THE TASK

Evening Star, Issue 15817, 31 May 1915, Page 6

THE TASK

FOR THE ITALIAN STAFF.' HOW TO ADVANCE? HARD FRONTIER TO MASiER. ITS FEATURES & FORTS. ONLY TWO PLANS POSSIBLE. [By A. SrENCK.] It's a stiffer proposition for the Italian army than it may look, and the time is opportune to offer a rough idea of tho frontier of Venetia, its mountains, two of its rivers, and its fortifications. Only one or two places have to be looked for on the atlas to gain that rough idea, First, there are the Alps—Carnic and Julian. They aro from 7,000 ft to 10,000 ft high, and not yet snow-free. They frown on the frontier nearly all the way. and it would be a. bold Staff that would tackle them. A Napoleon or a Hannibal might do it, but Hannibals aro periodic genuises of rare occurrence, though the everlasting mountains do not change. If Italy desires to strike Austria it will be good for her to leave tho barrier of billy land alone. It will be good for Austria to do the same if she is planning a*swoop on to the Venetian plains. The zone of uplands is nearly 40 miles broad, and the tracks nowhere good enough to allow an army to deploy out of column into line. If it cannot do that it cannot fight. Moreover, just in case some unlikely Hannibal might appear in the war, both parties have ornamented their sides of the mountains and the crests with hundreds of detached forts. Many of these are armored. ITALY AND PLAN No. 1.

_ Since the Carnic and Julian belt seems insuperable, some other way must be found, for no nation pars 'its generals and soldiers to sit still and look" at the other fellow's generals and soldiers. There are. two ways—one east and one west. In the east the Julian Alps fall away to nothing as they approach the Adriatic Sea, and here there is room to deploy and any amount of good roadmg. Here, too, the Isonzo River flows. It is said that the. Italian armv is proceeding on this line; its airmen have certainly been busy on it, but it is all misty, and, indeed, if Italy attacks in earnest hers she may receive- a blow on the rear which will do her no good. Still, it is her most promising path. It leads on to the important Dalmatian towns, which she covets, and to the Austrian naval bases. . Partly the Austrians have shut this gate with some hefty fortifications. It is true that the fort's have- the old-fashioned shell cupolas, buteach mounts from eight to a, score of long-range guns, observation stations, searchlights, and telegra-nh and telephone lines buried in the. earth. Assuming that Austria is satisfied to sit tight on this Isonzo front, as I expect she"may, Italy will find the task before her a" bloody one. This is Plan No. I—a strategic movement by the right. ITALY AND'PLAN No. 2.

Plan No. 2 is to move by the left. The eye has to travel west" along the map to the region of the beatitifurLake Garda to see it. Not far from the lake the Piver Adige descends due south from the_ Tyrol Mountains. The valley of the Adige is a broad one, and at least three excellent roads wind through it. It was said in one of last week's cables that the first great battle will be fought on the banks of this river, but if so° itwill be a battle of German making, not Italian. For what good could Italy do herself by boring away up the Adige? The fortifications are stronger there than they are on the eastern track, and if she forced them all she would be on a path which would lead her to no place of importance: though, to be sure, she might lose herself in the m.l 7* of mountains which they call the Tyrol. However, the Italians have, assaulted Ala on this line and insido the Austrian border. It was probably an engagement of Alpini. WHICH PLAN WILL SHE TAKE? Bzrv is Italy's dilemma. If she attacks on line No. 2, which is the Adige, she takes a ! route which will be profitless t" her. _ If she drives in on line No. 1, whiAt is the Isonzo, she lias much to gain, but in trying it her lines of supplv may be struck and cut by Germans pouring out of the Adige valley. We have heard that the Germans are'in the vallev iii some force, and if they are not masked somehow they will become very active. Now. to mask this dangerous back door to_ the Italian communications there is chiefly the great fortress of Verona. It is surrounded by a girdle of strong works pushed well out from the town, and as long as it stands it will keep busy any irrajition of Germans sweeping from the Adige into the plain of Venetia. and that is a consideration much in Italy's favor. The capture- of Ala also seems to be something defensive. It helps to stop the German sally port. All tlmse confusion features may tire the patience of the reader, but there is one more consideration still. It happens to lie the greatest one.

The Italian? may most likely specialise, on Avenue Xo. I—the Tsonzo—hut they cannnt jeopardise their line? of supply by Avenue, Xo. 2—tlio tli<- enemy nrvanee their sl'-atpev In tl>--> likeliest way the Italian commander will he committed to two operation*— on* to the. east and one. to the west. These, operations are divergent, and it is a rule in strategy that diverrent movements never did and never will do any good in war. On the other hand, the natural paths of advance, for the Austrians and the- Ormans are convergent, so they have the host of the deal so far as positions 110. Xo manceuvrinc ran set General Cadorna mil of this difficulty, and only sheer fightmcj will do it, ' Should lie adopt that course he will, as 'The Times" has predicted, leaw a. heavy mark on the strategy in Poland by compel lin 14 the enemy to send more troops south. If he manures that he will do mod work, even though be ninv receive some very hard knocks himself. ITALTAX O-UXR.

