World War I - 9 Book Collection: Nelson's History of the War, The Battle of Jutland & The Battle of the Somme. Buchan John

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      CHAPTER IV.

       CONCLUSION.

       Table of Contents

      This narrative reaches its conclusion at the moment when the British had made good the old German second position and had won the crest of the uplands—when the French in their section had advanced almost to the gates of Peronne and their new army on the right had begun to widen the breach. That moment was in a very real sense the end of a phase, the first and perhaps the most critical phase of the great Western offensive. A man may have saved money so that he can face the beginnings of adversity with cheerfulness; but if the stress continues, his money will come to an end, and he will be no better than his fellows in misfortune. The immense fortifications of her main position represented for Germany the accumulated capital of two years. She had raised these defences when she was stronger than her adversaries in guns and in men. Now she was weaker, and her capital was gone. Thenceforth the campaign entered upon a new stage, and the first stage, which in strict terms we can call the Battle of the Somme, had ended in an Allied victory.

      By what test are we to judge the result of a battle in modern war? In the old days of open fighting there was little room for doubt, sincc the retreat or rout or envelopment of the beaten army was too clear for argument. To-day, when the total battle front is 2,000 miles, such easy proofs are lacking; but the principle remains the same. A battle is final when it ends in the destruction of the enemy’s fighting strength. A battle is won—and it may be decisively won—when it results in achieving the strategic purpose of one of the combatants, provided that purpose is, on military grounds, a wise one. Hence the amount of territory occupied and the number of important points captured are not necessarily sound criteria at all. If they were, the German overrunning of Poland would have been a great victory, when, as a matter of fact, it was a disastrous failure. Von Hindenburg sought to destroy the Russian army, and the Russian army declined the honour. The success or defeat of a strategic purpose, that is the sole test. Judging by this, Tannenberg was a victory for Germany, the Marne for France, and the first battle of Ypres for Britain. The battle of the Somme was no less a victory, since it achieved the Allied purpose and frustrated that of the enemy.

The German purpose¹ we know. It was to hold their ground, to maintain the mighty defences on which they had spent so many months of labour, to beat off the attack at whatever cost. The Allied aim must be clearly understood. It was not to recover so many square miles of France; it was not to take Bapaume or Peronne or St. Quentin; it was not even in the strict sense to carry this or that position. All these things were subsidiary and would follow in due course, provided the main purpose succeeded. That purpose was simply to exercise a steady and continued pressure on a certain seetion of the enemy’s front.

      For nearly two years the world has been full of theories as to the possibility of breaking the German line. It is many months since critics pointed out the futility of piercing that line on too narrow a front, since all that was produced thereby was an awkward salient. It was clear that any breach must be made on a wide front, which would allow the attacking wedge to manoeuvre in the gap, and prevent reinforcements from coming up quickly enough to reconstitute the line behind. But this view took too little account of the strength of the German fortifications. No doubt a breach could be made; but its making would be desperately costly, for no bombardment could destroy all the defensive lines, and infantry in the attack would be somewhere or other faced with unbroken wire and unshaken parapets. Gradually it was accepted that an attack should proceed by stages, with, as a prelude to each, a complete artillery preparation, and that, since the struggle must be long drawn out, fresh troops should be used at each stage.

      These were the tactics of the Germans at Verdun, and they were obviously right. Why, then, did the attack on Verdun fail? In the first place, because after the first week the assault became spasmodic and the great plan fell to pieces. Infantry were used wastefully in hopeless rushes. The pressure was relaxed for days on end, and the defence was allowed to reorganise itself. The second reason, of which the first was a consequence, was that Germany, after the initial onslaught, had not the necessary superiority either in numbers or moral or guns. At the Somme the Allies did not relax their pressure, and their strength was such that they could keep it continuously at the highest power.

      A strategical problem is not, as a rule, capable of being presented in a simple metaphor, but we may say that the huge German salient in the West was like an elastic band drawn very tight. Each part has lost elasticity, and may be severed by friction, which would do little harm to the band if less tautly stretched. That represents one element in the situation. Another aspect may be suggested by the metaphor of a sea-dyke of stone in a flat country where all stone must be imported. The waters crumble the wall in one section, and all free reserves of stone are used to strengthen that part. But the crumbling goes on, and to fill the breach stones are brought from other sections of the dyke. Some day there must come an hour when the sea will wash through the old breach, and a great length of the weakened dyke will follow in the cataclysm.

      In the first two months of the Somme battle some forty-four German divisions—more than ever appeared at Verdun—were drawn into the whirlpool, and many were sent in twice. They represented the elite of the German army. The Allies have taken heavy toll of these; some 50,000 unwounded prisoners are in their hands; many German counter-attacks have been caught in our barrage and destroyed; and every line of trench taken has meant many German dead. They have drawn into the battle and gravely depleted the surplus man-power of the enemy. They have done more: they have struck a shattering blow at his moral. For two years the German behind the shelter of his trench-works and the great engine of his artillery fought with comparatively little cost against opponents far less well equipped. To-day the shoe is on the other foot, and he is coming to know what the British learned at Ypres and the French in the Artois—what it feels like to be bombarded out of existence and to cling to shell holes and the ruins of trenches under a pitiless fire. It is a new thing in his experience, and it has taken the heart out of men who under other conditions fought with skill and courage. Further, the Allies have dislocated his whole military machine. Their ceaseless pressure is crippling his Staff work and confusing the organisation of which he justly boasted. To-day Germany is the Allies’ inferior. The weaker side in every element which constitutes the strength of an army, she is subject in the field to the Allies’ will.

      Now it is a law of life and of war that in such struggles the power of the stronger grows pari passu with the weakness of the less strong. That is the security for the continuance of the Allied plan. Repeatedly in the last two months Germany announced СКАЧАТЬ