II THE NAVAL CRISIS IN THE NORTH SEA A Great Battle at Sea Impending. ENGLISHMEN have little doubt that the German fleet now in seclusion will sooner or later break forth into the North Sea and try conclusions with Sir John Jellicoe. Italian comment implies that the Kaiser may keep his fleet intact until the very end of the war. Germany would thus remain the world's second naval power and might secure more favorable terms in that capacity. This argument, altho plausible, as the London Times has admitted, loses force to English experts as the situation on land develops. As for the Berlin experts, they accept for their navy the position and, consequently, the function of "the inferior fleet." What, then, is the function of the inferior fleet? First, replies the expert of the Manchester Guardian, it should make use of the threat comprised in the very existence of the nayal forces intact to prevent the enemy from transporting troops overseas within range at least of the smaller craft. "If anyone had said before the beginning of the war that, in spite of Germany's thirty submarines we say nothing of her swarms of torpedo craft-England would be able to transport a large army across to France and support it by continual reinforcements, almost without loss, he would scarcely have been believed." The German fleet ought certainly to perform this part of its duty as the inferior fleet. Again, were there no German fleet, it would be possible to land a British army on German soil. A Russian army could be set ashore on the Baltic coast. Even if these things were not actually done, the Germans would be forced to detach valuable forces to prevent invasion. The hazard of a decisive battle, which may appeal to them as a naval proposition, might by some miracle result in the defeat of Sir John Jellicoe. Whatever be the nature of the debate in German naval circles, Admiral Ingenohl is assumed in England to want a fight. German Determination to Wear APART from their spectacular effect upon the lay imagination, the exploits of German squadrons in "holing" British cruisers and invading British harbors have not altered the balance of naval power. The battle off the Falkland Islands has left the situation about where it was when the war began as regards naval power, notes the expert of the Paris Gaulois. This daily understands that the completion of British. Dreadnoughts on the stocks has been so accelerated that two great units have been added to the fleet since the war began. This story lacks confirmation, like the tale of the resurrection of the battleship Audacious. Germany, according to the Paris daily, can not complete her three Dreadnoughts in the building yards owing to lack of copper and chemicals. These reports are pronounced fantastic in the Berlin press, but the experts are censored and details are withheld. Nor can much that is definite be gleaned in foreign dailies respecting the monstrous submarines to be used in the German invasion of England. The policy of "attrition" is maintained in Berlin. British battleships are to be picked off. Mines are to be laid. The English coast is to be raided. cruisers of the latest type opposed to twenty-one German ships of similar design and construction. Each side had supplementary ships of older date and somewhat less nominal fighting value. For months now. Germany has not attempted to use her vast naval force for any strategical or tactical purpose whatever, unless we are to take seriously the effects of the recent coast raids. The effects were serious to individuals and to single units taken by themselves, but upon the balance of naval power they have had no effect at all. Germany has submitted without a struggle to the total loss of her position as a naval power in the world at large. She foregoes all oversea trade still. She suffers an incalculable loss of prestige. She incurs a serious risk in her efforts to meet the economic crisis at home. No doubt her fleet could not emerge from its lurking place without tremendous risk. Nevertheless it remains difficult for the expert we follow here to understand how so vast and powerful a fleet as that of Emperor William can continue to exist without making some effort to justify the enormous sacrifices involved in the fact of its existence. Berlin dailies suggest by their somewhat guarded comment upon the naval outlook that, German sea-power will be an important factor in that invasion of England which is soon to be attempted. The English will be taught, according to the KreuzZeitung, that German might at sea is real. The war is five months old, says the London Telegraph, in reply, but not a single German battleship has put to sea. German cruisers, apparently, are more active. As regards the war at sea, England thinks she has won already. Austria is still busy capturing everything in sight-officially.Kansas City Star. The Khedive is to lead the Turks into Egypt. They may not need anybody to lead them out again.-Kansas City Star. The "dreadnought" is misnamed when the submarine is around. -Knickerbocker Press. RETURN OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT MUCH pressure of a tactful kind was exerted upon President Poincaré, in the light of Vienna newspaper reports, before he consented to the return of the French government to Paris. President Poincaré, who exerts a more direct influence upon affairs than any of his predecessors in office, dreaded the effects upon the German mind of a defiant return to the ancient capital when an invading army is but seventy miles off. He argued that the Kaiser might order just such a movement upon Paris as was directed against Calais. Desperate as such a step might prove, the Germans would be tempted to sacrifice everything for the sake of the prestige of success. Even if they failed to seize Paris itself, their appearance in the environs in consequence of some tactical accident at the front would embarrass