MILITARY STRATEGY.

Evening Star, Issue 24003, 30 September 1941, Page 8

MILITARY STRATEGY.

TO THE EDITOH. Sir, —I read with interest, tinged with a faint surprise, your contributor’s references in his Saturday column ‘ Comment and Reflections,’ to our British Brass Hat mentality. Newspapers in New Zealand, 1 would have thought, are not accustomed to such scepticism where one of our most cherished traditions is concerned. Nevertheless, I feel that your contributor, in donning the unusual role of critic, would have been much more convincing had he not regarded it as “ a little embarrassing to find Liddell Hart, whose theories of defensive warfare have been blasted by German blitzkrieg tactics,” on his side. I cannot but think that if he were to read —or perhaps I should say reread— ‘ The Defence of Britain ’ instead of culling the pages of ‘ Time,’ he would revise his attitude. In the meantime, may I be allowed to quote some extracts from a letter written last October by Liddell Hart in reply to another critic of his hook? He says: “ A basic conclusion expressed in my book ‘ The Defence of Britain ’ was that to give the offensive an adequate prospect of success, the side which attempted it would need a superiority over the defence of about three to one—that ratio being reckoned not in mere numbers of men but in terms of modern power units. I defined these as being constituted by mobile artillery, ‘ tanks, and aircraft.” He shows “ that the Germans, when they took the offensive,. fulfilled, with a margin to spare, these suggested conditions. According to authoritative statements in ‘ The Times,they had fully a four to one superiority in aircraft and tanks. Moreover, by directing their attack initially against the Low Countries, they not only lured the Franco-British forces out of their defences, but extended the front of operations from _ approximately 200 miles (half of which was barred by the Rhine) to 500 miles, thus obtaining both the room and the opportunity for manoeuvre against the French rear.” Further, he says: “ None of the armies attacked —the Dutch, Belgian, and French—fulfilled the condition of air strength emphasised as necessary for holding their own on the ground.” A long and most interesting letter is concluded by referring to an earlier doubt whether even then the Germans could have succeeded in penetrating the western front without extraordinarily bad generalship on the Allies’ side. . On this score, he readily admits that he did not foresee that the generalship could prove so bad as the event revealed. Rut of course your contributor can find all this elaborated in 1 Dynamic Defence ’ and ‘ Current of War.’ It may appear to you, sir, that these

matters savour of the academic. I would, however, like to suggest that so far Liddell Hart has been nearly always right in prognostication, whereas our great military captains, with the exception perhaps of General Wavell, still seem to have some diffiulty in emerging from the fog of World War No. I.—l am, etc., Sept. dO. W. Thomson.