AISNE & ARMIES.

Evening Star, Issue 15600, 17 September 1914, Page 6

AISNE & ARMIES.

GUIDE TO PRESENT POSITION. FIVE GERMAN CROUPS MOSTLY SOUTH OF THE RIVER. THEIR NEW FRONT. CROWN PRINCE GETS CLEAR. [By A. SrENCE.] The new German line seems to extend from Craonne on the west to Metz on the east. It is 110 miles Jong. The larger portion of the German armies is still south of the Aisne. The mischief imposed on the German armies in the battle of the Marne was what was stated in yesterday's notes — their flank was turned in the neighborhood of Meaux. Tuesday, September 8, decided the issue. One of the cables has informed us that the German General Staff has admitted this. There- is no ■confirmation of the capture of General Von Kluck, but whether he is a prisoner or still at large does not jnatter. We may be sure that his army was very roughly handled. The* aim of the Allies is to roll the German forces ur> on to the French fortresses, which begin their main chain at Verdun and run south. One of the telegrams states that our left wing is slowly contracting on the German centre. This is the continuation of the turning operation in which Von Kluck suffered first.

A. number of .messages depict the driftwood which the Germans left behind them after the battle of the Marne closed. Too much meaning must not be read into these cables yet. The scenes at the rear of any army during battle are always more or less nerve-shaking. Tho winner, the side which holds its own, can conceal this. On the other hand, the combatant who retires leaves the whole thing exposed to the war correspondents who accompany the hostile, side. Some of the news also purport's to relate happenings inside the line of the German rearguards. This information could only have been obtained by airship reconnaissance, but as a hurricane has been blowing in France airships would be temporarily out of action. "So a. good deal of the news must naturally be suspected, though there seems to be an element of truth in some of it.

The. position, as it must have presented itself to the German Staff by the evening of Tuesday. September 8. would be roughly as follows:—Von Kluck's army, which is our wing on the Paris side, is being beaten in. Can we push the frontal battle sufficiently at Montmirail and other central spots "to take the pressure off Von KJuck? How much of our major and minor reserves should we throw into the firing Ifne to do so? The result of the fighting of Wednesday and Thursday must have convinced them that the problem of committing the last reserves of their Second, Third, and Fourth Armies to the tiring line promised no good result. It was durin this stage that the French retook Montmirail. If things had been going well with the Germans every it e.rve available would have been sent' forward, with a view to wresting this important point out of the hands of tlie French. They did not send these re serves of troops forward. On Thursday, September 10. they must have become convinced that the Anglo-French pressure on Von Kluck had done the trick. On Frida.y, %September 11, they decided on a retire-ment-—the bitterest .decision which a German military direction can come to.

' The first thing would be to throw Von I Kluck overboard, and then to furnish rearguards of fresh troops to cover the backj ward move of Von Bulow, Saxe-Meinin-gcn. and the Fourth Army, who, apparently, were still unbroken. The fresh troops, who had originally been held back for the last effort, would immediately take ground for battle, and through their intervals the harassed men who had borne the stress would pass through. The best handling of the German artillery and machine guns would now be necessary. This phase of the operations probably continued throughout Friday night and Saturday. In that time the regimental officers would make all efforts to reassemble the men in their commands who had been scattered or demoralised by battle. Looking at all the cables broadly, it does not seem safe to assume anything like a rout of the four German armies who were engaged on the Marne. Von Kluck's command fared worst, of course, and the remains of this army are now the furthest north. It is these troops only which are north of the natural barrier of the Aisne. The others seem to be well south of it. The cables disclose five main groups of German soldiery. The first group pivots on Craonne, and is now probably engaged with British and French forces. Some of the British will be the cavalry which Sir John French sent promptly forward when the battle on the Marne was drawing to a close. The second German group is north of Rhiems, but south of the river Aisne. The distance between these points is not much more than the distance between Dunedin and Port Chalmers. The third German group is from Camp de Chalons to Vienna-la-Vllle (say, 20 miles). This line is a little slanted back on the eastern side, probably to cover the passage of troops northward near the forest of Argonne. .Some part of tlrj unspecified Crown Prince's army must now be engaged on this front. Thirty miles of Argonne forest divide the third and fourth German groups. The fourth group may be east of the Argonne. and may be large or' small. The fifth group is near the German fortress of Metz, which is about 45 miles away from the Argonne. The German endeavor seems to be to reestablish a plane front. It is straight enough as far as it goes, but dangerously salient with re>pect to Belgium. The landing of Russians in that country has been officially denied, but we need not yet cut loose from that interesting little story. It would be a movement which any military censor might legitimately wipe out of the cables. Our own second army may now also be showing up on this path of advance. In conjunction with all the foregoing two cable messages .should be read. One is that the Germans are. fortifying their new line east of the Meu.se, given to them by the fall of Xanrnr and the defeat of the French troops in that district. This fortification was mentioned in my notes as likely about a fortnight ago. The move is to shield one part of the " neck of the bottle " by ;t stiff series of military "works.