the cause of the allies. Then, too, a second flight from Paris as a measure of insurance must affect European opinion even if the city did not fall. The Kaiser would not a second time commit the blunder of ordering five army corps to Poland at a critical moment. It is possible, too, that the deadlock at the front is part of some subtle German plan to disarm the suspicions of the French, to give them a poor opinion of their foe. Paris Again a Seat of LONDON and Petrograd were sounded before the transfer of the French government from Bordeaux back to Paris became an accomplished fact. The deciding circumstance to the expert of the Débats (Paris) was the decreasing mobility of the vast German army owing to the breakdown of the strategic railroad system. Berlin has imposed so terrific a strain upon roadbeds and rolling stock in the swift despatch of regiments and divisions from one front to the other that repairs must be made all the time. The lines suffer, again, from lack of material indispensable in making repairs, and this material, which must in some cases be imported, is on the contraband list compiled by the British. Nor can the long runs of the locomotives continue, however urgent the strategical necessity of transferring corps from east to west. So complete is the cooperation of the allies that whenever pressure falls upon the western front, the Russians begin a new drive in Poland. Even, therefore, if the Kaiser ordered a fresh rush upon Paris the Grand Duke Nicholas would make all operations very hot in the east. His mobilization is complete. Progress of the German Struggle Towards Paris. ERMANY still hopes through repeated attacks upon the lines of the allies in the west to find a place weak enough for an effective piercing movement. This is realized perfectly at Paris, according to the Figaro, which insists that there is nothing tangible to base the German hope upon. General Joffre remains true to his tactical conception of an immense reserve. Wherever the line of the allies suffers from German activity, the reserve makes good the deficiency. Military Berlin finds in these tactics an insoluble problem, says the French daily. Paris, it adds, is perfectly safe. The Germans are sarcastically invited to test the truth of that statement by experiment. The news from the front in Belgium suggests to the London Times, too, that the German offensive is slackening and that the PARIS A REAL CAPITAL AGAIN GONE TO HOLLAND The Belgian refugees, before their flight from their native town, took this method of making known their future addresses to their relatives and friends, postal facilities being no longer available. conflict is lapsing once more into a series of artillery duels. The lull, it admits, is only temporary and its chief interest is that it may be taken to mark the close of the latest and by far the greatest of the German efforts to achieve Emperor William's aims in France. Whatever aims his Majesty had, however, declares the Petit Parisien, have been abandoned as far as France is concerned. It says the march on Paris will never be resumed. An German Interpretation of the French Campaign. IN ALL their comment upon the situation in France and Belgium, military experts in London and Paris neglect the fundamental German conception of the war, observes the expert of the Frankfurter Zeitung. That conception is based upon the "unity" of the war. The general staff in Berlin is not conducting three separate and distinct wars against France, against Russia and against England. The war to Germany is one. operation in the west is coordinated with an operation in the east. French dailies treat each episode by itself, omitting its relation to the German campaign as a whole. They have contrived in consequence to convey a false notion of what has been effected. They think the Germans are waiting for the ground to become harder in Flanders, making it difficult for the enemy to entrench. They infer that Germany lacks men to make an offensive movement in northern France effective. The fact is that "one single great plan of war is being carried out and there is no pursuit of partial successes, no premature attack." To this the expert of the Gaulois replies that the Emperor William entered the war with a single plan of campaign-the crushing of France and the checking of Russia. Unfortunately for the Germans, they were under the spell of their successes at Sedan and elsewhere when the third Napoleon was Emperor. 13 permanently at the disposal of the German military authorities for requisitions and measures of public order. The Germans live on the country. At least one-eighth of France is under Emperor William's rule to-day. The Germans have requisitioned the ablebodied to thresh the wheat. They have taken over all the big mills on the Aisne, setting aside for their own use in field bakeries what flour they want. The same fate has overtaken the sugar refineries. They exploit the mines in the conquered territory, forcing the inhabitants to labor without pay. Wool and raw materials generally have been seized and sent to Germany. Even the shirts of the men and the stockings of the women have been commandeered for the Germans in the trenches. These troops are said in our contemporary's columns to be living "amid perfect abundance and quietude, and smoking big cigars stolen in Brussels." They are told by their officers that the march upon Paris is delayed because cholera rages there. Functionaries have been sent from Germany to assist the military in administering northern France. Male inhabitants are forced to work as road-makers. These labors make military motor traffic swift and easy. In the conquered portion of France, moreover, the Germans have begun the publication of newspapers. There is at Hirson, for instance, a Journal which declares that the Germans love and respect the French. France, it adds, was misled by the mendacity of