OFFENSIVE TACTICS

Waikato Independent, Volume XIX, Issue 1892, 17 April 1917, Page 2

OFFENSIVE TACTICS

THE NEW CAMPAIGN. Discussing the prospects for the new campaign, Mr, H. Warner Allen, British correspondent with the French army, wrote: —“It can safely be said that the allies’ offensive will be made at a point and at the moment chosen by them, and that it will be based on the principles which have already converted the local or partial attack from a costly and unprofitable operation into a success bought at an insignificant price. A very large proportion of the 500 miles of front between the North Sea and Switzerland has been so completely organised that the actual preparation, for the assault will be a comparatively minor matter. The nightmare of the supremacy of the defensive over the offensive, which at one time seemed to promise years and years of monotonous and costly seige warfare, has been dissipated. The latest battles at Verdun and on the Somme have shown that the offensive, if planned in accordance with the principles of the new tactics, which arc in fact only an adaptation of the fundamental rules of ancient tactics, can not only be successful, but actually less costly than .the defensive which it has to overcome. In the lafet Verdun battle (December 15th, 1916), the French losses amounted to about one-quarter of the prisoners taken, and to only one-eighth of the enemy’s estimated total casualties. The offensive at Verdun was, of course, only a local offensive, but the extraordinary results that it achieved —the capture of nearly 12,000 prisoners—speaks well for itself, not by good luck but by good management, may well be regarded as foreshadowing the results of forthcoming allied offensives to be conducted on a much larger scale.”