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Show i , - - ! v; t r ; -V.-; GETTERAL GALLlTfl By ELMO SCOTT WATSON when at last the hideous nightmare of four years of slaughter was ended, the cry which has become be-come a solemn vow "It must not happen again !" And Armistice day is a day for repeating that vow. The pacifists will gain no comfort from "The Real War." For it shows all too clearly that, unless, un-less, they can change human nature, their recipe for avoiding war can never be made to work. Nor will the militarists find in its pages any arguments argu-ments to support their theories as to the best way to ward off the danger of war. On the contrary, con-trary, the history of the World war constitutes the most damning indictment that can be brought against the extremists on both sides. But somewhere some-where in between lies the answer in the common sense of the masses of the people of all nations, who have to fighl the wars which are brought to them by their blundering peace leaders and who suffer most in those wars through the mistakes of their blundering war leaders. It is from out that common sense wit.i its Increased recognition of "the folly and frailty rather than the deliberate deliber-ate evil of human nature" and its "deepened sense of fellowship and community interest, whether Inside the nation or between nations" that there conies the sorrowing cry and the solemn sol-emn vow of "It must not happen again!" Thw fundamental causes of the World war can be epitomized In three words, according to Captain Cap-tain Liddell Hart. They are fear, hunger and pride fear of one nation by another, whether there was any real justification for it or not ; hunger for more territory and more prestige In, the family of nations; r 1 pride which would not allow the leaders and diplomats of the various nations to recede from stands they had taken even though their stand could gain them no real advantage and was onl;. another threat at the peace of Europe. Although Allied propaganda during the war, and even after it, fixed the blame for the war upon the Central Powers, the evidence evi-dence which this Uritish historian brings forth shows that all the nations France, England. Russia, Rus-sia, Germany, Austria-Hungary. Italy and the Balkan Bal-kan stales had their share in the fear, the hunger hun-ger and the pride which brought on the war. The origins of the war went hack nore than 40 years and by 1914 "the surface of the Continent Conti-nent was slrewn with powder." The fatal spark was struck at Serajevo. the Bosnian capital, on June 28. 1914. However, even this spark might not have set off the explosion had it not been for the fact that in Germany. Ausiria and Russia, the military men. during the crisis immediately preceding pre-ceding the assassination, hail gained the upper hand over their governments and were determined upon war, all inspired by a common fear of being caught off guard. In fact the blunders of military technique is one of the main themes of this book. In it Moltke, the German chief of sin ft. is shown as a blundering blun-dering war leader. He painis Hinderiburg and Ludendorff as having grown great only in legend and adulation. Allied military idols are as ruthlessly ruth-lessly exposed. Foch is shown as a much-overrated general, especially during the early part of the war. Joffre fails to rise to the heights required re-quired of a great commander in chief because of lack of initiative. I.iilileli Hart condemns his "unquenchable optimism divorced from reason." and shows that, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, Joffre was not "the hero of the Marne," as his name has come down in History, nor a truly great military leader. In the four-year four-year struggle on the western front one stroke of Napoleonic genius Is noted and that was supplied by that most uuniiiitary of military men. Genera! Gallienl, safely shelved when the war began in the Job of military governor of Paris. It was this professorial ollicer, in eyeglasses and yellow palters, pal-ters, who saw the ipport'inity that Joffre did not see and Sir John French did not see, who succeeded suc-ceeded in opening .Toffrc's eyes, with the result that an army was sent around Paris to strike the Germans on their exposed flank, stopping their advance and then forcing their retreat. This was the first battle of the Marne. Nor does this Uritish expert spare the military leaders of his own nation. It was blunders by high British oflicialr "at home" which brought about the Dardanelles and Gallipoli fiasco when they refused to heed the recommendations of their subordinates subordi-nates who were on the ground and knew best what was needed to make the campaign a success. suc-cess. It was thesi same "arm chair warriors" who, though having had ample advance warning of the German plans for using gas. either pooh-poohed pooh-poohed the idea or disregarded it entirely and it was the same men who delayed the adoption of tanks, which turned out to be such a formula, ble weapon, and then were only half-hearted In adoption of the idea. Sir John French, the field commander who began the war, is painted as "endlessly vacillating" and Sir Douglas Haig suffers suf-fers for his helief in his divine right to command and for his needless sacrifice of men in the first three years of the war. In fact it is that last factor which lends a tone of bitterness to the cry of "It must not happen again!" The masses of people of the nations might read Captain Liddell Marl's book and have only a casual Interest in his analysis of successful and unsuccessful military technique, of why this strategic stra-tegic move won and that tactical error lost a pawn in the great game of war. Nor would they be Inclined to blame this general or that one for his failure. But when they read how ibis general or that one gambled with the lives of thousands of men when there was no real advantage to he gained and there is borne upon them the full horror of the needless slaughter of the young manhood of the nation then it is that "It must not happen again!" takes on an ominous tone. Such cases are all too common fn "The Real War." In it one reads how in September. 