Mar, 18.
Lord Kitchener's statement in the House of Lords as reported in to-day's telegrams is exceptionally interesting. The rare occasions on which the Secretary for War makes any public utterance are eagerly looked for because it is so clear that he may always be trusted to understate a success and overstate a difficulty according to those general principles of caution which have gained him the confidence, deservedly unbounded, of his fellow-countrymen. Thus when Lord Kitchener says that the question of adequate supply of war material for the next few months has cani him serious anxiety, it is permissible to hope that the worst of that anxiety is over, otherwise the statement would have been differently put, or more probably there would have been no statement at all. And the proposed arrangement with armament firms goes to support this conclusion. Similarly when Lord Kitchener eulogizes the successes gained at Neuve Chapelle and in the Champagne, we may be sure that those successes were of no mean order. And certainly Sir John French's estimate of the German losses at Neuve Chapelle, as not far short of 17,000 in three days, and the French survey of the fighting in the Champagne shy nothing to contradict this assumption.—In contrast, the German official attempt to poohpooh the fighting in these regions will deceive nobody but the German home public for whom, of course, these official falsehoods are mainly intended. The outside world will merely deduce that the blow inflicted on German arms was more severe than it had supposed, inasmuch as it has long been evident that the intensity of a German clementi is proportionate to the size of the misfortune that has to -be covered up.
At the same time it is of the first importance not to allow ourselves to overestimate these local successes. Had they been won by Germany, every military expert would have been at pains to prove that they made no difference to the whole plan of cam-pain. Something of the same attitude of mind should be observed in estimating how far they improve the Allies' position. Only time can show whether they are strategically to be reckoned
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.