The Story of the Great War (Vol. 1-8). Various Authors

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      Again, there came immediately forecasts of another Turkish thrust at Suez, under German direction, a first attack having failed in the previous winter. Whether Germany actually obtained any considerable stock of provisions or foodstuffs may be doubted by her succor, but it is clear that her campaign had enabled her to make use of many thousands of Turkish troops, who were waiting only for arms, it had given her control of the Bulgarian army, a small but efficient force, and it had provided an eventual means of attacking the British Empire by land, once the advance upon Egypt could be organized.

      This last circumstance is worth noting, for the time had now arrived when the Germans perceived that Great Britain had so far escaped injury, was the single one of the larger powers who had drawn profit without terrible loss from the war and was becoming the determining force in the allied camp, because its resources were still unexhausted and its armies only just coming into the field, while German numbers were approaching a positive decline. If Germany could reach Suez, conquer Egypt, using Turkish armies and German genius and munitions, she would deal a heavy blow to the British Empire, and she might compel the British to listen to proposals for peace, which were now contemptuously thrust aside by London.

       In sum, the Serbian campaign saved Turkey, disposed of Serbia, enlisted Bulgaria, opened the road to the Near East and to subsequent attacks upon Egypt and perhaps upon India, but it did not bring peace, and it did not inflict any immediate injury upon any one of Germany's larger foes, only Serbia and Montenegro actually suffered serious loss, and the destruction of their armies was but a detail in a world war.

      ITALY

      For the purposes of a summary it is unnecessary to review in detail the Italian operations. They have no distinctive challenge to the reader. Italian statesmanship imposed upon the Italian high command a task which made immediate victory impossible, and assigned to Italy the useful but inglorious rôle of occupying some 400,000 Austrian troops, and thus contributing to the strain imposed upon the Central Powers and to the hastening of the moment when exhaustion might be expected to set in.

      Had Italy decided to enter the war at the moment when Russia was destroying Austrian armies in Galicia in September and October of 1914 she would almost unquestionably have supplied the necessary numbers to bring a speedy and decisive defeat for the Central Powers. Again, had she selected the moment when Russian armies were at the crests of the Carpathians, and Przemysl had just fallen, she would have probably made the German offense against Russia impossible, brought Rumania in with her, and produced the collapse of Austria. Bulgaria would not have enlisted with the Central Powers, Greece would almost certainly have attacked Turkey, and the Balkan campaign would not have taken place.

      But German diplomacy averted the second peril, and Italian alignment with Austria and with Germany in the Triple Alliance made an attack at the opening of the war unthinkable. When Italy did come in, the German victory in Galicia had been won, Russia was in retreat, the allied defeat before the Dardanelles forts and the Russian disasters had produced a profound effect in Balkan capitals, and Austria was able to find the troops to meet and check the Italian advance almost at the frontier. Since that time the Italian operations have been merely trench conflicts, and Italy has nowhere penetrated a score of miles into Austrian territory, nor has she taken Trieste, Trent, or even Gorizia.

      If one desires a parallel for the Italian operations it is to be found in the later phases of the Peninsula War against Napoleon. This field was never of decisive importance, but it did require the attention of several of Napoleon's best marshals, and drew off thousands of French soldiers needed by the great emperor in the campaigns in eastern Germany, where his fortunes were finally decided. What Wellington did, the Italians under Cadorna have been imitating in their own peninsula, and their service to their allies has thus been very considerable.

      Nor is it necessary for the purposes of so rapid a review of the main phases of the war to dwell upon the allied failure in the west between the end of the battles of Flanders in November, 1914, and February, 1916. At the beginning of 1915 what were allied hopes and purposes in the west? Unquestionably French and British public believed that with the coming year the Grand Alliance would be able to crush Germany. Unquestionably French and British high commands planned to open the summer with a drive that would clear France and Belgium. As for the Germans, having laid their plans to go to Russia, they asked nothing of their western armies save that the lines should be held.

      The French began their spring drive in Artois and in Champagne. The Artois fighting of May and June was exceedingly severe, incidental gains were made, but the British were suddenly disclosed lacking in all proper ammunition, lacking in numbers to support the French offensive, and barely able to hold their own lines about Ypres, after desperate fighting, made memorable by the first use by the Germans of gas as a weapon of offense.

      From June until September the western armies stood still, while Britain organized her munition manufactures and continued to send her new troops to the Continent. Kitchener's "million" was not realized until the late fall, instead of the early spring. But when, in the latter days of September, the British attacked about La Bassée, and the French in Champagne, the muddling of British officers cost the Allies a considerable triumph in Artois, and the French victory in Champagne was purely local. Some 30,000 prisoners, 200 cannon, this was the fruit of an offensive which cost the British 60,000 casualties, and the French hardly less than twice as many.

      German defense, therefore, fulfilled its mission in the west, German armies were able to drive deep into Russia without having to detach reenforcements to the west. Such offensives as the Allies ventured were either complete failures or merely local successes, without major value. Belgium and northern France were not liberated, and there was, as yet, not even a promise of the crushing of Germany.

      ALLIED POLICY

      In the brief space that remains I desire to discuss the policy of the nations which are fighting the Teutonic Alliance. The German purpose at the outset of the war has been discussed. Franco-Russian preparation had been made long before the war, and the general plan of the high commands of the two allies worked out without any material interruption. The same is true of the cooperation of the British army. This simply followed out the plans agreed upon years before.

      It is not true, as has been frequently asserted, that France or her allies were surprised by the German invasion of Belgium, this had long been foreseen. It is not true, as was believed widely at the time, that Joffre invited disaster by sending the mass of his troops into Alsace-Lorraine, yielding to political and patriotic sentiment. He did nothing of the sort. Such troops as were sent into these provinces fulfilled their mission and contributed to drawing German corps away from the north. The bulk of the French armies and the British Expeditionary Corps were in line along the Belgium frontier from Arlon to Mons when the Germans began their great drive.

      The French were surprised in two respects. They had not foreseen the rapidity with which the German heavy artillery would reduce the forts in Belgium, the fall of Namur was the greatest catastrophe of the first period of the campaign, and they had not dreamed that the Germans would be able to mobilize so many troops in so short a period. Joffre had planned to meet the Germans along the Meuse and the Sambre, that is along the French frontier, but when the German advance began, his troops on these fronts were outnumbered by at least two to one, not because the mass of the French troops had been sent to Alsace-Lorraine, but because the French had not foreseen the capacity of the Germans to mobilize their reserves and had little more than their first-line troops ready, while the Germans were making use of Landwehr and even Landsturm formations in the first shock.

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