ALLIES OF THE ALLIES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9620, 28 March 1917, Page 3

ALLIES OF THE ALLIES

ATTRITION AND FAMINE REASONS WHY WAR MUST END SOON. LONDON, January 20. One of the shrewdest of military observers in England, one of the war s most cautious students, never given to undue optimism of the war ending within Lord Kitchener’s three years limit, Mr Edgar Wallace, the military correspondent of the Birmingham

“Post," contributes to bis paper a thoughtful article, in which he discusses the question why the war must soon end.

Writing about the two great forces which are working for tho Allies and the deterioration of Orman morale, ho says “Die nearness or tho remoteness or the end of the war depends upon two faetors. The first and inure important —since here wo base our judgment upon, known forces—is our ability to destroy the enemy before us, and to apply tho process of attrition, which may either De expressed in slow but persistent nibbling or by violent offensives, which sweep out of existence hundreds of thousands of tho enemy in a short period. All other phenomena—such os the breaching of a line, tho taking of certain notable towns, the reshaping of the German lino in tho West—are purely subsidiary to the principal objective, which is tho removal cither by death, wo muff, or captivity of. tho armed forces of the German Empire which stand before ns. The second factor is the internal condition of Germany, and the curious reader who is anxious to secure reliable data on this subject may conduct a little private experiment in his own domestic circle. Let him. turn hack on bis newspapers and make a list of Germany’s ration allowance. Then let him provision his own house, on the basis of that allowance—three pounds of potatoes per head per week, half a pound of meat per head, three ounces of butler, etc.—and let him live on this faro for a month, deducting from, the total of his supplies about onethird to represent tho days on which tho German people find it impossible to get the slocks to which they aro entitled. “WELL FED,” YET STARVED.

“A- number of Dutch workmen who have been recently employed in Germany have returned ty, their native land, t 0 the consternation of their relatives, for since their departure from Holland they have all undergone a. peculiar physical change. Yet these men, being in munition works, were very well paid, and in quantity at any rate were very well fed. They had their butter substitutes and their meat soup substitutes; they had their war bread, their coffee substitutes, ami occasionally they had cheese. They had, in fact, as much as they wanted—in quantity, but so poor was the quality and so valueless from the nutritive point of view that the men came hack to Holland in a condition bordering on starvation.

GERMANY IS HUNGRY. “It is no longer a lie that Germany is hungry. On the other hand, Germany is weli disciplined and has a certain machine uia.de patriotism beneath the florid lurgesconce which has characterised speech, newspaper leader and sermon of the German publicists. Thu length of the war is, therefore, determined by the ability of the German nation to' resist the armed attack which will be made Upon her manhood in the field and upon the nation behind the manhood. She is opposed to two enemies, one active and one passive, ono without and one within, bo that we shall have two forces working for us; and though it is wiser to depend entirely, upon the known quantity of our military offensive, it would be stupid to ignore all the possibilities of tho other factor. dlu i both sides can only be equally matched when they ha vo an equal number and equal artillery, equal tactical qualities and equal morale. We believe that we have a superiority, which may be small or mav be overwhelming, both in men and guns. The numbers of our forces are naturally withheld, because the disclosure of our strength would serve nobody’s purpose but the enemy’s. We believe, and I think with reason, that in genius of, generalship wo. at any rate, match tho enemy. We know that in morale ° ur troops arc infinitely superior to the German. Morale implies, in general, faith in the victorious issue of battle and tho personal faith of tho individual soldier that he is his enemy’s superior. No person who has spoken to a British soldier home on leave can doubt that in this quality our army leaves nothing to bo desired. Without speaking disparagingly of the enemy, onr men take their individual superiority for granted. PEAR OP TOMMY” ATKINS.

"Wo have to consider, also, apart from the fact that the German soldier has a wholesome respect lor his British opponent and a genuine fear of Mr Atkins in his more pugnacious moments, that the Germ an soldier general!}' is depressed as a result of his knowledge of the conditions under which his relatives are living in Germany, it would not improve the morale of tho British or any other soldier to know that his wife was getting barely enough food to keep body and soul together, and such depression as this is expressed in the numerous surrenders that have been all along the Western front. When we remember that officers of the German armyhave voluntarily surrendered—that is to say, have deliberately crossed over to our lines, not under the stress of bomibardmctnlt’, Ibut In 'the comparatively quiet times between attacks—we can appreciate to what depths the German has sunk. There has not been an instance of a British or French officer voluntarily surrendering since the war began; otherwise the Germans would have told us all about it. I am not suggesting that the moment the offensive begins the German soldier will not fight bravely and desperately. On t hew hole, ho is a good soldier and ho is well disciplined. He fights and thinks on bloc, if he thinks at all. His actions are. as a rule, subservient to the will of his commanders, and so long as his commanders desire that ho shall sacrifice himself he will go on sacrificing. CAN TAKE NO CHANCES.

“Yet there is that evidence of deterioration in quality, and it has been observed both in the West and in the East. To my mind, the cumulative effect of a great offensive plus an increased .stringency of provihiomnent among the German people must produce a <A»nparatively early end of the war. Why, then, you may . is it neces•sarj' that we should have a drastic combing oat of industries in Britain? Why must men be taken from factories? Why must skilled labour be diluted to a still greater extent? Why must new regulations be brought into force to conserve the food and man power of Great Britain?

“The answer is simple. Once, in its confidence, the British Government, supported by a majority of opinion in tin's country, 'slackened off,' i) the belief that tile war would end at a certain time. It did not end. The German produced unsuspected resources, and we had to adopt conscription in order to catch up with him. Though wo believe, that the war will end soon, we cannot take any chances.”