GALLIPOLI SECRETS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18548, 5 November 1923, Page 9

GALLIPOLI SECRETS.

CHURCHILL MEMOIRS. j THE DEADLOCK IN THE WEST FLANKS OPEN TO ATTACK. BY THE RT. HON. WINSTON 8. CHURCHILL. (Copyright.)" When the year 1914 closed a complete deadlock existed between the great combatants in the West by land and sea. The German fleet remained sheltered in its fortified harbours and tho British Admirality had discovered no way of drawing it out. Tho trench lines ran continuously from the Alps to the sea, and there was no possibility of manoeuvre. The admirals pinned their faith to tho blockade the generals turned to a war of exhaustion and Co still more dire attempts to pierce tho enemy's front. For more than forty years frontal attacks had been abandoned on account of the severity of modern fire. But now, in France and Flanders, for the first time in recorded experience, there were no flanKs to turn. Tho turning movement, the oldest manoeuvre in became impossible. Neutral territory or salt water uarred all further extension of the front, and the great armies lay glaring at each other at close quarters without any true idea of what Co do next. The commanders and their general staffs had no plan except the frontal attacks which all their experience and training had led them to reject ; they had no policy except tho policy of exhaustion. Grim Theory of Exhaustion. No war is so sanguinary as the war of exhaustion. No plan could be more unpromising than the plan of frontal attack . Yet on these two brutal expedients the military authorities of Franco and Britain consumed, during three successive years, the flower of their national manhood. Moreover the dull carnage of the policy of exhaustion did not even apply equally to the combatants. The AngloFrench offensives of 1915, 1916, and 1917 were in nearly every instance, and certainly in the aggregate, far more costly to the attack than to the German defence. It was not even a case of exchanging a life for a life. Two, and even three British or French lives were repeatedly paid for the killing of one enemy, and grim calculations were made to prove that in the end the Allies would still have a balance of a few millions to spare. It will appear not only horrible but incredible to future generations that such doctrines should have been imposed by the military profession upon the ardent aDd heroic populations who yielded themselves to their orders. It is a tale of the torture, mutilation or extinction of millions of. men, and of the sacrifice of all that was best and noblest in an entire generation. The crippled, broken world in which we dwell to-day is the inheritor of these awful events. Yet all the time there were ways open by which this slaughter oould have been avoided and the period _ of torment curtailed. There were regions where flanks could have been turned ; there were devices by which fronts could have been pierced. And these could have been discovered and made mercifully effective, not by any departure from the principles of military art, but simply by the true comprehension of these principles and their application to the actual facts. Battles are won by slaughter, and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less ho demands in slaughter. Manoeuvres Outside the Battle. There are many kinds of manoeuvres in war, some only of which take place upon tho battlefield. There are manoeuvres far to the flank or rear. There are manoeuvres in time, in diplomacy, in mechanics, in psychology; all of which are removed from the battlefield, but react often decisively upon Tfc l and the object of all is to find easier ways, other than sheer slaughter, of achieving the main purpose. The distinction between policies and strategy diminishes as the point of view is raised. At the siuirmit true politics and strategy are one. The manoeuvre which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that whioh wins a great battle. The manoeuvre which gains an important strategic point may be less valuable than that which placates or overawes a dangerous nelural. We suffered grievously at the beginning of the war from the want of a common clearing house where these different relative values could be established and exchanged. A single prolonged conference between the Allied chiefs,, civil and martial, in January, 1915, might have saved us from inestimable misfortune. Nothing could ever be threshed out by correspondence. Principals must be brought together, and plans concerted in common. Instead each Allied State pursued in the main its own course, keeping the others more or less informed. The armies and navies dwelt in every country in separate compartments. The war problem, which was all one, was tugged at from many different and disconnected standpoints. War, which knows no rigid divisions between French, Russian, and British Allies, between land, sea and air, between gaining victories and alliances, between supplies and fighting men, between propaganda and machinery, which is, in fact, simply the sum of all forces and pressures operative at a given period, was dealt with piecemeal. And years of cruel teaching were necessary before even imperfect unifications of study, thought, command and action were achieved. The men of the beginning must not be judged wholly by the light of the end. All had to learn and all had to suffer. But it was not those who learned the slowest who were made to suffer most. Essence of the Problem. v The essence of the war problem was not changed by its enormous scale. The line of the Central Powers from the North Sea to the Aegean and stretching loosely beyond, even to the Suez Canal, was, after all, in principle not different from the line of a small army entrenched across an isthmus, with each flank resting upon water. As long as France was treated as a self-contained theatre, a complete deadlock existed, and the front of the German invaders could neither be pierced nor turned. But once the view was extended to the whole scene of the war, and that vast war conceived as if it were a single battle, and once the sea power of Britain was brought into play, turning movements of a most far-reaching character were open to the Allies. These turning movements were, so gigantic and complex that they amounted to whole wars in themselves. They required armies which in any other war would have been considered large. They-rested on sea power, and they demanded a complete diplomacy of their own. At the very moment when the French High Command, was complaining that there were no flanks to turn the Teutonic Empires were in fact vulnerable fi? an extreme degree on either flank. Thus the three salient facts of the war situation at tho beginning of 1915 were:—First, the deadlock in France, the main and central theatre; secondly, the urgent need of relieving that deadlock before Russia was overwhelmed; and thirdly, the possibility of relieving it by great amphibious and political-stategic operations on either flank. Let us, at this point, cast a preliminary glance upon cach of tho flanks of the battle lino. Or. the Northern flank lay a group of small but virile and cultivated peoples. All were under the impression of the German power, and connected with Germany by many ties; but all were acutely conscious that the victory of Germany would reduce them to a state of subservience to the conqueror; and all trembled at the fate which had overtaken Belgium. It would have been wrong to embroil any of these Powers without being able to defend them by sea and land, and to combine their forces. Had it been possible to achieve thai, tlx# position .of