the English, who know very well that France and Germany are natural allies. The Germans did not wish to take Paris, for that would humiliate France. Whenever the Germans start a newspaper on conquered soil in the west, the comment is along these lines. Political Outlook in France To-day. GREAT precautions were taken by Premier Viviani before the assembly of the chamber of deputies in Paris to insure perfect harmony among the several groups. There will be no signs of division among Frenchmen, comments the Temps, in the course of the present parliamentary session. The ministry now in power reflects every faction in the chamber. This body had barely passed through the ordeal of its election. when the war-cloud darkened the horizon of Europe. It gathered for the first time last June. The Socialists, under the hapless Jean Jaurès, controlled over a hundred votes. The groups of the radical left numbered 164 more. Against them are the more moderate republicans and the conservative "right." Thus the radical element controls the chamber of deputies altho the ministry of Viviani includes leaders of the extreme conservative party. The first subject to be taken up by the ministry must be finance, according to the Temps, but the more radical organs, and especially the paper edited by the great Clemenceau, seem inclined to make an issue of the censorship and of the activities of royalists. The latter, if we may trust the radical republican organs, are making capital out of the position won by King Albert of Belgium. There are vague hints that a certain republican general was disgraced by monarchical reactionaries in high command. Premier Viviani will do his best, notes the Berlin Kreus-Zeitung, to prevent the explosion of any unpleasant scandal, but he will have difficulty in ruling a chamber so turbulent by temperament and so excited by the crisis the country. is passing through 102339 OBSCURITIES OF THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN LODZ was evacuated by orders of the Grand Duke Nicholas at the time when the military experts of Europe, including here and there a Briton, were conjecturing that perhaps the allies have all along been too optimistic on the subject of Russia. The failure of the German advance upon Warsaw as far back as October last was taken too seriously in western Europe, perhaps, observes the Rome Tribuna. The Germans, with the assistance of the Austrians, tried to repeat in Poland, as the London Times reminds us, some of the characteristics of their first great rush upon Paris. Their advance was necessarily slower, owing to the nature of the country; but it was rapid enough to give the Russians many awkward problems for solution. The main purpose of the Germans was to establish themselves upon the line of the Vistula. To that end, they deemed it necessary to seize Warsaw, largely because their occupation of the Polish capital would "hearten the flagging spirits of their troops and have a correspondingly bad moral effect upon the Russians." The original movement upon Warsaw was bold and audacious. It succeeded so well that the Germans were once within half a day's march of Warsaw. In the end they retired swiftly. The campaign between Russia and Germany has since been one of many vicissitudes. The episode at Lodz now suggests a new riddle to the experts. Is the German project of occupying Russian Poland as a means of stemming the Russian tide within measurable distance of accomplishment? Prussia, he tells us, is defended by its marshes and lakes, between which the passages are narrow. “Here the first Russian invasion under the unfortunate Sassonoff and Rennenkampf penetrated into the country as far as Königsberg, but the results of that invasion were so unfortunate that it is not likely to be taken as a model now." The people of East Prussia are said, nevertheless, to be once more taking refuge in Berlin. The German general staff is said to have given orders that the country be evacuated and laid waste. Apparently, therefore, they may decide, if the Russian pressure becomes severe, not to offer very serious opposition on this front. The Russians will claim "victories" as they advance. The truth may well be that the Germans want the enemy to advance a long way into their country in order to defeat them by a swift concentration. All news from the eastern theater of the war must be read between the lines, therefore, for the next month at least. The whole campaign has been inconclusive. Advantages of the Germans in Fighting the Russians. IMPRESSIONS of a Russian army on the first stage of a march to Berlin can have no validity just now. These are the conclusions of a very competent military expert in England, writing for the Manchester Liberal organ. His judgment is endorsed by the comments of the Figaro's expert, who deprecates too blind an optimism. On their eastern frontier, notes the Briton, to, the Germans have an exceedingly strong line of forts. and the fortified place is by no means discredited by events in Belgium. These German fortresses are connected by strategic railroads which enable the defence to concentrate superior numbers at a given point. "At the same time the fortresses make excellent bases for the sudden launching of attack against the heads of the invading columns as they emerge from shelter." It was by a series of such attacks that the misadventure of the Russians at Lodz was rendered inevitable, as this expert foresaw. They began these tactics last November when the Russians were in force between Lyck and the River Warta. They have since repeated the maneuver dozens of times. The configuration of the frontier and the splendid system of strategic railways give the Germans opportunities which embarrassed the Russians greatly. FROM One Continuous Battle in Poland. CROM Warsaw to Kolo-the extreme western point attained by the Czar's army proper-the Russian advance has been a series