THE CLIMAX OF GERMAN SUCCESS
No one's eyes had been more keenly trained on the Dardanelles
operations during the spring and summer than those of Ferdinand, King
and Tsar of Bulgaria. Descended from Orleanist Bourbons on the
mother's side and from the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on the father's,
he was purely Prussian in his realpolitik, and observed no principle
in his conduct save that of aggrandizement for his adopted country and
himself. The treaty of Bukarest in 1913 had given them both a common
and a legitimate grievance, and the great war was welcomed in Bulgaria
as an opportunity for revenge. The means would be the assistance
Bulgaria might render to the victor, and who that might be was a
matter of indifference if he possessed the essential qualifications of
victory and insensibility to the feelings of Bulgaria's neighbours and
to the sanctity of scraps of paper. This was a defect in the Entente
from Ferdinand's point of view. Bulgaria could with difficulty be
satisfied except by Serbian sacrifices which the Entente was loath to
make. The Central Empires had no scruples on that point; but Bulgaria
also wanted something from Rumania, Turkey, and Greece, and Turkey was
an ally, Rumania a neutral whom it was not wise to offend, and Greece
had as its queen a sister of the Kaiser who was distinctly her
husband's better half.
The Balkans
Serbia alone, however, had received by the Treaty of Bukarest enough
territory claimed by Bulgaria to provide a sufficient inducement for
Bulgaria's intervention in the war, once she was persuaded that a
victory of the Central Empires would place it at their disposal.
Efforts were made by the Entente during the summer to counteract this
attraction by inducing Serbia to reconsider her annexations in
Macedonia. But her successes in the autumn of 1914 had stiffened her
attitude, and in any case she could not be expected to make that
comprehensive surrender of Macedonia which the Central Empires were
quite prepared to promise Bulgaria. The decisive factor in the
diplomatic situation was, however, the progress of German arms and
prospects of German victory; for it was only the victor who would have
any favours to bestow, and the course of the war in the summer
convinced the Bulgarian Government that Germany was the horse on which
prudent people should put their money. On 17 July a secret treaty was
concluded guaranteeing Bulgaria in return for intervention the whole
of Macedonia possessed by Serbia as well as an extension of Bulgaria's
frontiers at Serbia's expense farther north. Bulgaria was also allowed
to extort a separate price from Turkey in the shape of a strip of land
along the Maritza controlling that river and Adrianople. An even more
sinister concession to Bulgarian exorbitance was that of Epirus, a
district assigned to Albania in 1913 but populated by Greeks who had
revolted and claimed incorporation in Greece. This Prussian
complaisance was doubtless due to the fact that Venizelos, who had
resigned owing to Constantine's opposition to his policy, had at the
Greek general election in June secured nearly a two to one majority in
the Greek Chamber. Greece could not be allowed the benefit of a
Prussian queen when it chose Venizelos as Prime Minister.
The bond had been signed between the Central Empires and their
Bulgarian taskmaster; but the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus was as
well understood in Bulgaria as in Prussia, and the treaty would have
remained a scrap of paper had Russia expelled the German invaders or
Britain broken the barrier at the Dardanlles. As it was, nothing
occurred in August or September to weaken Bulgaria's fidelity to the
secret compact. The failure of the attack at Suvla Bay was followed by
the futile routine of trench warfare; an equally barren result
threatened the long-prepared attacks in Artois and Champagne; and,
Russia having more than enough to do in reorganizing her shaken
armies, the Central Empires were free to turn their attention
southwards. Success in the Balkans was not this time to be staked on
Austrian control, and Mackensen, whose armies in Galicia were nearest
to the scene, was naturally selected to repeat in Serbia the triumphs
of his Galician drive. The task would be all the easier because Serbia
was a country small compared with Russia, and would, moreover, be
distracted by the coming Bulgarian stab in the back. Her Government,
conscious of this danger, had, indeed, wished to anticipate it by a
frontal attack on Bulgaria; but her offensive was vetoed by the
Entente. Possibly it was a case in which moral scruples unduly
weighted the scales against military advantage. There was no real
doubt about Bulgaria's intentions, and she would have had no grounds
for complaint had Serbia attacked before Mackensen was prepared for
his part in the joint assassination. The real doubt concerned the
attitude of Greece. She was bound by treaty to assist Serbia in that
case, and Venizelos would assuredly do his best to fulfil the bond.