Germany would have become desperate. The Dutch Army was a substantial factor. The Dutch islands offered invaluable strategic advantages to the British Navy. Denmark could open Che door of the Baltic to a British fleet; and the command of the Baltic by the Allies would havo afforded a means of direct contact with Russia. This would have rendered the blockade absolute, and would havo exposed all Northern Germany to the constant menace of Russian invasion by sea. Even more remarkable was the aspect of the southern flank. Here Serbia, by heroic exertions, had twice repelled the Austrian invaders. Hero a weak, divided, and ill-organised Turkey had lately declared war upon Che Allies. Three of the warlike States of tho Balkan Peninsulanamely, Greece, Serbia, and Rumania— divided from the fourth, Bulgaria, by the hatreds of their recent war; but all four were the natural enemies both of Turkey and of Austria and the traditional friends of Britain. Between them these four Powers disposed of organised armies which amounted to nearly 1,200, men (Serbia 250,000, Greece 200.000, Bulgaria 300,000. Rumania, 350,000); and their total military man-power was, of course, greater still. They had freed themselves from the Turks after centuries of oppression. They could only expand at the expense of Austria and Turkey. Serbia was already fighting for her life against Austria; Rumania coveted , Transylvania from Austria. Bulgaria looked" hungrily to Adrianople, to the Enos-Midia line, and, indeed, to Constantinople itself; while Greece saw great numbers of her citizens still held down under the Turkish yoke and several of the fairest provinces and islands of the Turkish Empire mainly inhabited by men of Greek blood. If these four States could be induced to lay aside their intestine quarrels and enter the war together under British guidance against Turkey and Austria, the speedy downfall of the Turk was certain. Turkey would be cut off completely from her allies and forced into a separate peace during 1915. The whole of the forces of the Balkan confederation could then have been directed against the underside of Austria in the following year. But is was also certain that the rally of the Balkans and the attack upon Turkey could not leave Italy indifferent. Italv was known to be profoundly friendly to the Allied cause, and particularly to Great Britain. She was the hereditary enemy of Austria. She had immense interests in the Balkan Peninsula, in the Turkish Empire, and in the Turkish islands. It seemed highly probable that any decisive or successful action taken by Great Britain in this quarter of the world must draw Italy, with her army of two and a half millions, directly into the ambit of the Great War as a first-class ally on our side. There were, in fact, at this juncture two great plans of using sea-power to relieve the murderous deadlock in the west. Both aimed at breaking into and dominating the land-locked waters which guarded the Teutonic flanks. _ Both would give direct contact with Russia and would rescue our Eastern ally from her deadly isolation. Both would* affect in a decisive manner a group of neutral States. Both in proportion, as they succeeded, would open up enormous new drains on the resources of the Teutonic Empires. Should we look to Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, or to Greece. Bulgaria, and Rumania"? Should we strike through the Belts at the Baltic, or through the Dardanelles at Constantinople and the Black Sea? (To he continued daily.)