The Great War

The Great War

BY DR. T- M. TANNER

THE BATTLE OF VERDUN

What may prove to be the greatest and most costly, and, insome measures, the most decisive battle of the great Europeanwar is now going on at Verdun, the greatest French military for-tification, about one hundred and fifty miles east of Paris. Thetown of Verdun is of itself unimportant. It is located on theriver Meuse and has a population of about one hundred andtwenty thousand inhabitants. At the close of the Franco-Prussianwar von Moltke, and other military leaders, insisted on the an-nexation of Lorraine as a necessity for the strategic advantagesit offered against the French. The Germans erected Metz andthe French immediately began the immense fortifications of Ver-dun.

The French were wont to look upon this great fortification asimpregnable, but when the enormous forty-two centimeter how-itzers of the Germans tore down the forts of Maubuege, Liege,Namur, and Antwerp, the French clearly perceived that their greatblocks of cement were unable to withstand the blows that camefrom the great shells of the howitzers. The fort was thereforeimmediately overhauled and sand was made to take the place ofcement. For a long time there has been going on, in the press, adiscussion of the inability of either the French or the Germans tobreak through the great trenches facing each other in the easternpart of France ami in Belgium. Trench warfare on such anenormous scale is new to all military experiences.

Last September the French and English undertook to break-through in the country north of Verdun in what was known asthe Champagne district. Along a front of about fifteen miles theFrench under General Castelnau bombarded with their powerfulartillery day and night the German trenches. The Germans weredriven back a considerable distance. They lost their first and sec-ond lines of defense but when the French finally reached the thirdline they found it more powerfully constructed and in such con-dition that a further advance would have meant an unjustifiablesacrifice of soldiers. They had, therefore, to be content with thetwo lines that they had won. It was claimed that the experiencesof this drive indicated the preparations that the English andFrench must make finally before they could hope to be successfulin breaking the German lines.

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The Germans, however, had broken the Russian lines at theDeumajec and through the walls which they had broken down intrie Russian ranks they poured an overwhelming- number of sol-diers and thus put the Russians to flight in such a manner thatthey were unable to do more than resist by rear guard battles.The day that that drive was effected Galicia was virtually lost tothe Russians. Could the Germans perform the same feat on thewestern front? In the case of Russia the Germans outnumberedthe Russians both in men and guns as well as in ammunition.Such, however, was not the condition in the west. The Frenchline was more compact; ammunition was abundant and the forti-fications had immensely better means of resistance. For sometime reports coming from the French indicating that the Germanswere amassing large numbers of troops on the west, that theywere testing the French lines in numerous places, and fromSweden came the report that a council of war had been held inBerlin where the question of an attack on the great fort of Ver-dun was under consideration. It is said the Generals von Mack-insen and von Hindenberg were opposed to the undertaking andthat the kaiser finally decided that the army of the Crown Princeshould make the venture. For seven days the most terrible bom-bardment that has ever been known was launched against theouter forts'. Many square miles of territory held by the Frencharmies were taken, and finally the fort of Douaumont. Into thisgreat fort the Brandenbergers, a favorite army division of theemperor, fought its way. After seven days' fighting the Germanswere temporarily halted, and at the time of this writing no furtherprogress had been made for a number of days. It is said that theBrandenbergers were virtually prisoners within the fort, that is,unless further advance could be made and the French driven backfrom the south and the west, as the country over which the Bran-denbergs had come was within the sweep of the French artil-lery. In this great battle the French employed a somewhat dif-ferent method of retreat from that of the Germans of the Cham-pagne. In that campaign the Germans held their trenches untilthey were overcome and taken prisoners. In the assault uponDouaumont, one of the outer forts of Verdun, the French whenthey saw the trenches were untenable withdrew from them undercover of their artillery, and thus avoided falling into the hands ofthe Germans as prisoners. So terrible was the bombardment atVerdun that the sound of the cannon was carried a distance ofover one hundred and eighty-eight miles. Infantry attacks uponthese trenches resulted in an awful destruction of human life, asthe machine guns mow the attacking forces down by thousands,and it is only when these attacking forces come on in such over-whelming numbers that it is impossible to kill all of them, thatthe trenches are finally reached, and fighting hand to hand with

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grenades, bayonets and rifles takes place. What the losses ofVerdun are we are not told. The French say the Germans lostfully one hundred and forty thousand men. The Germans reportthat their losses were normal. What normal means cannot verywell be given in figures. If it means what would normally belost in such an attack, normal losses would naturally be great. 1 fthe losses here were even one hundred thousand, and only abontone-fifth of the work accomplished, it is safe to estimate that thenumber of men necessary to take the forts would reach fully ahalf million. It seems incredible that the Germans would be will-ing- to sacrifice that number of men, or even half that number.Verdun, it is true, opens the country into the heart of France, butParis is one hundred and fifty miles away; and behind the greatforts of Verdun are other lines of trenches so that the Germanarmy would not have any triumphal march into Paris. Britainis throwing its men on to the lines in great numbers. In the be-ginning of the war, its soldiers occupied only about fifteen milesout of three hundred miles. Today the English army extendedalong the line of fully one hundred miles, and it is estimated thatEnglish soldiers now at the front have reached a total of overone million. If Germany was to make a supreme test of herstrength, the sooner that test was made the better, as the Englishand the Russians, in the spring, will be throwing on to_the frontat least two million more men, fully equipped with provisions andammunition. Even now the battle of Verdun will be regardedas one of the most marvelous feats of the present war. The workof the German artillery, the whole strategy of their attack, showthe most careful preparation and skill. The world is looking onwith breathless anxiety, for this great battle is in a large measurethe test of the relative strength of the two greatest battle lines of 'the whole war.

