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Aisne, proceeded on different principles. The principle of Pétain was economy of man-power; General Haig, on the other hand, having been fighting all the year for what he regarded as subsidiary objects, could not bring himself to abandon his project in Flanders. The Ypres salient had tortured the British army for two and a half years, and the temptation to clear the enemy from the hills east of the city was irresistible. If he could have resisted it, he would have saved many lives; but some of the saving might have been lost later, for the Germans holding the ridge east of Ypres had an excellent jumping-off ground for renewing their attempts to win through to the Narrows; and the autumn campaign, for all the blood and mud which suffocated it, secured us against that danger. It is, however, interesting to speculate on what our probable course of action would have been if the InterAllied Council had been in existence when Nivelle succeeded Joffre and was succeeded by Pétain.

The charge so commonly brought against Mr. Lloyd George of wanting to supersede General Haig by General Nivelle would, under such circumstances, have had no point. The view of the British Staff, which, as General Haig complains, was summarily set aside, would have had a better chance of presentment, and the policy would have been determined after the arguments on both sides had been put. It is even possible that the French offensive would not have taken place on the Aisne at all, or even on the Somme, but would have been directed to the recovery of the French mining and manufacturing districts.

Again, after the succession of General Pétain to the French command, the question would then necessarily have come before the Allied Council what the British policy ought to be un

der those circumstances; and it is conceivable that such a discussion would have directed attention to the risks on the Italian front. General Cadorna, at any rate, after the military collapse of Russia became certain, was under no illusions about his own position. He feared a concentration against him, and though he never thought that his defeats would be so sudden and so overwhelming, he expected to be driven slowly back. Had there been an InterAllied Council, this point of view would have been put, and it is possible that the Italian defeat would have been avoided and even replaced by victories which would have further increased the war-weariness of Austria.

The controversy which assumes such an important place in the discussions of Mr. Lloyd George's Paris speechwhether the new Inter-Allied Council should have over-riding powers over the separate general staffs is not, after all, of first-rate importance. Between equal allies there can be no such thing as over-riding their separate wills. The main thing is to ensure that the common interest shall be kept steadily in view at each crisis, and that there shall be some permanent machinery for coördinating the efforts of the Allies.

The British General Staff cannot justly be charged with selfishness, but it is often charged, and not without reason, with taking too narrow and provincial a view of its duties, and with acting as if the campaign in Flanders and Northern France were the whole war. And some part of this blame must be shared by the British Admiralty. The department which understood the nature of sea-power should have been the first to see the importance of the East in our imperial strategy, and should have insisted more strongly on its views being adopted. But then, the Admiralty never had a Lord Haldane at its head, and its staff work never at

tained the degree of influence and authority in the national councils that the Imperial General Staff at the War Office acquired as the result of Lord Haldane's work. Lord Haldane's services to War Office organization were very great, but they produced a somewhat lopsided development of British strategy. In this war, for the first time in English history, the dominating ideas of the national strategy have been military and not naval, and we have suffered in consequence; for our traditional naval strategy would have recognized the Dardanelles as the key of the whole war so far as this country was concerned, and there would have been no collapse of Russia if our navy could have done for her what it has done for France. Nor was there any way of rendering that service except by the Black Sea.

The year 1917, then, in spite of brilliant work, was a disappointment for the Allies. What are the prospects for the coming year? Russia is out of the war; Italy no longer threatens Trieste, but has been hard put to it to defend Venice. The French who, a year ago, were full of hopes of a break-through, have fallen back on the defensive. We ourselves, after incredible exertions, ended our offensive with something very like a reverse at Cambrai. If we could not break through last year what conceivable chance, it is asked, is there of breaking through this year? To add to our worries, the U-boat campaign is beginning, for the first time in the war, to have some effect on the morale of the people. There is no despondency, but there are far more skeptics than there were of the possible solution of the military difficulty being found; and for the first time in the war there is some danger of a failure of resolution, not from lack of faith in our cause, but from doubts as to how far victory is physically possible along the lines we

have been pursuing. This state of mind is dangerous, and though much may be done to fortify the people by the consolations of oratory, our best consolation, with Germany in its present mind, is military and naval victory. If there is a real prospect of that, the rest can be managed; if there is none-well, the rest cannot be managed.

