DOES HAIG WANT TO BREAK THROUGH?

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 54

DOES HAIG WANT TO BREAK THROUGH?

By 0. Pn j , in the Graphic. ' With an optimism which has never been justified by subsequent events, certain newspaper writers persist in regarding every attack \vc make on the western front as an attempt to "break through." Nothing could be more harmful, botn to the generals in command of the operations and the man in the street. Time after time the public have been led to believe that the German defences on the western front are crumbling, that our cavalry are "through," and nothing more remains than to pursue the enemy over the Khine. It is an astonishing proems ol reasoning, and one which has never received any corroboration from our General Staff in France. It is an extremely moot point as to whether Sir Douglas Haig desires to break through tlie German lines at any one point. The vast operations on the Somme last cummer indicated very clearly that a general smasli-up ot tiie German defences was- almost an impossibility. The Commander-in-chief and his staff learnt a great deal from the Somme campaign, and still more from the attempted capture of Lens in March and April. They learnt that the most successful method in the present development of war is the selfcontained operation, cue in which a definite object is to be attained and no more. Loos provided a lesson that has never been forgotten, the folly of allowing troops to go forward without restraint. Do the people who write so glibly of Sir i Douglas Haig "breaking through" know of tiie mMiiber of trench systems which the Germans possess behind their so-called Hindenburg line? Between Lille and Lens, running some distance back into Belgium, mile upon mile of entrenchments exist. And it needs but Tittle imagination to conjure up a vision of Flanders of to-day, every ridge and hilltop, every village and every wood, all defended by that method so dear to the heart of the German army commander, a detachment of men. with two or three machine-guns. "Breaking through'' the western front would prove a hazardous and costly operation short of a general shortening oi the whole of the German line. And that will not materialise until Lille is taken and the western flank is turned by a big Allied move from Ostend to Lilie. It is the latter town which is, perhaps, the most important on .the whole front. The enormous network of railways running in and out of the town give it a tremendous military importance, and much bitter fighting will ensue before the Germans will dream of evacuating such a position. The experience of this war has proved that seasoned, hard-fighting troops —and it would be self-delusion to imagine the Germans are otherwise —cannot be completely routed when they are able to utilise the protection of good trenches. All the British and French operations" on the western front have proved that fact. The German attack at Verdun last year, perhaps the greatest military effort in history, was an attempt to break through to Paris. Failure attended the effort; the French refused to run, and retained all. People who study the war closely will have noticed that all the big British attacks this year have been directed towards the capturing of the large towns close to the German lines. Lens was the first, Douai the second, Lille the third (and twice subsequently), St. Quentin the fourth, and Uambrai the fifth. None of these towns has yet fallen, although in the case of Lens victory was very near at times. Lille is the town we want; once in our possession the western flank of the Germans is turned. ' Lens in British possession is a terrible menace to the German occupation of Lille; that is why the Germans defended it at such fearful cost. That is the reason for the stubborn resistance we are. encountering in Flanders at the present time. Colossal drives such as General Brussiloff's in Galicia last year and the recent one in Northern Italy are an extreme improbability on the western front. The Germans tried it with disastrous results to themselves, and they are not likely to repeat the experiment' against our welldisciplined, magnificently-equipped armies. Whatever the newspaper critics may think, Sir Douglas Haig is much too good a soldier to pursue strategy which °has proved utterly useless against properly led and protected troops. The war on the western front will never become open if the Germans can prevent it. They bought the French and Belgian territory they now occupy comparatively cheap; they are holding it at terrible cost. It "is an axiom of warfare that the attacking force will always be the heaviest loser; but how far this is true of to-day only the history of the future can say. " The enoi

mous concentration of artillery which tho Allies make for big battles "now is unbelievable except by those who have seen or heard. But the Germans know, so they are building line after line* of trenches, and manning them with enormous numbers of machine-guns. How many people who talk of the cavalry being •'through" have any ' conception of a battlefield of to-day? The innumerable shell-holes, the ' tangled masses of barbed wire, the yawning trenches smashed into conglomerate holes and heaps —how is cavalry to operate over this ground ? What cavalryman could manoeuvre his men over such a field as this? You cannot chase men in trenches on horseback. What has become of the German Uhian, that forbidding figure of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870? He was scrapped early in the war, and has never been heard of since. - The war is now approaching a war of endurance. Germany is being steadily worn down by a series of well-planned operations, which have for their object the capture of the towns holding together

their lino in the west. "Breaking through" sounds magnificent—on paper. In stern reality it is an extremely dangerous undertaking unless accomplished on a very large scale. With the limitless trenches which the Germans possess the western front can only be broken by forcing a retirement all along the line, and that will not be done until Lille, Lens, Douai, St. Quentin, and Cambrai are all safe in our hands. Even that may not break the German front, but it will at least compel the enemy to shorten -his line enormously and release a large part of Belgium. In the meantime "breaking through" is at a discount, and should not be suggested as even a possibility.