But the obligation would not arise if Serbia were the aggressor, and
Venizelos would be powerless. The fault of the Entente, if it was a
fault, lay in the failure to act on the presumption that Constantine
would prove as false to international obligation as his imperial
brother-in-law when he invaded Belgium, and in the assumption that the
difference between Serbian aggression and defence would involve the
difference between Greece being an ally and a neutral.
The diplomatic crisis grew to a climax as Mackensen's forces reached
the northern bank of the Danube, for the arrest of the German
offensive in Russia was not entirely due to German difficulties or
Russian valour and strategy, and by the middle of August German
divisions were already being diverted from the Russian front. In the
middle of September Bulgaria concluded her compact with Turkey, and on
the 19th Mackensen's batteries opened their bombardment of Belgrade.
On the 21st Venizelos asked the Western Allies for 150,000 troops,
which were promised on the 24th, and on the 23rd Bulgaria ordered a
general mobilization and Greece retorted in kind. Bulgaria proclaimed
her intention to observe neutrality, and when on the 27th Serbia
requested the consent of the Allies to an offensive, it was refused.
Entente diplomatists at Sofia were still under the impression that
Bulgarian intervention could be avoided, and a vigorous protest by the
leaders of all the Opposition parties in the Sobranje against the
Government's policy gave some colour to their views. But by 10 October
it became known that many German officers were busy in consultation
with the Bulgarian Staff; on the 3rd Russia required Bulgaria to break
with the Teutonic Powers, and on the 5th herself broke off diplomatic
relations. A week later the Bulgarian Army invaded Serbia and the
Bulgarian Government declared war. Mackensen had crossed the Danube on
the 7th and taken Belgrade on the 9th. On the 19th an imperial
manifesto was issued from Petrograd denouncing Bulgaria's treason to
the Slav cause and leaving the fate of the traitor to the "just
punishment of God." It was assuredly not to be inflicted by the
Government whose designs on Constantinople had been the principal
obstacle to the success of Entente diplomacy in the Balkans. Bulgaria
did, indeed, betray the Slav to the Teuton, but no Balkan State could
view with equanimity the prospect of being ground to powder between
the upper and nether millstone of Russia on the Danube and on the
Dardanelles.
Nor was Bulgaria the only traitor responsible for the Serbian tragedy.
On 5 October Venizelos announced to the Greek Chamber in no uncertain
terms the intention of his ministry to draw the sword on Serbia's side
if Bulgaria attacked. The following day he was summoned to the palace
and told that Constantine disapproved; he resigned in the afternoon,
and the Chamber compromised its future and its country's by supporting
an alternative ministry under Zaimis, which proclaimed its neutrality
and refused on 11 October the assistance for which Serbia asked under
the terms of their alliance. Russia was willing but unable to help,
and large threats and insignificant demonstrations against the
Bulgarian coast were all she could contribute to the protection of the
little State in whose interests she had entered the war. The burden
fell on the Western Powers who had never contemplated it, and they
were divided in mind. British ships wrought effective destruction upon
the Bulgarian depots and communications along the Aegean coast; but
bombardment there was of little use to Serbia, and the British General
Staff pronounced against an expedition to Salonika. Sir Edward Carson
resigned as a protest against this inaction, while Delcassé resigned
in France because Briand was more adventurous. Briand carried his
point, succeeded Viviani as Premier, and committed both Powers to the
Salonika policy. Italy stood aloof; her antagonism to Serbia and
Greece made her ever averse from an offensive against Bulgaria.
The Salonika expedition, which consisted at first of troops
transferred from Gallipoli, came too late and was too weak to effect
more than a part of its purpose. It would have been more effective had
the Allies consented to the Serbian proposal for an attack on
Bulgaria; for in that case the Serbian armies would have been aligned
along the Bulgarian frontier with their right within reach from
Salonika. As it was, they faced north towards Mackensen, and the
Bulgarian offensive towards Uskub took the Serbians in the rear, cut
their communications with Salonika down the Vardar, and eventually
forced a retreat into the Albanian mountains. Serbia would in any case
have been overrun, and Mackensen's conquest of its northern half would
have been more rapid than it was. But the Serbian armies might have
remained intact and given a good account of themselves against both
their enemies in the mountain fastnesses of the south with their
retreat secured to Salonika, instead of being split into two and most
of them driven, to escape as best they could with frightful mortality
along impossible tracks towards the Adriatic.
