be delayed, and against the dangers of that delay we must insure and reinsure ourselves in the East, and, above all, in Turkey." Both schools alike seem to have entirely miscalculated the Allies' striking force in France and in the Balkans, but the splendid turn of events wiil probably leave them without any desire to quarrel any more. 4

With the close of the war whenever it comes, one may erpect much argument on the question as to which particular event or circumstance marKea the turning of the tide. The matter has already been the subject of some discussion in a mild form. Some people contend that the moment of crisis occurred when Belgium offered an unexpected resistance to the invaders and thus allowed France to mobilise her armies and Britain to despatch her first Expeditionary Force. Others claim that the allimportant occurrence was the enforced retreat of the Germans from the Marne| in the first months of war. But neither of these events was the actual turning-point, though both threw the Germans out of their reckoning and upset their plans. The actual turn of the struggle in favour of the Allies is more difficult to fix; consideration must certainly be given to the gathering in force in JPrance of the American troops and to the surrender of Bulgaria, which might have happened even without American intervention.

From the military point of view, there is some diversity of opinion as to the incident from which dates the decisive change of fortune. Foeh a few days ago said that it was the British break through on the Hindenburg line that caused Germany to offer peace. In a speech in London last week General Monash, commanding the Australian forces on the Western front, claimed in effect that the capture of VillerßBretonneux in April last determined the course of the campaign. In view of the fact that Australians composed the larger part of the small British force commanded by an English general, Sir Henry Rawlinson, which captured this village, it would have been better if General Monash had let someone else pay them so great a compliment. As we have pointed out, there is no disposition at Home, in spite of grumbles in some Australian quarters, to underrate the great services of Australian soldiers. The highest authority of all, Sir Douglas Haig, in his (recently-published despatch, gives the Villers-Bretonneux affair a special paragraph and bestows the warmest praise on all who took part in "this well-conceived and brilliantlyexecuted operation," particularly mentioning the Thirteenth Australian Brigade.

It is admitted by others that if the Germans had been able to follow up their advantage or even to hold tho village after winning it, Amiens must have fallen. Happily Sir Henry Rawiinson recognised this and struck back at once, driving the enemy back to the eastward of the village. But General Maurice, though giving its full value to this gallant counter-at-tack, declares that the real turn of the tide ocourred later on when' General Gouraud repulsed the Crown Prince's attack in Champagne and literally smashed fifteen of the best German divisions which had been carefully nursed and trained for that operation. Going further back, this same authority mentions as a powerful contributing factor in the present German position Byng's attack on Cambrai last year. That affair, owing to our inability to follow up the first success, has been generally regarded as virtually a failure, but General Maurice points out that by reintroducing surprise as a weapon of the offensive, it did much to bring about the satisfactory change in the course of the war which must sooner or later—and, as it seems, sooner rather than later—result in Germany's complete defeat. Previous to the Cambrai attack we had tried Joffre's plan of nibbling at the enemy's lines, which proved too slow, and subsequently assaults preceded by long and intense bombardments, which prepared the enemy for what was going to take place and allowed him to bring up huge reserves beyond the reach of our artillery.

Another factor of importance in our favour has been the Germans' failure to recognise when they were within measurable distance of carrying out their plans There is little doubt that if they had followed up their success at Villers-Bretonneux they would have effected the separation of the British and French armies, which was one of the objectives of their great March offensive. But the apparent success of tho offensive in Flanders induced the enemy to divert to it some of the forces on the Amiens front, and he thus fell between the two stools as von Moltke did in 1914. Another German device that eventually worked for our benefit was the creation of bodies of "storm troops," comprising the best men chosen from all manner of brigades, and employed, as military writer puts it, to bore

holes in the Allied lines through which the musses of German troops could pour. They were most effective as long as they lasted, but their losses were necessarily tremendously heavy, and when they wore broken, the fighting standard of the whole army was inevitably lowered.

Whatever troops may bo opposing tho Americans northward of Verdun, and further south in the direction of Metz, we may be sure that there arc no Alsaco Lorraincrs among them. For some months, the soldiers drawn into the Gorman army from the conquered provinces have been a serious cause of anxiety to the High Command, for while .Germany has been putting out floods of propaganda for public consumption, lo the effect that AlsaceLorraine is as loyal to the Kaiser as any other part of tho Empire, tho Al-Kice-Lorrainers have been deserting the army in large numbers, and up to August last troops from those provinces had been legarded with such suspicion that they bad not, except in very small numbers, been employed in fighting against the French Recently their diversion from the Western front lias been impossible because of the necessity for r.einforcing the troops engaged there, but strict orders were given that they must never bo left alone in tho lighting zone, but always brigaded with Germans of proved loyalty, and must generally be kept under the closest surveillance, and the "doubtful" treated with iron severity.

The official attitude towards the Al-sace-Lorrainers was expressed in a captured army order signed by Genoral von doehn —one of many documents to the same effect which have lately fallen into French hands. This ordor, after referring to "secret instructions," received from the High Command regarding the employment and treatment of Al-sace-Lorrainers on the Western front, went on to say:—

"The plea of those who urge tho presence of relatives in the French ranks, and who consequently do not wish to fight against them, must not be considered. It must be clearly explained to these people that there would be no risk of' meeting their French relatives if the latter wero actuated by similar scruples. The contrary has, long since, been proved. On our part we nave not the right to dimmish by a hair's breadth our demands that the Alsace-Lorrainer, wherever he may be fighting, should defend his country as a piece of- the German Empire against the French plans of conquest-. 1 '

And yet. in spite of this appeal, there are no doubt tens of thousands of men from Alsace and Lorraine whose one hope throughout the war ha 9 been that at the -end they shall live once more under the Government of Prance.