It is not a fashionable thing to say nowadays, but in the writer's opinion our prospects of military victory are on the whole rather better now than they were last year at this time. All last year Russia gave no real help to the Allied cause. She detained on her frontier, it is true, a great number of German and Austrian troops, but their fighting strength bore no real relation to their numbers. All through the year the Russian front was a rest cure for the German army. Divisions shattered in the Western fighting were being sent to Russia and replaced by fresh divisions from Russia; and it is hardly too much to say that the British and French faced, not at any one time, but during the year, practically the whole fighting strength of the German army.

Sir Auckland Geddes, in a late speech, by adding up the total number of Germans and Austrians on the Eastern front, calculated that we may have to face on the West an increase in the enemy forces of no less than 1,600,000 men- an alarming calculation, especially when we remember that these figures do not include any allowance for the German and Austrian prisoners who would presumably be released by Russia if she made a separate peace. In asking the House of Commons to give him power to raise another 450,000 men, his principle apparently was to divide the possible enemy increase by four, there being four Allies left in the war, and to assign to our own army the duty of providing a good fourth.

He was right to provide against the

worst possible contingency, but there is good reason to think that his estimate of the probable increase in the numbers of the enemy was exaggerated. One does not see Austria, in her present state of feeling, providing large numbers of men for service in France or Flanders, and even Germany would not be able to withdraw all her troops from the East. Nor will the restoration of the prisoners add very greatly to the enemy's strength. Many of them would be wounded, and few will be fit for service for months after their return. Many more will take good care not to return until the war is over, and the Russians certainly will not force them to return against their will.

All things considered, the effect of Russia's defection will be to add perhaps a million men to the strength of the Germans in the West. To that number we should add the demands that the defense of Italy may make on the resources of the Allies demands, however, which the 450,000 men for whom Sir Auckland Geddes is asking should allow us to ignore in our calculations. On the other hand, against that increment we must set the new American army in France, which by the end of this year, especially if the Germans use up men in a new offensive in the West, as seems generally to be expected, should have restored something like equality in numbers. In the writer's opinion, this is a better military prospect than we had a year ago, and for this reason: a year ago the Germans were satisfied to be on the defensive in the West, whereas this year the successful defensive will not satisfy them. Unless they win outright this year, they have lost the war. Indeed, if they do not win outright, it may be doubted whether they will await the American blow in 1919, and will not choose to make peace before it falls.

The great miscalculation of the Brit

ish and French General Staffs from 1915 to 1917 was that they ignored the enormous difference in standard of strength required for successful defense and for successful offense. Because they beat back the German offensive in France in 1914, both staffs seemed to have assumed that even a slight increase of strength would give them a chance of a successful offensive. This chance never existed in 1915 or 1916, and perhaps not in 1917 either, except on the basis of a ridiculous estimate of Russia's strength and France's endurance. All our attacks on the West in 1915 were a misapplication of energy and a waste of man-power; for to break through lines so strongly held as those of the Germans, a superiority largely in excess of that which we had in 1915 or in 1916 was necessary. In setting ourselves, therefore, to break through on the West, we were loading the dice against ourselves. We indulged in false optimism. For the same reason, we are indulging in false pessimism now, when we suppose that an increment even of a million men in the German strength is in itself enough to make the difference between a barely successful defensive like the German campaign last year and the brilliantly successful offensive which presumably Hindenburg hopes for this year. An increment considerably greater than that number of men in our own strength failed to give us what we wanted, and there is no reason whatever to suppose, so far at least as numbers are concerned, that the Germans can do in 1918 what they failed to do in 1914 and we in 1916 and 1917. It is natural that those who were optimists last year should be pessimists now, because in both cases they ignore the vast disproportion between the demands of successful defense and successful offense. But for the converse reason, those of us who were pessimists then should be optimists now. Given

reasonably good management, there should be no chance of a German breakthrough this year; and unless it is done this year, it will never be done and Germany will be beaten. The chances of her failure now are greater than the chances of our success a year ago.