Extreme care will be needed with the Ttiiliau news. Their censorship will ho the .strictest in Europe, and. in the absence of news, guesses will abound. Someone in Berne has been nt it already. He tells of a lieutenant and Bo men who fought a company of Bavarians (250 men) and lost 60 men. but, being reinforced, an advance of 10.850 yds was made. The Berne chroncler might have stopped after such a rousing story, and might have been believed. ]t is when he travels on to artillery that we preceive what manner of correspondent lie may be. " Italy's new seventy-fives." he says, "are remarkable guns for precision. They silenced a battery of 12in guns/' Field guns silenced heavy guns of position ! The correspondent seem; unaware that Italy will have more trouble over her grins than almost anything. Before tho war she was mostly dependent on German capital and German manufacture for her guns—largely on Krupps. ITALY'S FIST AT SEA. Much fatuous matter has been in the magazines in the past about .sea power in the Adriatic,, and how it might affect a war as between Italy and Austria. Italv has been fortunate in having Colonel Cunni-Iw.u-li as director of naval construction. It was he who thought out the Dreadnought type, but his Government had little money to give expression to his idea, while_ England had. The English yards therefore ( anie ahead with lots of Dreadnoughts, while poor CunnibeitL serving

his own Government only, had to fold his hands and watch others" carrying out his own. patent. He tried again. Seeing Sir Philip Watts putting wing turrets on his ships, which cannot fire at times without hitting their own funnels, bridges, and superstructures, he thought out the centreline system of gun mounting. That was copied, tco. Finally he devised the threegun turret on the centre-line system, producing such a perfect design as the battleship Dante Alighieri. Austria has a similar type in the Viribus Unitis, but generally Italy's naval striking force- very much overshadows that of Austria. So the domination of the Adriatic Sea. ought, theoretically, to be easy for Ita.lv, if fleet actions were the only thing to consider. Unfortunately for builders of Dreadnoughts, the submarine is the predominant feature in sea wars, and Austria and her allv have plenty. LOSS OF THE TURBINE. So the fleets must stand off while the destroyers do the inshore work, and the rather old Italian destroyer Turbine—a Thorneycroft pattern—has"conie to grief. The Austrian destroyers were beating up Porto Corsini, near 'the old Roman town of Ravenna, when the Italian destroyers came at them, and the Turbine, growing over-energetic, stumbled into what Martin Donohoe, the correspondent, calls " the main Austrian fleet," Perhaps he merely means some of the Austrian cruisers. At all events, his small despatch comes from Rome, and Rome is far away from Ravenna, Some other inshore melee was going on at the same time, and two Italian torpedo boats attacked two Austrian submarines, which constitutes a- capital way of _ using torpedo boats. By way of reprisal for the raid near Ravenna, an Italian dirigible passed across the Adriatic and bombed the Austrian town of SerVenico, where there is a. small-arms ammunition factory. Beyond these details the rest is vague, but it will be surprisuui ;-> learn that any "main Austrian Beet" or main Italian fleet happened to be on the da-tie THE AFSEXAL OF VENICE. "Vienna claims that Austrian airmen have bombed the arsenal at Venice, for tho second time. There will be more, of this. The arsenal dates back in its original form to the twelfth century, when it was a spot for building galleys of war. It is an extensive, place now, nearly two miles io circuit, Like many public concerns in the. north of Italy, it has for many years been largely run by German foremen and German capital. A PATIENT ALLY. Just what the enemy have done to France tho ' Frankfurter Zeitung,' in one of its late issues, professes to be able to tell. Nine-tenths of the French iron ore production, more than two-thirds of its coal production, practically the whole textile industry, and more than threequarters of the production of coke, rawiron, and steel have either been cut off by the German occupation or brought to a standstill by the military operations. Meantime Germany is taking away all the copper that can he found in the French factories, and also large quantities of machinery of all kinds. If only a modicum of this German account is true it will be a, glad time for France when the day comes to take up the general offensive. AX EXULTANT FOE. " Look at France," crows the German journal, "and then look at our Rhenish Westphalia. It is all one great workshop. There is no longer any difficulty about raw materials which we cannot overcome; we simply make everything ourselves." Then it gives statistics of the numbers of workers engaged at Dusseldorf and Dortmund. Large numbers of military prisoners have been put on " with good results," especially as regards the skilled Belgian and French miners. Prisoners arc also used in the rolling mills and blast furnaces, which, needless to say, hum on night and day. The output is the expected output—rifles, shells, armor plates, horse shoes, barbed wire, lines for field railways, and material for concrete foundations. A hopeful German picture, no doubt. But bear in mind that the ' Frankfurter Zeitung' published all this at the beginning of April. We have had later news. There was a cable last week embodying the opinion of " Neutral." That inI vestigator admitted the efficient German organisation, but added : " Despite this success real anxiety for the future, is traceable. The entry of Italy has stopped the supply of raw material, and Germanv is feeling the result of the loss of £020,000.000 foreign trade." There is just one point, however, which " Neutral " may have failed to note, and we will look at it. HARD GATE TO SHUT. Is it sure that Italy's act of war will prevent supplies from reaching Germany through Genoa? Hardly. .Induing by translated extracts from Italian journals, the, contrabandists have been working in the following manner : —They had their headquarters at Barcelona, and the practice was to ship to Amsterdam via. Genoa. Tho consignees al Amsterdam were also part of the syndicate. They never ieceived any of the goods, however,- for these were lifted out of the trains when they entered Germany. The same course can be pursued still, only with a little alteration. No more Italian (rains for Holland via Germany are possible, but if the Barcelona contrabandists consign not to Holland, but to Switzerland, there is little, to prevent the good> getting through. From Switzerland their despatch into Germanv would be simplicity itself. THORNS IN THE TURKS' SIDE. Relatives of soldiers would do well not to pav too . uch attention to the unofficial Dardanelles news, even though much of it. looks really good. a,;d probably is good. If Submarino 11 has been up tho Marmora to Constantinople nolhing could be hotter. ■MI that our submarines require is a. target, and if they can get to Stnmboul t.hey aie sure to knock th? Turkish arrangements about. It will have been noticed lately that the Tuik.- ean bring no reinforcements to the Galiipoli Peninsula by the landward or European side. Much has to he sent, over to Asia and then ferried bn-ck across the Narrows. From this we may judge that. Rul.iir Neck is not a safe, place for the nassnge. of reinforcements, but whether "we- have seized it- or whether the ffec-i m-rey sweens it with fire is uncertain. The result is the samp. liowev-r. When the operation at the Dardanelles began 1 d-.ubt-fd the ability of tho (lent to do it. alone, mentioned the need of a hind force, point-d out that the place was topogiaphically a replica, of I'.iij Arthur, 'and said that Bulair was the key of it. Those things were written at a. lime when the current forecast was ih.i*- th« fleet ' w.mld be through the strait "by Easter." ACHI BABA AND THE BOYS.

