THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 14, 16 January 1918, Page 6

THE WAR

Mr Marcel Hutin's conception of trie Ludendorff strategy foi the "coming German offensive" is the biggest thing we have yet had. The enemy's scheme is, according to M. Hut,jn, to "exert pressure on the Franco-British front generally, but the real offensive will be on the two wings, the first from St. Mihiel to the Swiss frontier, the second from Armentieres to the sea. The strategic, plan is to take advantage o£ the St. Mihiel Spur (presumably M. Hutin uses the word spur to denote the sharp salient of St. Mihiel) and so to manoeuvre the two wings as to bring about a general descent upon Paris." Consider first the left wing, from Switzerland to Stj Mihiel. This front is about 180 miles long, and ior the most part is buttressed by the Vosges mountains. It is by far the most difficult country on the West front to manoeuvre over, and because of its lack of strategical possibilities has been by far the most thinly-manned on the whole front and has been quiescent during nearly the whole period of the war. The other wing is the section of the front which lies within Belgium—the front where the British, and the French co-operating with them, fought in 1917 the most consistently successful offensive of the West front, and secured almost the whole of the highly , important MessinesPasschendaele ridge. The Germans are not likely to have any brilliant success in either of these theatres. And if M. Hutin seriously suggests that the enemy can bring up sufficient troops to carry out "the real offensive" on these great flanks, the one marked by extraordinary natural obstaoles; the other held by a determined and very powerful army, and at the same time can exert pressure on- all tie rest of the front, he must assume the existence of a much larger man-power than is usually credited to the German command. .

"It all boils down to ships" is a very , simple and expressive phrase that sets out exactly the real problem which faces the Allies in combating whatever great military effort the Central Powers may make in the coming year. The paramount fact in, Europe is that the Central Powers, faced, through the Russian metamorphosis, with a greaty reduced' strength of Allied forces, have a fighting • chance of . winning the war—not a good one, but a chance which will almost certainly be tested. But it must be tested at the earliest possible moment, because Eussia is being gradually replaced by the United States; Germany counts on making that replacement still more gradual by means of her mines and torpedoes; the Allies reckon on speeding it up chiefly by shipbuilding. We may take it that the British" shipbuilding effort is pretty well defined, in the neighbourhood of two million'tons in 1917 and perhaps of three millions this year. Whatever we may hope, we must be prepared for the continuance of destruction by enemy action at least as severe as in the past, and a bit more — some seyen million tons a year; and the shipbuilding output must more than equal this so as to provide for the increased needs due to the vast transport service of the American Army. Clearly, tho greater part, of the burden is going to fall on tho United States in this matter. According to a recent statement attributed to Mr. E. Hurley, chairman of the Federal Shipping Board, American yards in 1916 turned out 750,000 tons ships. But a later statement (received by cable on Monday) announced that in. 1917 the total 'was 900,000 tons, twice- the output of 1916. These statements disagree,, and in the meantime it is impossible to say which is correct. The discrepancy may be. due to, n, different method gf eompu-

tation. There is no doubt that the United States shipbuilders are making herculean efforts to supply the great demand for tonnage, and Mr. Hurley holds up before their eyes as the object to be attained this-year six million tons at least. But to assume without question that this vast total can be actually reached is going too far. Mr. Hurley's words in October were : "We will build six million deadweight tons of ships in 1918. I say 'we are going to do it,' rather than 'we are going to try,' because anything that America sets out to .do she does." At all events,: Mr. Hurley then said that a million tons would be completed by next March. As over 900,000 tons were completed in 1917 and more than 300,000 more are due for completion by the end of next' month, that promise seema likely to be improved upon,

An interesting graphic computation of what the loss of a foodship means nowadays was recently given by Sir Arthur Yapp, Parliamentary Secretary to the Food Controller, in a speech in Glasgow. He said : "For every 100,000 tons of wheat we can., save by eating less and wasting nothing, something like 28,000 additional troops with food for the voyage, but not including guns or munitions, could be transported from the United States to the Western front. The average tonnage of a wheat ship is 6000. ' Suppose two ships a week are sunk .for a month, then 25,668,264 average bread rations of 4^lb would be lost. That would provide bread rations for all Scotland for Wer five ■weeks, Glasgow for six months, and Edinburgh forone year and five months. A big meat ship could carry, ' say, 50,000 carcases of sheep, or about 3,500,----0001b, which would keep Glasgow in meat rations alone for nearly two weeks."

Lord Nortbcliffe some months ago remarked in a statement to the American press that the submarine force of Germany "is fighting the greatest naval battle in the world off the south' coast of Ireland," and if this fact is grasped it helps a good deal towards an appreciation not only of the submarine menace but of the work which the Allied naval forces—British, American, and Frenchare doing, TEe question is still held by some to be open whether the Allies, with their overwhelming superiority in ships, may yet devise some method of attacking the enemy's coast so as to cripple the German fleet and particularly the' submarines by destroying or blocking their portaj But as we have frequently pointed out, so long as the means available to the Navy are those generally known— that is, unless an entirely novel form of ship, and corresponding tactics, are produced—a project of this kind' is out of the question. There is something to be hoped for from a big military victory that would give the Allies control of the Belgian coast; very little to be expected from a duel between ship's guns and Germany's powerful land batteries. Even if the fleet, at an inevitably large cost, worsted those guns, it could not hold the coast. Only an army, and 1 a very big one, could do that, and in the absence of the necessary a.rmy the Germans would simply set to work and sink the warships with gun and torpedo until the whole scheme-was given up Then we should be worse off than ever. ■