THE WAR.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 12, 13 July 1918, Page 6

THE WAR.

General Maurice, the Daily Chronicle's Military Correspondent, has made a critiI cal statement in the shape of an attack 1 on the British man-gower policy to explain the troubles encountered this year. "We began," he saye, "too late; and I adopted a number of unsatisfactory expedients, of which the placing of men l&jr years old in the trenches was the most unsatisfactory of all. The French have not yet called up this class, and the Germans have not put them into the I trenches. America has fixed the age of twenty-one. On the other hand, France and Germany have long used older men." The wisdom or otherwise of the steps taken to meet the man-power crisis is from the point of view of military efficiency a matter for military experts. It may be remarked, however, that General Maurice's statement about the Geri man use of youths seems at variance I with other reports ; and the question is one of fact. It has been stated that about July, 1916, prisoners of the 1918 class were taken, which means that men were then fighting at the age of at most 18^. The relief acquired by the Russian collapse enabled Germany to stop acI celerating the rate of calling up new ! ■classes. She called up the 1914 class in j 1914; and in two years had called up | four annual drafts, being in 1916 about ! two years ahead of normal. She is now ; apparently about two years ahead etill— j perhaps a little less.

According to Mr. Belloc, Class 1920 (that is, boys reaching the age of 18 during this year) were warned for service early this year. If -this class had its normal period of notice and its normal training—four months—the first batches of 1920 class recruite would not have appeared in the trenches till July at the earliest; and these would have been only 18£ years old. Actually, troops of this class were identified in the first week of May. A whole company of 250 men was then discovered to be in the reserve, attached to the 13th Reserve Division. It was not in the trenches, nor was it then to be classed as attached to shock troops; but Mr. Belloc argues that it is only reasonable to suppose that this company was not a unique case; it was representative of others. If, as General Maurice states, Germany has not yet used youths of 19^ in the trenches, the presumption is that whenever units 18£ years of age have been formed, they are destined to ' spend at least a year in peaceful occupation with inactive reserves. This seems somewhat unlikely. There is every reason to presume that the Germans will not willingly use youths for heavy fighting except when that course is unavoidable; but their presence in reserve shows that it is expected that they will have to be called upon long before they are twenty.

The United States Federal Shipping Board was established in March, 1917; and, allowing for the early period of inefficiency caused by departmental troubles and' the difficulties inevitable in. the inauguration of bo powerful and large a concern, can. be regarded as having been, in, going order for just about a year. In the first months of its existence it took over a large tonnage of interned enemy vessels which had been seized by the United States as one of its first acts of war; and also commandeered practically all the tonnage under construction at the time. Neither of these steps, important though they were in increasing the merchant marine under the American flag, added a single ton to the world's shipping above what would have been available in any case with America as a belligerent. What really matters is the new construction actually carried out by the board; and so important is this and so many are its phases that it is a subject worthy of reference at any time. An item of news of great importance appears in to-day's cables. It is stated that 223 ships, aggregating 1,415,000 tons (average 6345 tons per ship), have been completed, and all but five of these are in service. This is roughly a million tons gross. Completion is a very different thing from launching. A ship can be launched as soon as her hull is built, and all the rest of the work can be done while she lies moored at a jetty.

As a matter of. fact, launching in America, at present at all events, is a very long way ahead of completion, and it is the rate of completion which is! of the greatest importance. Apparently less than half the building equipment of the United States is on the Pacific Coast; yet in the Pacific yards alone, up to the Ist of May, 202 steel ships, totalling 1,332,400 tons, had been launched. In addition there were many wooden ships. It is thus reasonable to suppose that the tonnage now completed is a good deal less than half the amount of new shipping actually launched. A steamer can be, and has been, launched in less than a month, but freak performances do riot count; nor is there any advantage in exceeding greatly in rate of construction the pace that completion can follow. That is fixed mainly by the output of machinery. The main engines and boilers of a steamer do not take up a great deal of room, but they represent a very great deal of work; and they are, moreover, attended by a host of auxiliary engines, pumps, piping, and fittings, all of which require time and labour, and that of a very highly specialised kind. Little information is available to show how closely tho engine shop is able to follow the shipyard in output; but there is reason to believe that it will take a long time to catch up. It appears that in some cases it has been necessary to tow new ships from the Pacific coast through the Panama Canal to completing berths in the Atlantic for tho fitment of engines, but that must have been a temporary arrangement, which for obvious reasons is most unsatisfactory.

Italy and Prance are engaged at present in an interesting "side-show" campaign against the Bulgars. It has developed in the curious sporadic fashion peculiar to the later stages of the Balkan operations, and, so far as the general public is concerned, seems to hove nothing very definite in view. Perhaps its directors would themselves find it difficult to put its objects in a simple sentence. Part of the campaign is being worked out on the front about Monastir, and in the hilly mass which, swept as it is on west, south, and north by the river Cerna, is called the theatre of the "Cerna bend.," There are no details of this fighting, but a brief cablegram received yesterday stated that the Bulgars had attacked again, and been again repulsed, north of Monastir, notwithstanding their costly defeats in the Cerna bend on the previous day. No report of this costly defeat had *ome through. More striking is the movement in Albania, where the Italians, forming the left wing of the Allies' Balkan Army, are steadily pushing north. They are fighting in the mountains north and east of the river Vojussa, or Viossa, which enters the sea near Valona, and have been able, as tho result of the most recent fighting, to move pretty freely. The operations seem to have been on a big scale, for the advance, to a depth of 15 miles, covers a front of 50 miles. It is an interesting detail that British naval monitors—those clumsy ships with one or two monstrous guns for long-rango fire—co-operated by firing upon the enemy's flank and rear. The Italian advance has reached the neighbourhood of the considerable town

clear outlook, for these operations. Important political motives exist to support the Italian drive in Albania, and the military effect of the campaign is, as the cables indicate, to damage the Bulgarian army's position by outflanking it. Incidentally the immediate effect is to punish the Austrians who occupy Albania, and express by their presence the Austrian hope of retaining the Adriatic coast as far south as the neighbourhood of Valona.