War and disease had reduced the Serbian armies before the campaign
began to some 200,000 men, and their enemies brought at least double
that number against them. The Serbians were, moreover, constrained by
the counsels of the Allies to preserve what they could of their forces
as a nucleus for future resistance, and thus to stand only so long as
retreat remained open. Threatened on three sides by superior numbers,
they were in an untenable position and had a well-nigh impossible
task; and only skill, endurance, and courage brought the remnants out
of the death-trap laid by collusion between the Central Empires and
Bulgaria. The campaign was for the Serbians simply a series of
rearguard actions encouraged at first by the delusive hope that the
Allies might yet be in time. They might have been, had they been
numerous enough. The French from Cape Helles came first, landed at
Salonika on 5-7 October, and by the 27th had occupied the valley of
the Vardar as far north as Krivolak. They also seized the commanding
heights of Kara Hodjali north-east of the river, and repulsed the
Bulgarian attempts to drive them off in the first week of November;
while to the west they stretched out a hand towards the Serbians
defending the Babuna Pass. With adequate forces they could have pushed
beyond Veles to Uskub, broken the wedge which the Bulgarians had
driven in between them and the Serbians, restored the line of the
Vardar, and secured the Serbian retreat.
It was this Bulgarian stab in the back which made havoc of the Serbian
defence. Mackensen made slow progress at first, partly because he had
no wish to drive the Serbians south until the Bulgars had cut off
their retreat down the Vardar. Belgrade did not fall until three weeks
after the bombardment had opened; but with the intervention of the
Bulgarian armies all along the bare Serbian flank, events moved with
tragic rapidity. On 17 October the Salonika line was pierced at
Vrania, Veles fell on the 20th, and Uskub on the 21st. By the 26th
Mackensen and the Bulgarians had effected a junction in the north and
cleared the Danube route into the Balkans. Nish fell on 5 November
after three days' fierce fighting, and the Constantinople railway thus
passed into enemy hands. In the north-west the Austrians were pressing
on from Ushitza down by the Montenegrin frontier towards Mitrovitza,
threatening to crush the Serbians on the Kossovo plateau between them
and the Bulgars. To save the main Serbian force and keep open a
retreat through Albania, a stand had to be made at Katchanik against
the Bulgars advancing north from Uskub. It was successful to that
extent, and when at one moment the Serbs temporarily broke the
Bulgarian front, a junction seemed possible with the French advance
from Veles. But both Allies were too weak for the solid Bulgarian
wedge. The Serbs had to fall back from Kossovo and the French to their
entrenched camp at Kavadar. A still narrower chance intervened between
the French and the Serbs who were fighting at the Babuna Pass to bar
the way to Prilep and Monastir, and at one time the French flung out
their left to within ten miles of the Serbian position. But their own
communications were threatened all down the narrow line of the Vardar,
and they were hopelessly outnumbered by the Bulgarian forces. Retreat
was the common misfortune and necessity. Prilep fell on 16 November;
and farther north, as the Serbians retreated into Montenegro and
Albania, the Austrians occupied Novi Bazar on 20 November, and
Mitrovitza and Prishtina on the 23rd. On the 28th the Germans
announced that "with the flight of the scanty remnants of the Serbian
army into the Albanian mountains our main operations are closed."
There was something still for the Bulgars to do. Pursuing the Serbians
in retreat from the Babuna Pass they reached the Greek frontier and
cut the railway between Salonika and Monastir at Kenali on 29
November, and on 5 December occupied Monastir itself. The Greek
frontier was a feeble protection, and the French at Kavadar were
threatened with encirclement on their left. Kavadar had to be
evacuated and a retreat secured by hard fighting at Demir Kapu.
Simultaneously the British holding the front towards Lake Doiran were
severely attacked, and on 6-7 December had 1300 casualties and lost 8
guns. But the enemy failed to cut off the retreat, and by the 12th
both the French and British forces were on Greek territory fortifying
a magnificent position which stretched from the mouth of the Vardar
round to the Gulf of Orphano and enclosed the Chalchidice peninsula.