But it is absolutely necessary that we should realize the conditions of successful defense, and should resolutely and consistently observe them. That numbers will help the defense goes without saying, but they are perhaps the least important factor in success. The most important is the staff work, and that is why English critics have attached so much importance to the publication of the facts about Cambrai, and why the government's suppression of the facts has had such a depressing effect on English opinion. The duties of a staff which is conducting a strategic defensive are threefold. First, it should economize man-power by every possible means. The true tactics of the defense, as Hindenburg has shown, are to hold the first lines with as few men as possible. That can safely be done only by the possession of great superiority in artillery, by elaborate fortifica

tion, by the provision of comfortable dug-outs, and by the accumulation of every possible artificial obstacle. Hitherto the British army, hoping to change its quarters, has given insufficient attention to these matters. Secondly, a corollary of holding the front line lightly is that we should have powerful and well-placed reserves for counter-attack. The promptness and efficiency of these counter-attacks will depend most of all on the quality of the railway communications. Lastly, the Intelligence Service must be perfect, and that depends on our aeroplanes and on the way we use them. It will be seen that these conditions for successful defense are all mechanical, and mere numbers of men come last in the order of importance.

Two provisos should be added. First, that no revolutionary change is made by the enemy in his armament such as might disturb the present balance of force. Second, and this is still more important, we must have enough ships to ensure the largest armies America can raise being brought safely to Europe and maintained there. That is a master condition of our hopes; and to its fulfillment everything else must give place.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB

THE PLUMBER APPRECIATED

'DID you ever,' said he, 'know a plumber who had grown rich?'

We stood in the kitchen. Outdoors it was a wonderful winter morning, snow-white and sparkling, felt rather than seen through frosted windows, for the mercury last night had dropped below zero, and, although reported on

the way up, was not climbing with real enthusiasm. On the floor was a little sea of water, in shape something like the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar out of sight under the kitchen sink. The stove (unfortunately) had been lighted; and a strange, impassive boy stood beside it, holding in pendant hands various tools of the plumber's craft. The plumber stood in the Mediterranean.

And I, in my slippers and bath-robe, a foolish costume, for the sea was not deep enough to bathe in, hovered, so to speak, on the edge of the beach.

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I suppose I wished to impress this plumber with my imperturbable calm. Upset as I was, I must have realized the impossibility of impressing the boy. Swaggering a little in my bath-robe, I had said something jocular, I do not remember just what, about the rapid accretion of wealth by plumbers. He lit his pipe. 'Did you ever,' said he, 'know a plumber who had grown rich?'

Now until that winter I had never thought of the plumber as a man in many respects like myself. One may winter for years in a city apartment without meeting a plumber, but hardly without reading a good many humorous trifles about them in current literature; and my idea of this craftsman had been insidiously formed by the minor humorists. Summer, in my experience, had been a plumberless period, in which water flowed freely through the pipes of my house, and gushed obligingly from faucets at the touch of a finger. It was like an invisible brook; and, like a brook, I thought of it (if I thought of it at all) as going on forever. Nothing worse happened than a leak at the faucet. And when that happens I can fix it myself. All it needs is a new washer.

I run down cellar and turn off the water. I run up from the cellar and take off the faucet. I put in the new washer, which is like a very fat leather ring for a very thin finger, and screw on the faucet. I run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. It still leaks. So I run down cellar, turn off the water, run up from the cellar, take off the faucet, make some slight alteration in the size, shape, or position of the washer, put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. If it still leaks (as it is

rather to be expected), I repeat as be fore; and if it then leaks (as is more than likely), I run down cellar, turn off the water, run up from the cellar, take off the faucet, make some slight alteration in the size, shape, or position of the washer, put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. Perhaps it leaks more. Perhaps it leaks less. So I run down cellar - and turn off the water and run up from the cellar — and take off the faucet. Then, talking aloud to myself, I take out the new washer, throw it on the floor, stamp on it, kick it out of the way, put in a newer washer, put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. If (and this may happen) it still leaks, I make queer, inarticulate, animal noises; but I run down cellar, turn off the water, run up from the cellar, and take off the faucet. Then I monkey a little with the washer (still making those queer animal noises), put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. Sooner or later the faucet always stops leaking. It is a mere matter of adjusting the washer; any handy man can do it with a little patience.

Winter in the country is the time and place to get acquainted with the plumber. And I would have you remember, even in that morning hour when the ordinary life of your home has stopped in dismay, and then gone limping toward breakfast with the help of buckets of water generously loaned you by your nearest neighbor, -rarely, if ever, does he carry his generosity so far as to help carry the buckets, that because of this honest soul in overalls, winter has lost the terrors which it held for your great-grandfather.

Revisit your library, and note what the chroniclers of the past thought about winter - 'this cousin to Death,

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