The Military Situation in October, 1917
Two great facts dominate the situation to-day.
1st. The great success won at Verdun in August, 1917, by the French, who in two days retook the positions that had cost the Germans five months of ceaseless assault and enormous losses in men and material. It is indeed a most remarkable success, considering that the German General Staff, in the defence of the ground so hardly won, employed every means known to military science.
The last battle of Verdun evidences the superiority that the French artillery has gained over the German artillery.
2d. The recent victories of the British Army and those of the French Army under General Anthoine in Flanders. Both French and British have made continuous progress despite most unfavorable weather conditions—fog, rain, and deep mud. The lines of communication of the Germans with the Belgian coast are threatened, and the occupation of the Belgian coast by the Allies will put an end to the hopes Germany has based upon her submarine warfare.
The significant feature of these latest French and British victories is the fact that the German armies now find it impossible to react in time—or, in other words, to check an assault by launching prompt counter-attacks.
The difficulty that the two Crown Princes experience in finding immediately and on the moment troops sufficient for energetic attack, proves:
1st. That notwithstanding the withdrawal of various contingents from the Russian Front, they are short of reserves;
2d. That the quality and the morale of their troops have declined, which is also evidenced by the large number and inferior fighting-value of the prisoners taken.
These are signs which foreshadow not only the final victory, which is not doubtful, but even a more rapid termination of the war than could have been anticipated six months ago.
While the approaching entry of the American armies into the fighting lines will be, from the start, of great importance for the military situation, the participation of the United States in the war has already produced in Germany a moral effect that the German authorities are vainly trying to conceal. The number of the adversaries of the military power increases every day, and even Prussian brutality is powerless to prevent the diffusion of the idea that the leaders of the Empire have terribly blundered in turning the whole world against Germany.
Germany suffers much, and her sufferings can but increase, owing to the insufficiency of the harvest in Europe.
Let us remember the prediction of a man who knows Germany well, the former Representative from Alsace in the Reichstag, Father Weterlé. “After her defeat,” he said in 1915, “Germany will astonish the world by her cowardice.”
May his prediction prove true!
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We will now consider the general principles of the French military organization, which are based upon experience dearly bought during the past three years of war.
The American armies will be constituted upon a similar plan.
CHAPTER I
WAR PRINCIPLES
(For 1917)
1. The rules of strategy and tactics have not been modified. The mode of fighting alone is different.
2. Violation of the laws of warfare. Influence of science.
3. Fighting units. The Army. The Army Corps. The Division. The Command. The Staff.
1. Strategy and tactics are unchanged. Strategy is the art of manœuvring large armies over a great extent of country.
Tactics is the art of handling the troops on the battlefield.
One might be inclined to believe that, in the present war and since the victory of the Marne, the general rules of strategy and tactics have been modified. Not at all. The ways of fighting and the armament only have undergone a transformation.
The opposing lines have buried themselves in mazes of entrenchment. On both sides old methods of warfare and weapons forsaken or forgotten for centuries have again been gradually resorted to. The “Minenwerfers,” the trench guns, are nothing but the old-fashioned mortar much improved upon. The jet of liquid fire driven by compressed air, finds its prototypes in the Greek fire of Constantinople and the hand-thrown combustibles—boiling oil and burning pitch—of the Middle Ages.
Strategy. The rules of strategy remain immutable. They still consist in attacking the enemy on one of his wings; in attempting to outflank him on one side; in trying to cut his line in two by a blow in the centre; in organizing a system of transportation so that the necessary forces may be quickly assembled at the points which are to be attacked or protected; in taking advantage of a superiority due to the possession of well-organized interior lines. Such are the ancient basic principles, that, in various combinations, have been applied by contending armies since the dawn of military science.
Examples. When the Germans attacked on the Yser front, their purpose was twofold: 1st. To outflank the left wing of the Franco-Anglo-Belgian Army; 2d. To force their way towards Calais and Dunkirk so as to prevent England from using those harbours for the concentration of her armies in France.
After her failure on the Yser front, Germany made use of her superiority in interior lines, composed of the railway lines existing before the war, supplemented by new ones built as they were needed for military operations. Owing to her central geographical position, Germany is able at all times to dispatch forces from the heart of her Empire to the various fronts; from Russia to the French Front, and vice versa. To these interior lines is due the facility with which she has quickly concentrated large masses of troops at any desired point, notably on the Roumanian front at the end of 1916.
When she had firmly consolidated her Western Front she rapidly collected all her available forces on the Eastern Front in an effort to crush the Russians.