Strong measures had to be taken to ensure the safety of Salonika with
its cosmopolitan population, and the enemy hoped for its fall in
January. But there was great reluctance to attack lines which were
daily growing more formidable and were held by troops that were being
gradually reinforced. Bulgarian ambition was also restrained by German
counsels, for even Constantine and his new and pusillanimous premier,
Skouloudis, might resent the occupation of Salonika by their
hereditary rivals, and the Kaiser trusted more to family and
diplomatic influence at Athens than to Bulgarian valour. The Germans
themselves were more intent on consolidating the Berlin-Constantinople
corridor and their hold upon the Turks than on Salonika, which fell
within the Austrian sphere of influence, and might thus, if taken,
become an apple of discord between its captors.
Austria had to content herself with dominion along the eastern shores
of the Adriatic. The conquest of Serbia had left Montenegro an
unprotected oasis surrounded by enemy territory; and Italy, which
alone might have defended the Black Mountain, was unable or
disinclined to make the effort. Lovtchen fell on 10 January, and the
Austrians occupied Cettinje three days later. The Germans announced
the unconditional surrender of the country, and some sort of
capitulation was made by some sort of Montenegrins. But King Nicholas
escaped to Italy and thence to France, while the greater part of his
army made their way south to Scutari to join the Serbians who had
retreated to the Adriatic coast. An Italian force marched up from
Avlona to Durazzo to protect them, and Essad Pasha, a pro-Entente
Albanian who had established a principality of his own on the fall of
the Prince of Wied, rendered useful assistance. Eventually about
130,000 Serbian troops were transported to safety across the Adriatic,
while the Serbian Government was provided with a home at Corfu in
spite of the protests of the Greek administration. Save for neutral
Greece and Rumania, the Italian foothold at Avlona and ours at
Gallipoli, the whole of the Balkans had passed into the enemy's hands;
for Essad's rule was as brief as it was circumscribed, and the
Italians withdrew from Durazzo as the Austrians advanced to the
southern frontier of Albania, and menaced Greek territory far beyond
the reach of protection from Salonika.
While Greece and Rumania seemed to depend for their existence upon the
forbearance of the Central Empires, our foothold in Gallipoli was even
more precarious, and the first use the Germans made of their corridor
to Constantinople was to furnish the Turks with howitzers designed to
blow our forces off the peninsula. In October Sir Charles Monro had
been sent out to take over the command from Sir Ian Hamilton and
report on the situation. His report, which, owing to the singular
relations then existing between someone in the Government and the
press, was known to selected journalists within a few hours of its
reception in London, was in favour of evacuation. The Cabinet was not
prepared to accept that decision without further advice, and
dispatched Lord Kitchener to make a survey of the political and
military situation in the Ægean on the spot. He confirmed Monro's
opinion; and in spite of the damage to our reputation and the losses
which it was thought such an operation would inevitably involve,
orders were given for a complete withdrawal from the Gallipoli
Peninsula.
Some of the forces had already been transferred to Salonika, and the
evacuation was to be completed in two stages, the first at Suvla Bay
and Anzac and the last at Cape Helles. Success depended upon weather
suitable for embarkation and skill in organizing transport and
concealing our intentions from the enemy. No one dared to hope for so
complete a co-operation of these factors as that which characterized
the enterprise on 18-19 December. The weather was ideal in spite of
the season, an attack from Cape Helles diverted the attention of the
Turks, and the whole force at Suvla Bay and Anzac was embarked during
two successive nights with only a single casualty. Marvellous as this
success appeared, its repetition at Cape Helles on 7-8 January was
even more extraordinary, although a Turkish attack on the 7th
threatened to develop into that rearguard action which had been
considered almost inevitable. But it was a mere incident in trench
warfare, and they were as blind to our real intentions at Cape Helles
as they had been three weeks before at Suvla Bay and Anzac--unless,
indeed, with true Oriental passivity, they were content to see us
leave their land in peace and had no mind to seek a triumph of
destruction which would inure to the benefit of their uncongenial
allies.
The brilliant success of the withdrawal from the Dardanelles provided
some solace for the failure of the campaign, but did nothing to
relieve from responsibility those who had designed its inception and
directed its earlier course; and a Commission, which was appointed in
the following summer, produced on 8th March 1917 an interim report
which threw a vivid but partial and biased light not only on the
Dardanelles campaign, but on the governmental organization which was
responsible for the failures as well as the successes of the British
Empire during the greater part of the war. Both were largely the
outcome of that autocracy in war with which popular sentiment and the
popular press had invested Lord Kitchener. It swallowed up everything
else: the Cabinet left the war to the War Council and the War Council
to a triumvirate consisting of Mr. Asquith, Lord Kitchener, and Mr.