Broadly tho position is :—A number of Now Zeaianders and Australians have been brought round from the flanking position at (iaba- Tepc, and have been thrown into the fiont.al" struggle for iniporiant Achi I'.-jba. The grou-id i? ri-eep. and in places precipitous. The left, of _ ti !<? line is its hardest pin.h. and it \v;is in assisting here that th" Triumph was destroyed. The composition of the line as last officially reported disclosed that the French and an English naval force were on the right. They have the plainest, giriund, which grows gradually more formidable from 1 i-riit to left, though vone of it is easy. Tu tho centre are the British, largely Territorials. Along the left centre, corncs, N-rw Zealand and Australia in that order. Then, forming the extreme left, are Indians, more English Territorial*, and the warships Further reinforcements have come from Alexandria, including the mounted men, who are goine in r,s "footies."' The battle, for Achi Baba. will be trench warfare, pure and simple, and it is -wonderful that the 'lads bar?, fo far done so well.. ResrettaHe enoinrh is the ■news that Mr Ashmend-B.irvlett' has suffered mishap in the V-iiestie. fcr we shall receive no mors of his fine letters for some "time. A LITTLE PTTRE STRATEGY. Roughly the battle of the San is unfavorable to our plans, however it ends. The position is this: If tho Allies could have lain hack on their oars a little longer, waiting till alt were ready, and then struck by simultaneous convergent move, nxing a.

