The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 15, 1916. THE "BIG PUSH."

Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 15, 1916. THE "BIG PUSH."

The indications are that the "big push" in France is not many -weeks off. Largo forces are being massed in France. The British army has been greatly increased and taken over a considerable section of the front from the French, who have consequently been able to strengthen their forces along the line they are guarding. We were told by Mr. Asquith the other day that Britain's forces, on land and sea, numbered five millions. By that he no doubt meant the full forces the Empire had so far produced. Allowing the casualties to have been 600,000 and the sick another 400,000, there are now available something like four millions. Four to five hundred thousand are probably in the Navy and doing sea patrol work, leaving three and a-half millions of 'soldiers for duty on land. In the minor expeditions—East Africa, Mesopotamia, Salonika and Egypt—probably not more than half a million are engaged. We thus have something like three million men available for France, but thi& number is not considered enough and a further million men are being put into training at Home. The French must have something like three millions available, so we therefore have the gigantic force of six millions ready to make the "push" when General Joffre thinks the time opportune. Can the Allies break the Gorman line? This thought must occur to many since the Germans battered their heads in a vain attempt to capture Verdun. But the western line is not all Verduns. Verdun offered the! quickest and easiest route to Paris, but right from the time the Crown Prince at the beginning oj the war sought to overwhelm it, Verdun has proved the toughest part of the whole line. It is unbreakable, and the Germans have now good reason to realise the fact Not so other portions of the German line. If the Allies are prepared to pay the price and have the necessary munitions, the line can be broken. That, at least, is the opinion of the military experts. Which is largely based on the events of September and October of last year, when the German line was pierced in two places, once by the French and the other by the British. In his tenth volume of the History of the War, John Buehan refers at length to these events. General Castelnau attacked in the Champagne district and simultaneously the British attacked in the Artois district. In both these regions the defensive [>ositions held by the enemy were extremely formidable, and they had been strengthened by every conceivable means that German scientific skill could suggest, In the Champagne district there were four fortified lines, each a mile or more apart. All the downs on and between these lines were deeply excavated and transformed into underground fortresses, armed with quick-firing batteries, mortars for aerial torpedoes, pipes for the emission of poison gas clouds, and thousands of machine guns. Many of the sunken and barely visible concrete forts were fitted with domes of armoured steel, and all these points of vantage were linked up by deep communication trenches, in which hundreds of miles of rails were laid for the transport of munitions and guns. So confident were the Germans in the strength of their defences that they boasted that the "Hand of Massigeg," one of the points most exposed to attack, could be held "by a washerwoman with two machine guns'* against an army. Yet, in spite of everything, Castelnau's attack not only broke through the first two lines of entrenchments on a fifteen-mile front, but carried his forces to a point from which lie could have dealt a decisive blow at the German communications if the moment so long waited for by the Allied High Command had at last arrived. But it was not the purpose of Joffre and his colleagues to conduct a "grand offensive" against the enemy and push home the attack to the last extremity. The principal object of the operations in the. Champagne district was, according to Mr. Buchan, to compel the Germans to relax their pressure on while pushing the Allied front forward to a point from which we could more effectually com-

mand tlio lateral communications just behind the German front, The subsidiary operations on tlia La Bassee-Lens-Arras lines were merely "holding" actions to I divert tlio attention of the Germans, and prevent them l'rom concentrating to repel Casteluau in the Champagne. At one critical moment after the attack at Loos the whole of the approach to the plain of Douai and Lille was exposed to the British; and the reserves did not come up in time to make good the positions won, because the High Command had never anticipated so startling a success, and had made no arrangements for the general advance, for which the whole Allied forces were not yet ready. In the Champagne operations, the success of the attack was even more sensational. There was indeed one dramatic moment in the fight when Castelnau's divisions had reached and pierced the third line of the German entrenchments, and the way at last seemed even for a decisive blow. It ;was rumored, Mr. Buchan tells us, that the last German position had been carried ofi a three-mile front. "All along the Allied lines frt'Jn Nieuport to Belfort there was a moment of wild anticipation. Men asked each other if the cavalry could go through at last and ride for the key-points of the railways." For it was obvious that if the German lines were once pierced, a bold dash by the French cavalry would have imperilled all the vital points of the German railway communications right up to the Belgian border. Castelnau had his cavalry ready in thousands; but the time had not yet come. There was nothing to be gained by a premature adVance to points that could not be permanently held; and so the French genefal stayed his hand and held back his horsemen, waiting eagerly for the work to begin, that "wild ride to •the north," which they have expected so long. Yet whit the Allies did in the, Artois and the Champagne they can do again, even more, effectively, when the High Command decides that the hour has struck for a general onslaught. And the signs are that the hour is at hand. Ths fact that the New Zealand lads, along with the pride of Australia, Canada, and South Africa, are there to take part will give us a personal interest in what fraught with the greatest importance, it is hoped will prove the decisive operation of the war. News from the front during the next few months should be