1914. Joffre, "the unquenchable un-quenchable optimist" planned a break-through by the French and British in two sectors. His plan failed. True, he did gain a slight amount of ground but the cost was a casualty list of 242,000! In 1918 the world hailed Foch as the general-lissimo general-lissimo of all the Allied forces who at last had brought victory. But Captain Liddell Hart's hook reminds us that in 1915 it was Koch who begged Sir John French to .support a French offensive to retake the Langemarck region at all costs. So the British general hurled his troops into the attack and when his subordinates, seeing the uselessness of their efforts, asked permission to withdraw, Sir John French, Influenced by Foch. overruled their wish and they were compelled to slay there to be in readiness to aid the French offensive. But that offensive never developed, for finally "Foch confessed that Joffre. so far from sending reinforcements, was calling for troops to be sent from Vpres to strengthen his forthcoming offensive offen-sive near Arras." Even afler that the British commander kept his troops In the salient where they were "one huge artillery target, there to be pounded and gassed incessantly, with their scanty ammunition running out. until relief came at last, in the fourth week of May. through the Germans exhausting their own comparative superfluity of shells." The author of "The Real War" speaks volumes In these words: "To thr-w good money after bad Is foolish. But to throw away men's lives where there is no reasonable chance of advantage is criminal. In the heat of battle, mistakes In the command are Inevitable, and amply excusable. But the real indictment of leadership arises when attacks at-tacks that are inherently vain are ordered merely because If they could succeed they would be useful. use-ful. For such 'manslaughter' whether it springs from ignorance, a false conception of war, or a want of moral courage, commanders should be held accountable to the nation." But lest one get the idea that this British historian his-torian Is protesting against the slaughter of his countrymen through the mistakes of the military leader of another nation, let It be recorded that he is no less strong in bis denunciation of British generals, too. ( by Western Newspaper Union.) ACH Armistice da.v kindles emotions TJT I and memories in the minds of citi-jp citi-jp . I zens of the nations which participated J in the great .'(inflict of 1914-18 such a,, t as no other day In the year has at -8y I present the power to do, says the SnSst British military historian. Cnpt. B. 'a E3 H' Lidde" Hart, in the. epilogue of 'UjfWl nis bo(lk- "T'-ie '5e!l1 War," published recently by Little, Brown and com- I pany. "For those who shared In the i in " experiences of those four and a quarter quar-ter years of struggle fhf commemoration does not stale with repetition," he continues. "But the mood In which it Is commemorated has undergone under-gone subtle changes. On the original Armistice Itself the dominant note was a sigh of relief, of infinite volume, most restrained among those who had the most direct cause for relief, most exuberant, exuber-ant, perhaps, among those who least appreciated the relief. "The earlier anniversaries were dominated by two opposite emotions. On the one hand grief a keener sense, now that the storm had passed, of the vacant places in our midst. On the other hand, triumph flamboyant only In rare cases, but nevertheless a heightened sense of victory, that the enemy had been laid low. That mood again has been modified. "Armistice day has become more a commemoration commemo-ration than a celebration. The passage of time has refined and blended the earlier emotions, so that, without losing sense of the personal loss and of quiet thankfulness that as a nation we proved our continued power to meet a crisis graver than any In past annals, we are today conscious, above all, of the general effects on the world and on civilization. In this mood of reflection we are more ready to recognize both the achievements and the poiut of view of our late enemies, and perhaps all the more because we realize that both the causes and the course of war are determined by the folly and the frailty rather than by the deliberate evil of human nature. "The war has become history, and can be viewed In the perspective of history. For good It has deepened our sense of fellowship and community com-munity of interest, whether inside the nation or between nations. But, for good or bad, it has shattered our faith in Idols, our hero-worshiping . belief that great men are different clay from common com-mon men. Leaders are still necessary, perhaps more necessary, but i r awakened realization of their common humanity is a safeguard against either expecting from them, or trusting in them, too much. It has been for the benefit of both history and of future generations that the past decade has seen such a flood of evidence and revelation, rev-elation, of documents and memoirs. That most of the actors are still alive provides an invaluable inval-uable check In sifting the evidence, while the his-N his-N torians themselves have been so immersed In the atmosphere of war that they have a certain immunity im-munity from the abstract theorizing which a historian his-torian in his cloistered study fifty years later so easily contracts. We know nearly all that is to be known. The one drawback Is that the flood has been so huge that only the student has been able to cope with its investigation." That excellent statement of the spirit of Armistice Armi-stice da.v, as it 'S observed now and as it will be observed in the years to come, is a fitting climax to an excellent one-volume history of the World war which gives the reader, as probably no other single book has yet done, a clear idea of that conflicthow con-flicthow it came to be, how it wns fought and how and why it resulted as It did. The reading of it might well be a singularly fitting part of Ihe observance of Armistice day. For after one has read what is written there, there Inevitably comes to the mind of the reader that cry, wrung first from the hearts of the war-weary nations |