TRENCH WARFARE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16338, 19 September 1916, Page 6

TRENCH WARFARE.

The suggestion in to-day's cable-1 grams that the end of trench warfare is approaching may come as a surprise to many readers. It is a hopeful deduction— overhopeful— the success of the Somme offensive and the satisfactory trial of a new typo of armoured car. Whether we are on the eve of such a complete break in the German entrenched line as would lead to open warfare may be doubted, but it is of interest to note that the wish which is father to the thought had its birth on the Allied side of the entrenchments. We have heard much during tho past two years of Germany's military superiority, but every battle of the war from the Marne to the Somme has shown that individually the German has met his masters in the British, the French, and the Russians, nor has tho Allied superiority in field generalship— every military asset except such as depended upon prolonged and methodical preparation—been less pronounced than it has been in the ranks. It is the consciousness of this personal ascendancy that leads Allied soldiers to anticipate joyfully the end of trench warfare, which would mean an early end to the war. Trench fighting was never the deliberate choice of the Allied command. Even when they were inferior in numbers to their enemies the Allies took reluctantly to the digging of trenches, and it is not surprising that they should now crave for a return of the soldiers' opportunities which war in the trenches denies to them. Looking back over two years it is somewhat difficult to realise- that when the war opened neither side foresaw the course it would takeThe first trench was dug by the Germans on the Aisne in the third week of September, 1914, not in pursuance of any preconceived plan, but as a bare necessity, in order to check' the victorious advance of the French from the Marne. In his latest book j on the war, Mr. Hilaire Bclloc points I out that the German defensive posi- j tions on the Aisne which checked the Allies had the advantage of only; three days' preparation. The Germans from the outset took it for granted that their overwhelming numbers would secure for them immediate victory. They dug trenches as an afterthought to avoid defeat. The trenches were from the German point of view effective, but it was not at that date fully realised that the new conditions, thus accidentally created would take the permanent form with which everybody is now familiar.