Churchill; but of these the greatest was Lord Kitchener.
"All-powerful, imperturbable, and reserved," said Mr. Churchill, "he
dominated absolutely our counsels at this time.... He was the sole
mouthpiece of War Office opinion in the War Council.... When he gave a
decision it was invariably accepted as final." He occupied, in the
words of the Report, "a position such as has probably never been held
by any previous Secretary of State for War," though it cannot compare
with the elder Pitt's in 1757-61. Oriental experience had not improved
his qualifications for the post; secretiveness, testified the
Secretary of the War Council, made him reluctant to communicate
military information even to his colleagues on the Council; the
General Staff sank into insignificance, and the regulations
prescribing the duties of its Chief were treated as non-existent. Mr.
Churchill was debarred from a similar dictatorship at the Admiralty
mainly because he was not a seaman and had Lord Fisher as his
professional mentor; while Mr. Asquith busied himself with keeping the
peace between his two obtrusive colleagues, neither of whom expressed
the considered views of the Services they represented.
Thus the Dardanelles campaign was less an active expression of policy
or strategy than the passive result of conflicting influences and
opinions. As early as November 1914 Mr. Churchill had suggested an
attack there or elsewhere on the Turkish coast as a means of
protecting Egypt, but the idea was not seriously considered until on 2
January 1915 an urgent request was received from Russia for some
diversion to relieve the Turkish pressure in the Caucasus. There was a
corresponding need to deter Bulgaria from casting in her lot with the
Central Empires, and on 13 January the War Council resolved upon the
"preparation" of a naval attack on the Dardanelles. Its members were
in some doubt as to what was meant by their resolution. Lord Fisher
was averse from the scheme because he preferred another sphere of
action, possibly the Baltic or Zeebrugge, with which Jellicoe's mind
was also occupied; and he hoped that preparation did not involve
execution. Lord Kitchener warmly supported the idea of a naval attack,
but most of his colleagues assumed that the operation would
automatically become amphibious and involve the army as well; at any
rate this impression was clearly stamped on their' minds after the
purely naval attack had failed. Lord Kitchener, however, was strongly
opposed to military cooperation; a great advantage of a purely naval
attack was, he thought, that it could be abandoned at any moment, and
he maintained that he had no troops to spare. Meanwhile Russia
enthusiastically welcomed the notion, France concurred, and Mr.
Churchill had secured an uncertain amount of naval backing for an
expedition, the nature of which was not defined. But Lord Fisher grew
more pronounced in his opposition, and when on 28 January the War
Council proceeded from preparation to execution, he accepted the
decision with a reluctance that nearly drove him to resign.
No sooner, however, had the War Council decided on a purely naval
expedition than it found itself involved in an amphibious enterprise.
"We drifted," said the Director of Military Operations, "into the big
military attack"; and on 16 February it was resolved to send out the
29th Division and to reinforce it with troops from Egypt. The naval
bombardment did not begin till three days later, and therefore it was
no naval failure that produced this resolution; it was rather an
unconscious reversion to the Council's original idea which had been
dropped out of deference to Lord Kitchener. The same influence delayed
the execution of the plan of 16 February: the 29th Division was to
have started on the 22nd, but on the 20th it was countermanded by Lord
Kitchener. Animated discussions ensued at the War Council on the 24th
and 26th, but Lord Kitchener could not overcome his anxieties on the
score of home defence and the Western front, and the Council yielded
to his pressure. It was not till 10 March that the ill-success of the
naval attack, advices from officers on the spot, and reassurances
about the situation nearer home overcame the reluctance to dispatch
the 29th division and other forces under Sir Ian Hamilton. Lord
Kitchener now desired haste, and complained that 14 April, the date
suggested by Hamilton, would be too late for the military attack. It
was not found practicable until the 25th, and according to Enver Pasha
the delay enabled the Turks thoroughly to fortify the Peninsula and to
equip it with over 200 Austrian Skoda guns. Enver's further statement
that the navy could have got through unaided, although it agreed with
Mr. Churchill's opinion, is more doubtful. Out of the sixteen vessels
employed to force the Dardanelles by 23 March, seven had been sunk or
otherwise put out of action.
