TURN OF WAR'S TIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 6, 8 January 1916, Page 10

TURN OF WAR'S TIDE

AN AMERICAN VIEW

GLOOMY PEOSPECT FOR GER-

MANY

"Is the time near when the swelling tide of war must recede a little? Some French statisticians believe that such a. time will be reached before the month is out, if, indeed, it has not already passed," comments the Springfield Republican, one of America's beet respected papers. "English computations put the turn of the tide in December In both cases the conclusion is based on an estimate of the reserves which Germany can put in the field.

"Naturally no helpful futures are given out by the Germans, who are not anxious to ehed light on this point. It is to be noted, however, that such a devolution of the war was. forecast by Bernhardi and other German militarists, who clearly foresaw that if hostilities were prolonged armies would necessarily shrink. Of the steady wastage of men civilians have little notion, as wasshown by the grotesque misunderstanding, in England as well as in this country, of the figures of British recruiting. If Kitchener had nearly 4,000,000 men it was easily assunmed that • something like 4,000,000 men should be in the trenches in France, no thought being given a« to how losses were to be replaced. "In the American Civil War for various reasons too little attention was given to this problem. No . sooner was a regiment formed than it began to waste away. In recruiting there was no system, and it was found easier to organise a new regiment, officers and all, than to fill gaps in the old organisations. After six months a regiment would have full complement of ofiicers, good or bad, and, perhaps 300 men out of the 1000 on its rolls It is often said that at the close of the war the Union army numbered a million, but its fighting strength wa« only about a ttiird pf that. One general commanded a division of three brigades, 12 regiments, which at Atlanta had but 22C0 muskets. To command this force, equal to two-thirds of a German regiment, there was a major-general, besides three brigadier-generals, 36 field officers, 120 captains, &64 lieutenants, 56 administrative officers, a total of 480, or about one officer for every five men. The wastage of effective force was disheartening. " Even with Prussian efficiency the normal shrinkage of an army under war conditions is great The German estimate prior to this war was that at the Close of the first year 40 per cent, of the infantry, 20 of the cavalry, artillery, and engineers, and 12 of the train troops would be lost. But these figures are inadequate for a war on two fronts continuously sustained with so many great battles. ' By the end of the first yea* the loss must have been nearer 60 per cent., which means that to keep the army at full strength till next spring the" whole original fighting force would have to be replaced. But though the German press speaks confidently of 10,000,000 possible soldiers, and declares that ■ the lads . yearly reaching military age will make good the loss, there is some reason to think that the limit is near at hand.

" Such a shrinkage would not, of course, assure victory for the Allies, as some of their military writers assume, but it would materially improve their chances. Sooner/or later, if the war continues, their armies must shrink, too, if only from the financial strain of keeping such enormous forces in the field. But their operations - would, on the whole, suffer less than those of the Central Powers from a reduction of the scale. The German plan calls for an impregnable living wall.about the Central Empires, with sufficient resources for a battering ram that can at will be used against any point If the army shrinks, this grand scheme cannot be carried out; the lines must be drawn in till they can be held by fewer men. In short, the maximum strength seems to be very closely the minimum that will serve, and if the scale of operations shrinks the plan- of campaign will have to be radically altered. Bernhardi looked for a.return, under such conditions, to the older type of warfare which prevailed before conscription yielded such huge armies. In place of trench warfare, he expected a more active campaign by forces not large enough to stretch from sea to sea in an unbroken and invulnerable line. In such a change there would be an increased chance for strategy, so that it might not be wholly to the disadvantage of the German. general staff. On the ■ other hand, in such a waning war, economic pressure would tell steadily in favour of sea power. But the calculation of the chances of success is a quite separate .jnatter, not involved in efforts to fix the point at which some shrinkage of the armies in the field may be looked for._ Two thingg seem clear, that the -Allies are expecting to make their most powerful effort in the early spring, and that to meet the expected drive the Germans will call up every man available, probably exhausting its reserves. If peace does not come in the interim, the spring campaign will be the most desperate and terrible of the war. And if that gives no deceisi&n a slow waning of the war from a progressive exhaustion may be expected.