THE IMPERISHABLE STORY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19010, 5 November 1923, Page 8

THE IMPERISHABLE STORY.

SECRETS OF GALLIPOLI. THE MAN BEHIND THE WAR. THE SECOND VOLUME OF WINSTON CHURCHILL’S MEMOIRS. dopvright. Rights of Production Acquired "by the Otago Daily Times. I. When the year 1914 closed a complete deadlock existed between the great combatants in the West by laud and by sea. The German fleet remained sheltered m us fortified harbours, and the British Admiraliy had discovered no way ot drawing it out' The trench lines ran continuously from the Alps to the sea. and there .was no possibility of manoeuvre. The admirals pinned their faith to the blockade; tne generals turned to a war of exhaustion and to still more dire attempts to pierce the enemy's front. For more than 40 years frontal attacks hail been abandoned on account of the severity of modern five. But now. in France and Flanders for the First time m recorded experience, there were no flanks to turn. The turning movement, the oldest manoeuvre in war, became impossible. Neutral territory or salt water barred all further extension of the front, and the great armies lay glaring at each other at close quarters without any true idea of what to do next The commanders and their general staffs had no clan except the frontal attacks, which all their experience am training had led them to reject; they had no policy except the policy of exhaustion. No war is so sanguinary as the war of exhaustion. No plan could he more unpromising than the plan of frontal attack. Yet on these two brutal expedients the military authorities of France and Britain consumed. during three successive years the flower of their national manhood. Moreover. f he dull carriage of the policy of exhaustion did not even apply equally to the combatants. The Anglo-French off ensiles of 1915, 1916, and 1917 were in nearly every instance, and certainly in the aggregate, far more costly to the attack than to the Gertnan defence. It was not even ti 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 ma.de 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 hut incredible to future generations that such doctrines should have been imposed bv the military profession upon the ardent and heroic populations who yielded themselves to (heir orders. It is a tale of the torture, •mutilation, or extinction of millions of men, and of the eacrifice of all that was best and noblest in an entire generation. The crippled, broken world in which we dwell to-day is the inheritance of these awful events. Yet all the time there were ways open by which this slaughter could 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 fhe actual facts. Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the .more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter. A PIECEMEAL WAR. There arc many kinds of manoeuvres in war. some only of which take place upon the 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 it. 'and the object of all is to find easier ways, other than sheer slaughter, of nehieving the main purpose. The distinction between policies' and-strategy diminishes as the point of view is raised. At the Eiimmit true politics and strategy are one. The manoeuvre which brings an ally into the' field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle. The manoeuvre which pains an important strategic point may be less valuable than that which placates or overawes a dangerous neutral. 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 Cue 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 he 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 manv 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 moist not bo 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. The essence of the war problem was not changed by its cnormaus 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 lino of a small arrnv entrenched across an isthmus, with each' flank resting upon water. As long as France was treated as a self-con-tained' theatre, a complete deadlock existed, end 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 soa 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. Thev rested on soa power, and they demanded 'a complete diplomacy of their ©wn. GERMANY’S VULNERABLE FLANKS. ■At the very moment when the French High Command was complaining that there were no flanks to turn the Teutonic Em-pires-were in fact vulnerable in an extreme degree on eithev flank. Thus the three salient facts of the wav situation at the 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-strategic operations on either flank. Let us. at this point, cast a preliminary Since upon each of the flanks of the ttlo line. On the Northern flank lay a group of grail but virile cultivated peoples. All were inder the impression of the German power, and connected with Germany by manv 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 the Powers without being able to defend them by sea and land, and to combine their forces. Had it been possible to achieve this, the position of Germany would have become desperate. The Dutch army was a substantial factor. The Hutch islands offered invaluable strategic advantages to the British Navy. Denmark conld open the door of the Baltic to n British fleet; and the command of the Baltic by the Allies would have afforded a means of direct contact with Rusisa. This would have rendered the blockade absolute, and would have exposed all Northern Germany to the constant menace of Russian invasion by sea.