TWO FAMES

Evening Star, Issue 16264, 6 November 1916, Page 6

TWO FAMES

THEIR MERITS COMPARED.. HISTORICAL PARALLEL. SUCCESS ON THE CARSO. GREECE. [By CRITICU3.] The recapture of Fort Vaux by the French and the complete reconstitution of the main defensive Hue at Verdun may be said to ring down the. curtain on one of the greatest strategical blunders of the war. The attack upon Verdun has ended in absolute failure. Nevertheless, it is not on that account that it is to be condemned. It would have been a strategical blunder even if it had succeeded. Hindenburg's attack upon Enmania will now almost certainly be a failure, yet, far from being open to condemnation as a blunder, it will rank as one of the greatest strategical conceptions of the war. It failed, like our own attack upon the Dardanelles; but, as in that case also, the errors were those of execution, not those of strategical conception. Hindenburg's one great mistake in his campaign against Rumania was his failure to shorten his western line in order to gain a sufficient number of troops to carry his plan through successfully. It is interesting to the strategist to compare the strategical merits of the attack upon Verdun and that upon Rumania. The first must be condemned, because it offered no results to justify the sacrifices and the expenditure of energy which might have been more usefully employed elsewhere. At the most the French would have been driven from the cast hank of the Meuse, but so unimportant was that, from the strategical point of view that the French General Staff actually proposed at first to withdraw voluntarily to the west bank, because the east bank was not worth defending, until they were overruled by the politicians, who dreaded the moral effect of the evacuation of Verdun. Moral-effect, indeed, was the only advantage the enemy would have gained by the capture of Verdun, and to make gigantic sacrifices for moral effect merely, without substantial material advantages, is pure folly. It is true that Napoleon declared " The moral is to the physical as three to one," but he intended that aphorism to be interpreted rationally, and not to be made an excuse for the phrasemongering of the inefficient thinker. A CONTRAST. The contrast between Hindenburg's conception and that of Falkenhayn illustrates the difference between the plans of a leader with a real' grasp of grand strategy and those of one in whom the larger problems of the war produce only confusion of ideas. If successful, the attack upon Rumania would have had even a greater moral effect than the capture of Verdun, and would have given Germany enormous strategical and material advantages as well. In addition to giving her control of the enormous natural wealth of Wallachia, it would have completely ruined the grand strategical combination of the Allies, and would have so strengthened the defensive position of the Central Powers as to have justified their hoping that they would make the task of overpowering them so costly that the Allies would tire of the work before success crowned their efforts. In short. Hindenburg's tailuro must be accounted a great strategical conception, because the ends sought were adequate to the means employed, and because it was quite the best move available; whereas Faikenhuyn's failure must be condemned as a criminal blunder, because the ends sought were utterly unworthy of the sacrifices made, and there were numerous better moves available. A HISTORICAL PARALLEL. Hindenbtirg failed because he was afraid to shorten his western line, and the excuse which will be made for him will be the usual kind of phrasemongering. He dare not retreat from Belgium "because of the moral effect.'' Even so, Napoleon dared not retreat from Moscow until too late, because ho dreaded the moral effect. But in both cases the hesitation was due far more to personal vanity than to sound policy. Napoleon had worked himself up into a condition of almost insane self-adulation, and he loathed the idea of any action which would be an admission that he was less than infallible. So all his thinking on the problems before him resolved itself into desperate special pleading and self-deception in finding reasons for not doing what he clearly ought to have done. General Com to Philippe Be Segur. who was in close touch with him throughout his Russian campaign, has sketched the workings of his mind with considerable psychological insight in 'La Campagne de Russe.' He excused his unwillingness to retreat by such phrases as: " What a sequence of frightful wars will date from my first retrograde step! I know that in a military sense Moscow is not worth anything; but Moscow is not a military position, it is a political position. They believe that I am only a general; whereas I am an emperor. In politics it is necessary never to recede, never to return on one's steps, never to admit <in error, as that discredits! When one has made an error it is necessary to persevere, as that gives justification." Pad nonsense this. A timely retreat would have re-established his position, and the temporary moral effect would soon have passed away. Tho first snows swept away Napoleon's thin cobwebs of self-deception, and in (ho. retreat ho lost, between three and four hundred thousand men, and ultimately his throne. Hindenbtirg is now doubtless beginning to realise that he should have withdrawn from Belgium. But. Hko Napoleon, he was intoxicated with self-adulation. He knew that tho German "man in the street'' looked upon him as a demi-god. and he was unwilling to destroy the illusion of infallibility, either in their minds or in his own. Hence Ihe thin arguments about moral effect outweighed the substantial consideration that it. was imperatively necessary for Germany to defeat the strategical scheme of the Allies. Any loss of prestige that would have been incurred by the evacuation of Belgium would have been more than recovered by the overrunning of Wallachia, and the whole strategical situation would have been modified, to Germany's advantage. Soon Hindenbtirg will find that in trying to save everything he has lost, everything, and is on the highway to RUMANIA'S DEFENCE FIRM.

At the present rate of progress it wilt -soon be necessary to resume the discussion of the problems of the Riisso-IJwmanlan offensive. The enemy's attack is practically at. a standstill, and in a few more days the position should be completely secure. From the Moldavian front nothing is reported, but l!io Rumanians admit ihat the enemy occupied a couple of heights, and progressed beyond the frontier at the P.uzeu Pass, south-east of Brasso: but everywhere else they have been repulsed, and at the Vulcan Pass they are being driven northward, four more guns and much material having been captured. All is quiet in the Dobrudja, and this confirms the impression that the northern part of the province is going to be held. PRESSURE ON THE CARSO. The Italians continue to attack successfully on the Carso Plateau. They have advanced to a depth of two miles on a front of three and a-half miles, and their prisoners now number nearly 10,000. The fighting extends from the Vertobizza River, just south of Gon'zia (which the Italians have crossed), io the coast at a. point a mile or two west, of Duino. The hottest, struggles rage round Mount Pecinka and the villages of Sejeti and Hudilog, about halfway from Gorizia to the. coast. Too much should not he expected from the Italian successes, but they will compel the -'enemy to heavily reinforce that front at the expense of other fronts, and if they are maintained they will enable the It:iliai:s to extend their right flank down into the peninsula of Istria in a fev,' weeks, with a great, lengthening of the enemy's line as the result. TOWARDS ATHENS. Something like a small civil war is developing in Greece. The Veuezelists have occupied the town of Ekaterina, on the. western shore of the Gulf of Salonika, and King Const antiue's troops are endeavoring to retake it. Ekaterina is not, on U\c. route from Salonika to Monastir, but it is on the route from Salonika to Athens. Not unnaturally Kin? Constantine has revoked the order withdrawing the Greek forces from Thecssaly to the Peloponnesus. The "Vcnr.zelists assert ihat the torpedoing of Greek vessels renders it- impossible to send volunteers to Salonika by sea. so it is necessary to use the railway." This appears to mean that they intend to seize the. railways of Thessaly. They might as well propose to seize- Athens while they are about it. The Venezelist army is said to number 30,000 men, of whom 17,000 are ready for the field If they march on Athens, the.'best thing the Allies could do would be to make this an excuse for settling the matter. Bodies of troops landed at well-selected points would cut up Greece into fragments and render Constantine helpless. The Allies would then be able to get rid of him and dictate their own terms.