of sanguinary struggles, says the military expert of the London Westminster Gazette. Each of these struggles a century ago, he tells us, would have been given a name and remembered as a "great" battle. This "battle of Poland" has a certain unity. It might be considered as a gigantic Borodino with the substitution of towns tens of miles apart for the villages and farms on the old-time battle fronts. As reported in the despatches from day to day, this "battle of Poland" seems a chain of apparently unconnected incidents. It has not been decisive except in the winning and losing of land. The two armies remain intact,, even 15 THAT CONTEMPLATED MARCH TO BERLIN after so sanguinary a conflict as that which preceded the Russian evacuation of Lodz. Russian experts quoted in the Novoye Vremya regard this as normally characteristic of the war in the eastern theater of operations. "Except in a local sense, there were no great surprises." The killed and wounded attain almost incredible totals and the Germans shrink from nothing. still in their determination to seize and occupy Russian Poland. Waiting for a Chance to March to Berlin. ALTOGETHER, the Russian progress has been dis appointing, as we find more than one military expert in England conceding. Official London may not have anticipated serious Russian pressure on Berlin by now; but the newspapers, including even the cautious Manchester Guardian, ventured to surmise that Berlin might be imperiled before Christmas. It is true that between Russian armies and German armies there have been great, even decisive, battles. The defeat of General Sassonoff in East Prussia, for instance, seems to the British paper a bigger event than the battle of Mukden. At Mukden the Russian losses were just over a hundred thousand. At the battle of Tannenberg there were lost that number in prisoners alone and it was followed by two other serious defeats at Insterburg and Lyck. "The The most numerous army can not bear defeats of that magnitude without flinching, and the wonder is not that the Russians lost ground but that they were able to recover so rapidly." On the Russian left the prospects of the Russian aggressive are brighter: "The greater part of Galicia is now in Russian possession, and the Austrian army is divided between Cracow and the passes over the Carpathians into Hungary. It should not be very difficult for the Russians to seize and hold the few Carpathian passes over which the Austrians could attack in the winter, and with their whole offensive strength to attack the German right and the Austrian left in the neighborhood of Cracow. The advantages of this plan is that it would give the Russians access to the rich industrial and agricultural province of Silesia and turn the fortress of Posen. It is also pretty certain that if this attack were resolutely pressed the Germans would not continue their attacks further north, and the great weakness of Russian strategy-the projecting bastion of Poland-would be relieved. But there are grave objections to this as to every other plan. The Austrians have two exceedingly strong fortresses in Galicia, Przemysl and Cracow, and their heavy artillery is exceedingly good. With Cracow and Przemysl in their hands and the Carpathian passes held, the Russians might penetrate Silesia sure that their retreat was safe, or they might make an attempt to raise Bohemia, the population of which is Slav, if not exactly Russian in sympathies. Prague would be an excellent base for the invasion of Saxony in the spring." What Russia Has Accomplished for the Allies. RUSSIA, in the prosecution of her war, has suffered from the sanguine expectations of the misinformed, according to the Paris Matin. Her great 1 A SCRAP OF PAPER -Macauley in N. Y. Tribune achievement was the diversion of the German forces from the western theater of the war to the eastern. This made possible the check that kept the enemy out of Paris. This is only an acknowledgment due to the ally, says the Gaulois. It, too, thinks the Russians have performed prodigies. It quotes a well-informed British expert to the effect that the march upon Berlin ought not in reason to be expected before the end of this new year, if then. Russia has been hampered by her lack of railroads of the strategic kind. In spite of that handicap she has forced Germany to concentrate three million men upon her eastern frontier. This has made possible the campaign which leaves the allies in such splendid shape in the west. In truth, affirms one of the greatest military experts in Russia, Colonel V. Shumsky, who has gone to the front, and whom our Paris contemporary quotes with approval, the German plan regarding the war has failed. What Germany set out to accomplish is still to be done the crushing of France. Russia foiled that purpose by her swiftness on the eastern frontier. Germany had to divert five, army corps at least to meet this menace. Russia has still to undertake her war on Germany in its second phase-an invasion of Emperor William's dominions. The task is not easy. The defence will be obstinate. It was never characteristic of Russia to act in too great a hurry. Let the allies, says this authority, be patient. They will meet in Berlin, if not this year then next. Russia's triumph over John Barleycorn is the biggest victory won since the war started.-Toledo Blade. The big war is horrible. And yet the camera at the front catches most of the soldiers wearing a smile.-Toledo Blade. One never knows when he goes to bed at night what flag he will find flying over Dixmude in the morning.-Detroit Free Press. Russian prohibition is evidently intended to spur the Czar's armies across the state line.-Wall Street Journal. Mr. Brander Matthews scolds the professors for preferring the rules of grammar to life. On their recent showing in Europe, the professors would do infinitely less harm by sticking to their grammars.-N. Y. Evening Post. |