FIRST MONTH ON THE SOMME.

Timaru Herald, Volume CV, Issue 160, 28 September 1916, Page 8

FIRST MONTH ON THE SOMME.

AN INTERESTING REVIEW. A GREAT ARMY. The special correspondent of "The Times" writes on August 1: So little action .has'there been on either side to-day that it is almost as if. both parties, had agreed that the day should be given to reckoning up the gains and losses of the montE. It is an easy ■ task, because for the first time, perhaps, in all the two years of war, wo have tho results of a. battle clearly before us while tho battle is still _ going' on. For the first time in British operations the public has known accurately from day to day just what r has occurred. There are tilings, of course, . which cannot now he discussed and which no one wishes to discuss until tho .information to bo derived from than canhavo no possible bearing on tho immediate situation. So far as the. facts of the fighting are concerned, the world has been kept exactly informed of each day's progress.

THE ENEMY VIEW. About no ono"of those facts has there boon any serious issue taken. The German documents, official or other, have confirmed evorything that we have claimed. There have been, as' I have found necessary on occasions to point out, the usual characteristic falsehoods in Geiman claims. But they have been m points of detail. The essentials, being largely mere matters of goography and of faits accomplis, have remained undisputed. All that was said about the terrific character of our preliminary .bombardment in the last days of Juno has been confirmed by the statements of prisoners in letters found on German dead and in the enemy's official-communi-ques. Captured documents have told us how much importance the enemy attached to the positions" which we have taken, and how determined he was that we- should not take''them. "Whenever private letters and Orders have spoken of tne share borne in the fightin" bv particular regiments and of their "terrible losses, the facts have been substantiated in the prisoners whom we .have taken and the Gorman dead that wo have seen.

Ihe desperation of the German deicnoo linds voico in various Orders of the Day which have come into our .hands, which have spoken of "the important ground lost," of the necessity o' standing firm so that "the enemy should have to carvo his wav over heaps or corpses ' —which w© have assuredly done—and of the urgency of hurrying the construction of new front lines of trenches, new intermediate lines "behind the principal salients," and new defensive lines in the rear." All these things wo have seen coins on, and everything that we have known or guessed from in front has' been confirmed, by the intelligence which has thus com© from behind the enemy's lines. •

FACTS ■ BEYOND DISPUTE. Whatever arguments there may be hercaitor on points of strategy or tactics, or as to the sharo taken by this or that unit in the capture of particular "positions, the main facts as to the course of the operations arc beyond dispute,, and a knowledge of them is everybody's property. So much of. the Gorman first and second lines broken; so many miles of territory won'; so many villages, woods, and strong positions captured; such "and such a number' of prisoners and guns in our hands, all, except the enumeration of the losses on either side, has been told. And on this last point it can hardlv be necessary to say that the claim in. the German wireless of British losses of 230.000 is merely grotesque. It'is a monlii's work of which wo may fairly be proud.

We may quite justifiably compare our effort here with the German attack on Verdun. We have attacked positions, laboriously prepared,' which, as the captured orders testify, the enemy was willing to make every possible sacrifice to hold. One after another he has failed to hold them. We have broken his front, and at every point boaten him m fighting power as emphatically he has not beaten the French. At Verdun he failed. .Here.we have succeeded and continue to succeed. The result of his assaults on' Verdun has been to increase the confidence of the French that they can beat him. The result of our attacks has been to increase our confidence. Whether in attack' or defenco, he has lost.

A BRUTAL ENEMY. One point which, without seeming ungenerous. I would like to urge is this. From the beginning of this battle I sought opportunity to give prominence to every instance which I could find of chivalrous conduct on,the enemy's part. They were very few. To his stubbornness in defensive fighting I-Jiavo borne amplo testimony, but that is another matter. It has seemed to "us out here as if at home there was something of a tendency observable to be over-lenient to the Germans, to magnify each case where British and German wounded have helped each other, and. as our British way is, to strive to regard our adversaries as sportsmen and gent-le-mon. They are nothing of the kind. Individuals there aro among them, of course, who are h,umane and gentlehearted, and have the chivalry of brave men. But in the mass they are a brutal and uncivilised enemy. Perhaps the murder of Captain Fryatt will have helped to correct our point of view, to make us again to remember, and to cheek .a, certain sentimentalism which , has seemed to be growing up in Eng- j land. Heaven knows, I would not make war more hideous than it is. But we must bo under no misapprehension as to the character of the German. He damned daily in his own handiwork. And the British Army knows it—even though nothing will ever make the individual British soldier other than fjeiitl.s to tho individual enemy who is at his mercy.

OUR ARMIES. As for our Army, I have extolled it till, in the retrospect .of the month; there is nothing loft to say. One can repeat encomiums, pile up adjectives of praise, and become banal in superlatives. And one only says what has been &aid before. If anything new is to be told of our Army it must be in other ways than in prose speech. One ought to be able to interpret it in colours, to paint - the spirit of the Army on some vast canvas spread with tints of flame and glory. One should be able to sing it—in measures as stately as the cadence of tho million marching feet, rising to 'stanzas of triumph, such as Milton may have dreamed, but surely never moulded. It should be cast in bronze—gigantic, piercing the clouds to clearer sunlight far in the upper skies. It .should bo set to music more splendid and tumultuous than was ever written with the irresistible rushing of ' ten thousand strings, the organs' pealing praise, and all the brasses of the world braying victory. One must have some other medium than prose.' It is almost a commonplace, that our First Expeditionary Force was probably the finest fighting Army for its size that the world ever saw. Our Allies do—our enemies will—allow so muchEither France-.or Germany, perhaps, might have taken the pick of all thenmillions and made another Army of the same contemptible dimensions imd un-

quenchable spirit, but such another Army was not and never has been in existence. There are those who fear that the splondour of the old Army may be forgotten in the majesty of the new. There us no danger, of that. The honour of the' eld Army is secure to all time. And it was its example, its precedent and' achievement, which -made it pos-sible-'for?, these new Armies to be what they* have - proved themselves. • He is ol ten dirty and ragged and very disreputable to look at,' is the British private soldier. I\have seen him with his bloodstained clothes" in ribbons, so tired that he could hardly move his feet, with broken bayonet, and his trench hat lost, a German helmet on his head, above a face so grimed with dirt and perspiration that it had no features except two eyes and a.mouth —two eyes ( which danced with" victory and,a mouth ! which laughed. .-The. enemy by this timo knows him" well. 1 sat npon a bank only two days ago when, down the road below me, they came by, as I have described them, back from the fighting" lino in what was left of a battalion. The leading'company, as it passed—such a sight as it was ! —sang, and it sang "God Save the King !" I wish that the King could have heard it. Surely he would have felt that he was honoured as no King or Emperor ever was