THE FALL OF ERZERUM

The fall of Erzerum was a great surprise to those who be-lieved the Turks were in a position to withstand, for months, theRussian attacks, and who believed that the Russians would re-quire a much larger army than they really had in the southernbattlefield. Time will afford us some explanation of what isreally mysterious now. In the meantime, we may well ask our-selves such questions as: Were the Turks disheartened? Werethey short of ammunition?' Was their city properly provisioned?Did the German generals take due precautions in strengtheningthe fortifications:; The surrender came like a thunder bolt outof a clear sky to those who are more or less familiar with Turkishtenacity and who expected that at Erzerum they would showsomething of those qualities which they so wonderfully displayedat Gallipoli The unexpected happened. There have been so

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many unexpected things in this war that we have become usedto surprises.

What does the fall of Erzerum mean? It has a number ofmeanings. It has made the invasion of Asia Minor two-foldeasier than it would have been with the fort standing. It enabledthe Russian army, a small one to be sure, to make its way to thesouthwest. That division of the Russians, joined with theirarmies in Persia, means the downfall of Turkish resistance in thatempire. Persia is now Russian. The Russians are in possessionof Kermanshaw. That town is about one hundred and fifty milesfrom Bagdad. If necessary, Russian troops could float down theTigris river in great numbers to the relief of the English at Kut-el-Amara. The line of the eastern district has thus been drawnup westward to the valley of the Mesopotamia and northward tothe Black Sea.

Another division of the Russian army, how large we do notknow, will strike in a southerly direction toward Diarbekr. Fromthis point the German Bagdad railroad would be open to attackfrom the Russians and so far as we know, no sufficient Turkisharmy has been placed along its route in that part of Asia Minorto give it adequate protection. This Bagdad railroad has notbeen fully completed. How many miles of a gap has to be filledwe do not know, since the Germans have evidently pushed asrapidly as they could, under the circumstances, the completion ofthis railroad. If it should be seized by the Russians, the Turksin the neighborhood of Bagdad would be hemmed in. Attackedfrom the Russians, in the north, and the British in the south, theywould have to fall back upon the desert or fight their way out.

The third and most interesting division of the Russian armyis that dispatched in a northwesterly direction about one hundredand fifty miles to Trebizond, on the Black sea. This city pre-sents a very picturesque appearance on an elevated table landrising up from two large ravines on either side. Here, in thedays of ancient Greece, was the Greek colony of Sinope. It washere that the ten thousand Greeks, in their retreat, embarked byway of the Black sea for their native land. In modern times itis a commercial city of great importance, and its capture by theRussians will be a severe blow to the commerce of the Turks.For a long time the Turks have had a regular line of steamshipstraversing the Black sea between Trebizond and Constantinople.It is, indeed, the principal seaport of Asiatic Turkey on the Blacksea. From this port the Turks shipped their provisions, grain,cattle, and other agricultural products, to the large commercialcities of Turkey, such as Constantinople, Smyrna, and Beirut.Once this port is in the hands of the Russians, it will cut short thefood of the civil population in the west. From this point Russia

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can carry on more easily her campaign against the Turks in theinterior of Asia Minor.

The fall of Erzerum means, in all probability, diversion of theso-called Turkish campaign against the British in Egypt. Everymile of progress made in that country against the Turks meansmore and more the pinch of starvation. Turkey is not self-sup-porting, and those parts of the empire which contribute much tothe food of the population are endangered by this Russian ad-vance.

One cannot resist, at this point, to venture some predictions.One is that the Russians and English will endeavor, while holdingtheir own on the eastern and western frontiers, to put Turkey outof commission, and compel that country to sue for peace. OnceTurkey is brought to her knees, large armies in the east will bereleased for the purpose of tightening the bands about the Teu-tonic powers within the present limits of their armies in Europe.Bulgaria will be attacked, and the present attacks upon Italy andfuture attacks upon Bulgaria cannot be so easily averted, fromthe fact that Germany and Austria will need every available manon the Russian, French and Italian frontiers. The English andRussian recruits, for the coming summer, will increase the dan-gers on these fronts to such an extent that military experts believethe Germans will be compelled to recall their generals from theTurkish battlefields, for service nearer home. The enormousareas and vast distances, in the campaign of the Allies, make thewar a most difficult problem to them, and call for greater re-sources in men and provisions than would be required could theydo their fighting nearer home.

M I. A. SCOUTS, DUCHESNE, UTAH

Standing on a 12-foot snow drift. PaulCluff, Assistant Scout Master