Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1917. ITALY LOSES VALUABLE TIME

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 112, 8 November 1917, Page 6

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1917. ITALY LOSES VALUABLE TIME

One of the best indications of the trend of the war is the nature, locality, and scops of the targets selected by the enemy for his 1917 offensives. During the year so far as it has elapsed—and less than one-sixth of it remains—all these several offensive efforts have been directed against either the Eastern or the Italian front; and the object in each case has been similar—viz., to knock the attacked country out of the war by accumulation of military and political pressure outside and within. The fighting in Galicia, and later in the Riga district, aimed at the elimination of Russia; and the present drive into Italy does not differ from it except in this: Italy is a smaller and more compact country, in which a sudden disaster must produce a more rapid nervous effect than would be possible in loosely-knit and colossal Russia. Hence Mackensen, if he can, will drive his blow home without delay, recognising that Venice is much closer than Petrograd, and that the politicomilitary effect of a march into the Venetian city might be, so far as Italy is concerned, decisive. With Russia passive and semi-paralysed, and with Italy converted into a suitor for peace, the German Generals would end the year well satisfied. These political gains would, in their estimate, more than compensate ' for their enforced adoption on the Western front of a defensive policy. Even the sting of successive local defeats, at the hands of the British and the French armies, would be mitigated, if not removed, by the spectacle of a tame Rome and a powerless Petrograd. That is the light, at any rate, in which th« war's balance-sheet for the year would be presented to the German people. And if the' German Generals should thereupon be asked-: " What about the defeats in Flandersr* they could truthfully reply that all the Anglo-French pressure had not prevented them, early in the fourth year of the war, from dealing to, fullyprepared Italy a staggering blow.

This, then, is tho German programme for the year 1917: To hold, or impede, the Western armies, while dealing demoralisingly with Russia and decisively with Italy. • Perhaps the closest parallel, in aim and scope, to the Italian offensive is the campaign at Verdun in 1916. In that operation the Crown Prince hoped to do for France what Mackensen is trying to do for Italy. To knock France out of the war, the Crown Prince poured out Mood and iron against the Verdun defences, but expensively and futilery. Mackensen, in North-East Italy, has begun a similar operation with initial success and comparative cheapness; and, though he will probably fall short of Venice and will suffer heavily in countertactics, he has already achieved a military triumph, which it»is no exaggerafion to say is "the greatest Allied disaster of the war."- Even had the heroic defence of Verdun failed, its fall-woufcknot have been such a moral shock as the driving and partial destruction N of the Italian armies. At Verdun the defencehad to contend with natural disabilities, in French military circles "there were-in-deed grave doubts as to whether the obsolete ■ forts were worth holding; the world could have been prepared for an orderly witfcdmval.. But tlie -semi-col-.

lapse of the Italian armies admits of no such palliation. It comes at a time when the new artillery warfare and the tactics are—or ought to be—thoroughly understood; it befalls a military organisation with years of war-training, and with an ample concentration in a compact theatre, whose terrain and comnumrcaitions had been the subject of intensive i study and immense outlay. From a comI parison of the campaigns of Verdun and North-East Italy there is, therefore, no deduction consoling to the Entente arms. In the third year of the great artillery war Germany was unable to break through the Western front, but in the fourth year, with a receding line in Flanders, she yet breaks through against Italy. And the thing has been done not with preponderant strength. The AustroGerman triumph is moral rather than material.

So far, Russian and Italian defeats have not deprived the Entente of its winning' chance. But they have postponed it, and have put back the hour of victory; which means, in cold fact, the sacrifice of more blood and mrjre treasure, is also evident that, superior though the Entente nations still are in resources, they cannot be prodigal in time, for time, in a very real sense, is money. If, as Mr. Bonar Law suggests, Germany is already bankruptr—that is, cannot raise sufficient revenue to pay the interest on her debts— it is more "than ever necessary to avoid Entente bankruptcy, for there is a challenge in peace as well as in war to consider, and there is no need to take an avoidable plunge into the slough of insolvency along with the dupes of the Prussian war-lords. So far as Italy is concerned,' the disaster to Cadorna-'s armies, who were probably neither outnumbered nor overweighted, seems to have been entirely avoidable. The danger now is that, by a judicious employment of Bolos and Mackensens, the enemy may alter the Busso-Italian position from bad to worse, postponing "Entente concentration to a point economically impossible. To counter this danger, the Italian rally must not be over-long deferred; and if Russia must have civil war, it would be better to get it over at once, and to put the house in order before the arrival of the spring of 1918. Meanwhile, everything depends on the staunchness of France and Britain and the new American ally. Probably the enemy will not risk another Verdun; he will be more likely to strike in the Macedonian-Albanian sphere, partly garrisoned by Italy. And the MacedonianAlbanian front presents by no means the least of the knotty military problems that the projected Entente Conference will be called on to solve.