The same hesitation that characterized the inception of the military
attack marked its prosecution, and forces which might have been
adequate at an earlier stage were insufficient to break down the
defences which delay enabled the Turks to organize. Nevertheless the
enterprise might have succeeded but for errors of judgment in its
execution, notably at Suvla Bay; and success would have buried in
oblivion the mistakes of the campaign and its initiation just as it
has done similar miscalculations in scores of precedents in history.
There were, moreover, vital causes of failure which could not be
canvassed at the time or even alleged in mitigation by the Commission
of Inquiry; and the publication of its report on 8 March 1917, without
the evidence on which it was based or reference to these other causes,
was a masterpiece of political strategy designed to concentrate the
odium of failure on those who were only responsible in part and to
preclude their return to political power. Of these hidden causes there
were two in particular: one the possibly justifiable refusal of Greece
to lend her army to the scheme when a comparatively small military
force might have been sufficient, and the other the far more culpable
failure of Russia to co-operate with the 100,000 troops which were to
have been landed at Midia and would have either found the northern
approaches to Constantinople almost undefended or have diverted enough
Turkish forces from the Dardanelles to give the southern attack a
reasonable prospect of success. As it was, the British Empire had to
content itself with the idea that 120,000 military casualties, apart
from the French and the naval losses--which might have bought the
downfall of Turkey, shortened the war by a year at least, and saved a
greater number of lives--had the minor effect of immobilizing 300,000
Turks and facilitating the defence of Egypt and the conquest of
Mesopotamia and Syria.
The failure of the larger hope was a blow to the "Easterners" who
discerned in the Dardanelles the strategic key to victory in the war
and expected to turn the argument against divergent operations by
pointing to a converging advance from the Balkans upon the Central
Empires. But the "Westerners," who maintained that the war could be
won and could only be won in France and Belgium, were not much happier
at the end of 1915. The British and French commands alike had
subordinated the Dardanelles and Salonika expeditions to the needs of
an autumn offensive on the West; and the argument between the two
schools of thought is narrowed down, so far as the autumn of 1915 is
concerned, to the question whether the troops we lost in September and
October at Loos and in Champagne might not have been more effectively
employed at the Dardanelles or Salonika. That they were not needed for
defence in the West is obvious, since the line was held in spite of
their loss. They were, in fact, mortgaged to an offensive which
produced less strategical effect than the casualties in the East; for
without the Salonika expedition, at least, Greece would have fallen
completely under German dominion, and our control of the Ægean and our
communications with Egypt would have been seriously imperilled. The
controversy was an idle one so far as it was conducted on abstract
principles, because war is an art in which success depends upon
changing conditions which dictate one sort of strategy at one time and
another at another. There were times when neglect of the West would
have been fatal; there were others at which neglect of the East was
almost as disastrous, and the autumn of 1915 belonged to the latter
rather than to the former category. Neglect of the East would, indeed,
have been not merely excusable but an imperative duty, had the
situation in the West been what it was in the autumn of 1914 or spring
of 1918. But there was no such necessity in September 1915: troops
were not then withheld from the East to defend our lines in the West
against a German offensive, but to take the offensive ourselves; and
illusory hopes of success were based upon the known inferiority of
German numbers in France due to their concentration in Russia.
The Entente advantage in bayonets on the Western front was between
three and four to two, and it also had the ampler reserves. Sir John
French commanded nearly a million men and General Joffre more than
double that number, while our advantage in guns and munitions was not
less marked; an almost unlimited supply of shells had been accumulated
during the summer, and the new Creusot howitzers outdid the monsters
from Essen and Skoda. Thirty fresh miles of French front had been
taken over by the British, but it was not continuous. Plumer's Second
and Haig's First armies still held the line from Ypres to south of La
Bassée, but D'Urbal's Tenth French army intervened between Haig and
the new Third British army which stretched from Arras to the Somme. It
was not, however, along the British front but in Champagne that the
main attack was planned. The objective was Vouziers, and the design
was to break the German communications from east to west along the
Aisne and thus compel an extensive retreat from the angle of the
German front on the Oise and the Somme. If the subsidiary attack on
the British front also succeeded, the Germans would suffer disaster
and be compelled to evacuate much of the ground they held in France
(see Map, p. 67).