When, in February, 1916, the Germans launched the gigantic attack against Verdun, it was with a twofold strategic purpose: 1st. To pierce the French line between right wing and centre and resume the march on Paris. 2d. In case of a partial success, to strengthen themselves by the occupation of Verdun, with a view to preventing the French armies from reaching the right bank of the Meuse, while at the same time guarding their own left wing and their communications with Metz, should circumstances ever force them to withdraw behind the Meuse.
During the autumn of 1915 the French attempted to avail themselves of the comparative weakness of the Germans due to their campaign against Russia. A favourable issue would have taken them to Vouziers-Rethel, and very possibly have caused all the German lines to be withdrawn from around Rheims and Soissons.
We might vary these examples. Quite recently, the British troops have resumed the attack planned in 1915 by the French in Artois. They will gradually free the North of France and Flanders.
Tactics. Let us now consider tactical operations as they are conducted on the battlefield. The formidable field entrenchments constructed by the Germans have compelled both combatants to transform their artillery and to change the armament of their infantry.
The manner in which the different arms are employed on the battlefield has changed but little.
The field artillery has been enormously developed and it has been necessary to constantly increase the power of the cannons and howitzers. We shall later on discuss this subject more fully.
The definition of tactics as given by General Pétain, the French Generalissimo, in the course of his lectures at the “École de Guerre” has not been modified by the creation of these improved weapons. He said: “The Artillery conquers the positions, the Infantry occupies them.”
We will take for example a quite recent military feat which strikingly establishes the distinction between the strategical and the tactical operations.
On the 22d day of last October (1917), the French Army in the North, east of Soissons, scored one of the most important successes of the year. This operation, carried out on a nine-mile front, was essentially tactical. It had for object the capture of very important positions forming a salient in the French lines, which furnished the Germans with facilities for an offensive return to Soissons. The capture by the French of Vaudesson-Allemant and the Malmaison fort eliminated the salient, opened the road to Laon, and exposed the German lines on the Ailette to an enfilading fire.
This tactical operation was evidently a part of a vast strategical plan matured by the French and British Commanders-in-Chief. The general purpose of these operations aims at forcing the Germans to abandon the North of Belgium and to retreat in France. All the tactical operations being carried on in Flanders, on the Aisne, in Champagne and Lorraine, are parts of this single plan and have the same object in view.
BATTLE FIELD OF THE FRENCH OFFENSIVE OF THE 22d OCTOBER, 1917.
The rapid campaign just conducted by Marshal von Mackensen against the Italians in the Julian Alps, like that he led in 1916 in the Dobrutcha and Roumania, are evidences that the old principles of war, and especially those practised by Napoleon, are still fully adhered to by the German armies.
2. Violation of the laws of warfare. Influence of science. We must acknowledge that, although the Germans had hoped in 1914 for a quick victory gained by a few overwhelming blows, they had also, during their forty-four years military preparation, provided for the possibility of a check, and had equipped themselves with a mighty artillery which enabled them to hold the Western Front while fighting against Russia.
France had to make great efforts to complete her armament in 1915. Germany had already accomplished this in a great measure before the war commenced.
It was reserved for German science, if not to render war more bloody (the weapons used in 1914 sufficiently fulfilled this purpose), to violate all the laws of warfare enacted by all the Governments, even by the German Government itself.
German science has given birth to gigantic cannon which no law forbids (we shall speak of these further on), but German science will bear, in the judgment of History, the responsibility of having added to the horrors of war an unprecedented ferocity and savagery by the introduction of asphyxiating gases, tear-producing gases, and burning liquids.
But we may add that Germany in her turn already suffers greatly herself from her inventions; the Allies having been compelled to adopt and use similar and often much improved weapons.
3. Fighting units. The fighting units are composed of a variable number of tactical units. The tactical unit is the Division, the composition of which will hereafter be described. It includes infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. It ought to possess also, and we hope it will soon, a special service of aviation.
A group of two or three and sometimes four Divisions constitutes an Army Corps. The union of three, four, or five Army Corps forms an Army. In this war, two or three armies placed under one Command form an Army Group. Four or five of these Army Groups exist on the French Front. The general organization of the British differs but little from that of the French armies. Whatever difference there may be exists rather in the organization of the rear than in that of the front. The British occupying a much shorter front, dispose of a proportionately larger number of men. Though the bulk of their forces have been but a short time in France, they have received from their women workers very intelligent and valuable assistance, and, having at their disposal larger appropriations of money, have been able to do much more than France towards perfecting the organization at the rear.
The Army Corps and the Division must be organized so as to be entirely and under all circumstances self-sufficient. They may, however, rely upon any reserve forces that the surrounding armies may place at their disposal, according to the work assigned to them.