THE WAR SITUATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16685, 4 May 1916, Page 4

THE WAR SITUATION.

Vert opportunely has come Mr Asquith's assertion that the naval and military situation of the Allies was never so good as it is at present. The enemy has made all the capital that was possible out of the capitulation of General Townshend's forces at) Kut-el-Amara and out of tho insurrection in Ireland. These have been disagreeable incidents in the war, but. it may be contended that they do not affect the military situation in even a remote degree. Tho surrender of General Townshend, mainly due to causes over which the enemy had no' more control than he had himself, and made only when the starvation of his heroic troops was the alternative to capitulation, reduces the effective strength of the British army by 10,000 men at the outside, a mere handful in relation to the gigantic armies that are now in the field and considerably less than the Germans must have lost in each one of numerous onslaughts upon the French positions at Yerdun. The insurrection in Ireland, involving, it is true, a tremendous loss to owners of private property—a loss which it will be the duty of tho State to make good—as well as an unascertained loss of life, chiefly on the part of the rebels, was an inglorious fiasco, out of which great good will accrue. To represent the week which produced these incidents as "a black week " for Great Britain is to afford merely one other illustration of the lack by Germany of any true sense of proportion. They were both regrettable incidents, but neither of them alters the broad prospects in connection with the war. Isolated events have no necessary bearing upon the situation Least of all have isolated events in subsidiary fields of operations. The issue of the war is to be determined by the military developments on the continent of Europe and by the naval developments in the European seas. It was with this in mind, no doubt, that Mr Asquith made his confident assertion in the House of Commons on Tuesday last. 1 We do not forget that Mr Asquith is sometimes given to the making of comforting statements of which the justification is not always apparent. But it is hardly questionable that in declaring that the naval and military situation was never better for the Allies than it now is he was speaking the literal truth. The enemy forces in Europe are now confined within walls of steel against which they are fruitlessly hurling their strength in the endeavour to break a way through. At -an enormous cost in life they have vainly battered the French lines at Verdun. And the military strength by which they are opposed at all other points on their front of hundreds of miles is so much superior to their own that the chances of any successful offensive on their part-, while certainly not negligible, are at least inconsiderable. When the time arrives when they will be called upon to resist the pressure that will be simultaneously exerted upon them on all their fronts their position will, we may Teason ably anticipate, become critical and unenviable. And " that invulnerable navy," the might of which has powerfully impressed the Prime Minister of Australia, as it has also impressed all the other visitors who have been privileged to inspect it, affords us the fullest guarantee that the command of the seas will remain a tremendous factor in the prosecution by the Allies of the war to the only conclusion that will be satisfactory to them and to civilisation.