A desultory bombardment of the whole front had begun early in the
month, and on the 23rd a more intense fire, designed to obliterate the
first line of German defences, opened from La Bassée to Arras and in
Champagne. On the 25th the infantry attacked in high hopes and high
spirits: for months, declared Joffre in his order of the day, we had
been increasing our strength and our resources while the enemy had
been consuming his, and the hour had come for victory. The striking
force was Langle de Cary's Fourth Army, and the front of attack ran
for fifteen miles from Auberive to Massiges. The bombardment had been
effective and the élan of French, and particularly Marchand's colonial
troops, carried most of the German first and parts of their second
line of defence, and thousands of prisoners and scores of guns fell
into their hands. But victory was not in this Western warfare of the
twentieth century won in a day, and the morrow of a successful attack,
which used to be fatal to the defeated, was now more trying to the
victors. Instead of their well-protected lines they had to lie in the
open or in the blasted trenches of the enemy, and from thence to
attack a second and a third line of defences not less strong than the
first, but less battered by bombardment. The second French effort,
made on the 29th, was less successful than the first; some more
prisoners and guns were taken, and a breach was made in the second
line, but it was too narrow for the cavalry to penetrate. A third
French attack on 6 October secured the village and Butte de Tahure
which commanded the Bazancourt-Challerange railway, the first of the
lateral lines of communication which it had been the object of the
campaign to break; and later in the month the French made some local
progress in other parts of the front. But on 30 October German
counter-attacks, which had failed elsewhere, succeeded in recapturing
the Butte de Tahure and recovering the use of the railway; and while
the French had advanced on a front of fifteen miles to a depth of two
and a half in places, the net result of the great attack was to leave
them without appreciable advantage save in the disputable respect of
greater German losses and the withdrawal of some divisions from the
Russian front.
The subsidiary attacks between Ypres to Arras produced the same
general kind of result. They extended almost continuously all along
the line, but except to the north and south of Lens do not appear to
have been designed to do more than prevent the opposing troops from
being sent to reinforce the defence against the main offensive. For
this purpose they were perhaps needlessly aggressive, for each
resulted in the capture of ground which could not be held, and the
forces engaged in these local enterprises were badly needed to clinch
the nearly successful major operation. Later on in the war it was
found that enemy troops could be contained along the line without such
numerous and expensive precautionary attacks, and possibly these were
really intended not so much to contain the enemy as to test his line
with the idea of finding some weak spot which might be pierced. None
of them succeeded to that extent, though Bellewarde was temporarily
taken in front of Ypres, Le Bridoux redoubt in front of Bois Grenier,
the slopes of the Aubers ridge, and some trenches near La Bassée. The
last operation, if more force had been put into it, might have secured
La Bassée and done more to convert the battle of Loos into a
substantial victory than could ever have been achieved by a series of
local successes farther north.
That battle was the principal British effort, and it only fell short
of a real victory because the reserves were not on the spot to follow
up the initial success which might almost seem to have surprised the
higher command. The front extended from the La Bassée Canal to the
outskirts of Lens, and as in Champagne the attack on 25 September was
preceded by an intense bombardment which destroyed the first German
trenches and wire-entanglements. Nearly everywhere the advance was at
first successful. The Hohenzollern redoubt was captured, the Lens-La
Bassée road was crossed, and even Haisnes and Hulluch reached. But the
greatest success was farthest south, where the village of Loos was
rushed by the 15th Division and then Hill 70. Even there the
Highlanders would not stop, but went on impetuously as far as the Cité
St. Auguste, well outflanking Lens and past the hindmost of the German
lines. This was all by 9.30 a.m., within four hours of the first
attack. But there were no reserves at hand to consolidate the victory
and hold up the German counter-attacks. There were plenty miles away
in the rear, retained by Sir John French because along the extended
line of attack from Ypres to Lens it was not known where they would
most be needed; and even when the need was clear, interrupted
telephones and defective staff-work caused confusion and delay.
Eventually the 11th Corps fresh from England and to fighting was
marched eight miles and put into the battle line without sufficient
food or water. Gradually our troops were pushed back from Hill 70,
across the Lens-La Bassée road, and out of the Hohenzollern redoubt.
The line was restored to some extent by the Guards on the 27th, and
Loos remained firmly in our hands; but a great opportunity had been
lost, and the great stroke of the 15th Division had not been turned
into a great advance. Lens had been almost in our grasp, and with it a
lever to loosen the German hold on Lille (see Map, p. 79).
