NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16873, 11 June 1918, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE TRANSPORT PROBLEM. A . oRREsroNUENT, writing in an English magazine, mentions some of the difficulties encountered by the attackers when advancing after a successful bombardment of the enemy's line. " The essence of war," says the writer, " lies in the conveyance of a certain mass of men and material to a certain point in a certain time. That side which accomplishes this operation most successfully will win on every occasion. A tract of country that has been successfully bombarded —and even more if it has been for some time unsuccessfully bombarded—is in very truth blown off the map. All those of its features, contours alone excepted, that would appear upon a map have disappeared, and their place been taken by a sea of earth. Such aterrain resembles nothing so much as a rough seascape turned solid—or, what is worse and more frequent, into mud of varying degrees of stickiness. Imagine such a belt of country from two to five miles wide, in which the shell craters or wave-troughs actually touch, and are of depths varying from two to a dozen feet ; seamed everywhere with an intricate network of ragged ditches, which were once trenches; and consider the problem of driving one single motor-'bus across it, or a motor-car, or a horse-drawn ammunition waggon, or a cart or a wheelbarrow ! Suppose that the line has been broken on a front sufficiently wide to let the cavalry through, and that anything from ten to thirty thousand of them get through. In either case the guns, men, and horses must be fed. The shell of an eighteen-pounder —to take the lightest and most mobile type—weighs with its cartridge some 231b. The gun can fire twenty rounds a minute: its moderate daily expenditure would be 150 to 200 round?—ten tons of metal for a battery. The horses must be foraged ; another ton of oats alone. It can cany with it in its own vehicle one day's forage and rather less than one day's ammunition, and it occupies a quarter of a mile of road space." But. the writer points out, cavalry alone is not sufficient, and division after division of infantry must be poured in, and field howitzers at least, "with a shell alone weighing 351b," brought forward to deal with fortified localities, improvised field works, and areas that the low trajectory of the eighteenrounder cannot reach. " Every hour of respite -riven to the retreat means more and heavier guns to break down the defences that will have lee.i organised during the breathing spare. Ordnance of a calibre larger than live inches— and this includes practically all siege and heavy artillery—ran only lie pulled and supplied for any hut the shortest distance along roads, and metalled roads at that. The eighteen-pounders themselves wore unable to advance on the Somme until tracks had been levelled for them by pioneers and working parties."

THE KING OX RATIONS.

Apparently the soldiers at the front are i.i danger of being misled concerning the facts of the food shortage in Britain by the letters of those of their people who have taken part in the queue* for butter and meat, and also probably by rumours instigated from enemy sources. To put the matter in a true light, Lord Rhondda has sent to tl.: men at the fronta mecsage explaining the position, and Lord Rhondda further makes it clear that the King has placed himself in the same position as his humblest subjects, and will be, like them, on rations. The messa-e is as follows : — " You can be in good heart about the folk at home. The health statistics were never better in our history. At this etage of the war it is remarkable, when so much of our shipping is engaged on errands of military necessity, that our food supplies, so great a part of which is seaborne, remain at their present level. We have ehared our bread liberally with our brave allies in France and Italy, where last year the harvests were poor, and this self-sacrifice further binds together the peoples nowbattling against the foe of human liberty. Rationing schemes, which mean share and share alike for everybody, in every class, are about to be put in operation throughout Great Britain, and I hope that under the new arrangements queues will now disappear. Hie Majesty the King will be on rations as well as the humblest of his subjects.-'