date to begin, something would have had to give somewhere. We see. to-day that a German mission is making a last appeal to Rumania, indicating that Rumania is seriously thinking of war. The ' Handelsblad says that if Germany proclaims an annexation of Belgium during the war Holland may fight, Mr Robert Bacon, who was Secretary of State in America in President Roosevelt's time, declares that war Detween the United States and Germanv is surely coming. The. last is doubtful 'but imagine the effect of that united strikiii" force opening a joint offensive on a given oate. However, the Germans, by their serious double attack on the Grand' Duke's armies—in the north at Libau, in the south at tho San—have made it desirable for Italy to move forward at once and do something to ease the pressure bv emerging from Venetia to offer battle. So. instead of attacking as one, the Allies are for the present attacking piecemeal. It, must have been with a view to this that the AustroGermans grasped the reins and took the offensive as soon as the spring weather rendered South Poland and Ga-Hcia a practicable place to fight on. SO LIKE MACKENSEN. Mackensen, the conqueror of Lodz, is said to be endeavoring to repeat his move of November. That move, as well as it can be described, was only a fairly ordinary one, though good. He covered the whole front with troops, carefully avoiding a general 1 entanglement. Here'or there, behind the fog of feint*, he launched a '"bolt" of men and guns, striking at his opponent's centre. When the opponent was thoroughly locked up in a central struggle Von Mackensen swiftlv drew off the spare troops which he had used to create the mist of war, and struck at a flank—sometimes at two flanks—still keeping the central battle going. If'tlie flankers did not succeed he slowly and skilfully broke off the central action." To-dav it is said that, after the long central 'battle near Przemysl, where he pierced the. Russian line in two spots, he endeavored to encircle the place both north and south. The southern flanking armv was. however, so punished at Gussachow that it could not co-operate. Far to the north the 3rd Caucasus Corps partially got through the German line at Sieniaw'a, so, as the cable says, it is premature to say anything as to the upshot of the battle. Distinct from the conflict on the Przemysl sector another big one is going on down'near the Dniester marshes. Thirty-four enemy army corps (say of 43,0(30 men each) are' operating altogether. Of these no fewer than 17 corps are believed to be near these marshes. THE ACTS OF THE U'S.

The shot made at the big Scottish Shire Line's steamer Argyllshire (cabled on Saturday) gives the blockade figures their periodic interest. Altogether" 152 vessels that we know of havo been attacked, 121 of these since blockade dav, February 18. They include 29 neutrals and 21 trawlers. The rate of attacksince February 18 has averaged about 1.2 ships a day. But it is evident we are not receiving word by cable of nearly all these attacks, for on Mav 11 the Admiralty's summary placed " complete losses—not merelv attacks—as hi eh as 201. THE "UNSATISFACTORY NEWS." Tho unsatisfactory nature of the news during the past week has increased tho demand for national service at Home. Itis uncertain whether this "unsatisfactory news'' refers to some local reverse in Belgiuin or to the general situation affecting Rrssia and especially to the capture of Libau (which is serious), or to the censorship. Sure it is that we are receiving much guff and little truth. For instance ■ English aviators blew up an ammunition depot at Pool Capelle. One hundred Germans were killed and 75 wounded. How can any sensible one suppose that the aviators, flying at 6,000 ft no doubt, were able to count the number of damaged Geima-ns with such precision? Compare this message with the other one about the Italian field guns. When the censoring began (and with it the fool messages) it was painful to notice hundreds and hundreds of citizens accepting tho latter as truth. I may say, for my"own part, that I realised what was coming from the start, but we are only on the "threshold of developments and revelations yet. "SIR ARTHUR." The great Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson is the friendly adviser of the Admiralty, and is to continue on as such. This brilliant tactician is now 75 years of age, however, and his remarkable grasp of handling a fleet as a whole can hardly be as fine as it- was. Year after year in the British naval manoeuvres ho was a terror to any admiral who opposed him, and the decision of the umpires was always 100 per cent, in favor of him. His'subtle way of bringing on the culmination of the manoeuvres in the grand " show off " mimic battle at the last was always something to ponder over. He had Nelson's principle of concentrating on the opponent's van off to a, T, but as all the other officers in the. Navy knew it too, and also knew that Sir Arthur Wilson would aim at that, they sought by one device or another to evade that decision. It never mattered. Sir Arthur had such a subtle wav of altering what, is known as the "fleet angles" in the most sudden and embarrassinc'way that his. opponents realised quickly enough that they could do nothing with'this terror in tactics. All the younger school in the British Navy, including Sir John Jelliccic, havo sa.t at the feet of this master. TO CORRESPONDENTS. "J.R.H."—-The Fr-sendun electric oscillator, as a defence against submarines, has been talked of for a long time, and there arc said to be great hones (j f it. It will probably suit the armament makers better than the .-impio expedient of filling a ~,,.,-. Chant-man with empty ca-1-:-, mi that -lie could not sink, and giving her a few gun-. That would bo too simple. I suppose.' " A.T.S."—If. as you s.-iv, sullhient influence could be obtained to remove Lord Kitchener from the War Office, and then conscription came, the abu=c> \<>u mention nrc conceivable. It- i- true, 'as iuii xiv. that they have occurred in Germanv. in that- country a. proportion ~f the wealthv e.-cape.