The fault was partly due to the fact that D'Urbal's simultaneous
offensive south of Lens had fallen short of the Vimy Ridge and left
our right flank almost in the air in front of Grenay where the two
lines joined. D'Urbal's army was, like our own, greatly superior in
numbers to the Germans opposite, seventeen to nine Divisions, and the
French artillery preparation for the attack on 25 September was
equally elaborate. Unhappily the French offensive did not begin till
one o'clock, three hours after the Highlanders had swarmed over Hill
70 and into Cité St. Auguste; and when it did begin, its left, where
it joined the British right, was held up in front of Souchez till the
following day, and the Germans used the interval to recover from the
staggering blow they had received at Loos. On the 26th the French were
more successful. Souchez, most of the Givenchy Wood, La Folie farm,
and Thelus were captured, and on the 28th they made some progress up
the Vimy slopes. The impression of success exceeded the reality, and a
historian writing some months afterwards declared that by the 29th
"the Vimy Heights had been won": it required a considerable Canadian
victory a year and a half later to give much substance to this claim,
and most of the ground secured in September 1915, including the
Givenchy Wood, La Folie, and Thelus, was found to be in German hands
when the line from Lens to Arras was taken over by British troops.
Attacks and counter-attacks, particularly round the Hohenzollern
redoubt, during October led to little but slaughter, and the line in
the West relapsed into winter stability and stagnation where they had
been a year before with changes which only a large-scale map revealed.
There had been at least 120,000 French casualties and more than 50,000
British; each side claimed that the enemy's losses far exceeded its
own, and there was probably little to choose. A fortnight's battle in
the West cost the Allies as much as nine months in the Dardanelles,
though in the former it was the French and in the latter the British
who bore the brunt. The optimism of the civilians with regard to the
Dardanelles was capped by the optimism of the soldiers on the Western
front; and neither was in a position to throw stones at the strategy
of the other. Mr. Churchill disappeared from the Admiralty in May and
from the Cabinet in October, and Sir John French lost his command of
the British forces in December. His ostensible cheerfulness had been
useful in the early days of shock and stress; but the part had been
somewhat overdone in public and underdone in private, and it was
becoming clearer, though not yet sufficiently clear, that brilliant
cavalry generalship was not the quality most required to control the
gigantic machinery of a modern army. Nevertheless, the criticisms that
were levelled against the ineptitude and mental inelasticity of the
generals and the staff of the old army overshot the mark. No one
ventured to bring such a charge against the staff-work of the French,
and yet the French had been no more successful in Champagne than we
had been in Artois. The truth was that no generalship could have given
the Entente victory over the Germans in 1915. The war was constantly
and correctly described as a soldiers' war or a war of nations, but
the meaning of the description was not fully realized. The Entente had
to deal with a mighty people, splendidly organized and equipped for
war, and against that colossal force mere generalship was like a sort
of legerdemain pitted against an avalanche. The only power that could
cope with the Germans was that of people similarly determined and
equally trained and organized, and the only way in which they could be
defeated was by exhaustion. Individual skill in modern politics and
war tells mainly in matters of personal rivalry; it is our
aristocratic quality which breaks its head in vain against the stolid
mass of democratic forces. The single people in the long run beats the
single man, and the community of nations overcomes the rebel State.
So far the rebel had succeeded because he took the world by storm and
by surprise. The Germans in 1915 had played a skilful game and won.
They had calculated that their line in the West could be held by
inferior forces against any attacks the Entente could launch against
it, while they broke the strength of Russia and overran the Balkans;
and their calculations proved correct. It is conceivable that they
might have done better to concentrate in 1915 as in 1914 against the
Western Powers, but it is more probable that here, too, they were wise
in their military conceit. The offensive that had failed in 1914 when
British forces were a hundred thousand without munitions to
correspond, would hardly have succeeded when they had grown to a
million; and neglect of the East might well have meant invasion by
Russia, the collapse of Austria, Czecho-Slovak and Jugo-Slav revolts,
the defeat of Turkey, and the intervention of Rumania and Bulgaria on
the Entente side. More could hardly have been achieved by Germany with
the resources at her disposal; but she had not won the war. She had
won a respite from defeat, as she was to do again in 1916 and in 1917,
and her successes enabled her to postpone the reckoning from 1916 to
1918. But it was a fatal reprieve which she only used to weave her
winding-sheet; and her efforts to snatch a German peace out of the
transient balance of power, which her victories had set up, involved
her in that fight to a finish with civilization which made her an
outcast in disgrace as well as in defeat.