Another message, in connection with the new German battle line, may be permitted to say its own word. It runs:—"A Paris correspondent says that the whole German line is intact. There, is a fast but orderly retreat. A battle is now in progress which is probably only a rearguard action to cover the main retirement to the Meuse." There is a lot of military sense in this telegram Strategically the Germans have been beaten by the engagement on the Marne, but they have not been tactically routed. To-day's messages seem to indicate that the. army of the Crown Prince has got out of the danger zone. He had some, clash with the French frontier forts, and it seems reasonable, to suppose that this phase of operations will come in later cables—perhaps a week later. FOOL STORY? One would like to believe anything which the great Edinburgh paper the ' Scotsman' states, but the story of avenging the loss of the Pathfinder is a little past belief, at least in the form in which we have received it here. The German submarine which had, blown the Pathfinder up " dived again and again to prevent the destruction of her periscope. The cruisers waited grimly, a<nd, when she finally showed her conning tower, (-even ships were within range. Ten seconds later eeven shots tunuhed iuto the liaii shell,"

eto. The repeated dives, allegedly to con-1 coal the periscope, the showing of the con-! ning tower, and the ten seconds of gunnery are all very suspicious. i We will doubtless see submarine warfare | in the North Sea on a. terrible scale before the war is over, and every loss of I battleships will probably be kept back from the public for weeks arid months. This, of course, is a legitimate suppression of news in cases where the enemy do not know ! what class of target they have struck. In cases where the enemy do happen to kr.ow, however, the news might as well be given out at once. The panicky section of the nation will, of course, become more panicky than ever, but such news only galvanises the resolute man into doing something in the hour of national need. One stalwart is worth more now than the mobs which have had their little picture of the reality of war badly thrown out of focus by the literature and films on which the public have been eo injuriously fed. ANOTHER FOOL STORY. The public should steadfastly refuse to believe nearly every line of the alleged pronouncement by General Joffre as to close order and extended order in battle. Also the statement that "he led the Germans on his retreat from the Belgian frontier to a. battleground of his own .choosing." If General Joffre has said this (and more) he must be growing rather more garrulous than befits the post of a general actively commanding in the field." The lure of the Germans back from Belgium is evidently a little gleam of Paris Press moonshine, for the first rule in strategy is that an army must not be committed to the offensive •until it is prepared to maintain the offensive. How heavily General Joffre committed himself to Belgium, and what happened afterwards when Namur fell, we know now. As to the close and extended order, a book might he written. It must not be supposed that the German troops- advance into the firing line shoulder to shoulder, as the cables have led us to believe. The grenadier companies of the German battalions open out to five paces at least as soon as the opposing fire develops. Everything, however, depends on what the. commanders have, considered is the right width and depth for the whole battle. If the front of the corps and divisions is a restricted one, the front of the battalions who compose these -corps and divisions M'ill be correspondingly restricted. It is not unlikely that the British have sought to impress on the French the tactical value of the wide extensions of men which marked the South African War, and it is not unlikely that the French have begun to alter their company and battalion drill on lines which their V>rothers, the Britons, have pointed out. At the same time, the subject of extension of troops in the line of battle has to be looked at guardedly. What happens to bo good to-day may happen to be very bad tomorrow. BEAUTIFUL VILLAS AFLAME. Beautiful private property must have gone up in fire at such places as Compiegne and Soissons. If the incendiary match of the soldier spared the mansions and villas, the incendiary shell of the artillery would not. Every villa, mansion, or cottage on a battlefield becomes a bloody rallying post for infantry and engineers, a target for the convergent fire of guns. The glorious forest of Compiegne and its vicinity, is thickly studded with the country houses of well-to-do Parisians, and Compiegne itself is a meeting ground for Parisian hunt clubs. The great Napoleon, when he could find leisure in the intervals between his numerous campaigns, loved to visit Compiegne, and there is a semi-palace in the place in which the. Emperor's bedroom still forms one of the sights for travellers in France. The town also contains «, monument to that splendid heroine Joan of Arc. It was at Compiegne that she was captured. Many of these towns—Amiens and Soissons, for example—contain noble cathedral .structures. They are the embodiment of the conception of no jerrybuilder, but of the sympathy of the