The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1917. THE BRITISH ADVANCE.

Southland Times, Issue 17968, 8 March 1917, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1917. THE BRITISH ADVANCE.

There is a disposition in some quarters at Home to discourage anything in the nature of undue jubilation in connection with the British advance on the Somme front. These writers explain that the Germans are retiring from untenable positions to establish themselves on a stronger line; in other words, they are giving up positions which they coaid not hold except at a cost in life quite disproportionate to their value. It is a perfectly correct explanation of the military operation in which the enemy is now engaged, which is a strategic withdrawal, but it is absurd to suggest that the retirement is voluntary. Unfortunately, many of our chickens are now coming home to roost so far as this withdrawal is concerned, and it is not a little amusing to find that the most indignant protests against the idea that the German retirement is “strategic” comes from those who in the earlier stages of the war described every retirement made by the Allies as “a strategic withdrawal,” meaning thereby that it was purely a voluntary movement, signifying nothing as an enemy success. The retreat from Mons to the Marne was a “strategic withdrawal” according to this school. The great retreat of the Russians in the east was also “strategic.” The flight of the unfortunate Serbians from their country was a "strategic retirement,” and at the outset the Roumanian debacle was an operation of the same sort. Those who have said so much about the “strategic retreats” of the Allies cannot now complain if the Germans cover their discomfiture by the same euphemisms. The fact is that the Germans are now falling back for reasons similar to those which compelled the Franco-British armies to fall back from the Belgian frontier in AugustSeptember, 1914. The Germans have to retreat simply because they cannot hold their ground against British pressure. The front which they ‘thought to be impregnable has been made untenable, and they must find a new front somewhere in their rear. The British advance is comparatively easy because the enemy is merely fighting delaying actions with small bodies of troops, but the gain is nevertheless very real, and the’ military success unquestionable. Our troops will encounter a much more determined resistance when they reach the enemy's new positions, but the Germans can find no stronger positions anywhere than those from which they have been driven in the last eight months, and the methods which expelled them from the Gommecourt-Chaulnes line will drive them from any new position they may take up. It is an unfortunate thing that so much nonsense should have been talked about strategic retreats in connection with the Allies’ reverses, for now that the enemy is forced to make a genuine strategic retreat our own people are apt to undervalue the military success which has been won. The retirement which the enemy is now effecting is truly a. strategic retreat, but it is not a voluntary movement. It is a compulsory movement, enforced by conditions created by the British attack. It is a case, as French writers point out, of men and guns.