architect thoroughly «nlisted to give the, best expression of his genius to the faith of his fathers. Let us hope that the incendiary cannon spared those structures. In "the war of 1870 the Germans avoided the destruction of religious and royal buildings as much, as possible. The celebrated Von Moltke, stern as he was in war, had a strong emotional and religious side to his complex character. It is hard to believe that the nephew, now generalissimo of the German armies, will be unlike the uncle in such things. ALL POWERS WERE READY. It is to be hoped that no one imagines that England was caught unawares by the war. She seems to have understood what was coming. Mails have brought files of the London ' Times' of July 31 and thereabouts, before the dogs of war were slipped. One passage l-eada : As foreshadowed in the official announcement issued yesterday, naval and military measures of a precautionary and defensive character are being carried out calmly and quietly throughout the British Empire. The actual steps which are being taken it would he unpatriotic to mention, but the reports which reach us from places as wide apart as the North of Scotland and the Channel Islands indicate the thoroughness of these preparations. Turning over the. same file, of the London 'Times' one finds an analysis of the Russian mobilisation. Then there is mention of .special manoeuvres which had been arranged by Sir Douglas Haig at Aldershot, and also of prayers in the churches. It seems that Britain understood everything well beforehand. It was no eleventh-hour commitment. "RESURGAM." Over every German general who is killed in the cables one ought to write the word " Resurgam." They have a sturdy habit of coming back again from Walhalla, or wherever dead warriors go. It may have escaped notice that General Von Billow, who commanded one of the armies in the battle of the Marne, is the same Von Bulow who was shot by a, boy scout (or something like that) in Belgium the week before. After his alleged demise thev found 135.000 francs (between £5.000 and £6,000) in the pockets of his uniform! This is what !<? termed the "crisp up-to-date pen artist" at work again, and the military censor must have smiled in his saturnine way a little when he let this go out to the world as part of the people's news. The poor public seem to catch it. every way. There, is much lurid detail about the Davids of Belcium and the Goliaths of Prussia, but little genuine news which will enable the taxpayer to form an opinion as to what is really what. We have not, for instance, been informed yet what the composition of the Crown Prince's army is. The strategist at the breakfast taihle will no doubt inform his little audience that this latter suppression is for " military reasons." We must not let the Germans know anything, even about their own ) armies. [ VARENNES. It will not be without some feeling that students of history will see such names as Varennes and nS-t. Menehould figuring on the war map. It was from Varennes that \he butchers of the French Revolution conducted Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette back to the shambles. With them came " Sister Elizabeth" — the king's sister—the two hapless children, and Madame De Tourze], their governess. Three deputies—Petion, Barnave, and another—travelled in the carriage. It is on this page of the revolution that Carlyle seems to strike the grandest note in his history of tha.t time. He called it "A night unexampled in the Clermontais."'. To those who have thought over the religions and political consequences which have followed on the French Revolution, and are still felt in France, Carlyle's phrase—" night unexampled " —will not seem overdrawn. At present the town "seems to be one of the spots at which portion of the Crown Prince's army halted after the battle of the s Marne. WATCH THE WAR TAX.

Artisans, clerks, and housewives should watch the war tax which the Government of New Zealand seem to meditat*. The tax seems to be coming. The freezing subject is -being gently broken by the Gouservative Trcas. Beii:'.d ike Cpnsai'i

vative editorial the whole Conservative intent is marshalled. One journal' has 'pint it this way : The liberality of the public does not seam to us. to furnish any valid argument against the imposition of a special tax to cover the payments for which the Government have rightly assumed the responsibility in ronnection with the war. ... In the aggregate this means a heavy commitment, which, however, the people of the Dominion will willingly bear. Will they? It depends where the incidence of the tax will fall. If it falls on those who, in all human probability, are going to make money out of the war, good and well. If, on the other hand, it falls largely on the intermediate classes in the cities, public opinion should revolt. It will, of course, be difficult to trace the incidence of this tax until long after the word of protest would be futile. It may lay its long paw on to the artisan's dinner table through the Customs. Now i& the time to watch it. Now is the time to watch the price of food also. A number of interesting letters have appeared on this subject in the ' Evening Star' during the last three weeks. Every one of these writers is a public benefactor.