It is inevitable that there should be considerable fitictuation in the titanic struggle which is proceeding in France, and the fact that the Germans have again been able to make some headway should cause no dismay. The initial momentum with which the enemy commenced the invasion of the Low Countries and France has been very considerably reduced, and the probabilities are that in the near future there will even be a further reduction. The further the Germans get away from their supply bases, the longer, their lines of communication grow, the more vul-norable do they become, while the ability to deliver severe and disrupting blows to the enemy's rear calculated to hamper the bringing up of supplies, is something which must always be kept in mind. What the world is seeing is the putting into operation for the second time of the plan formulated by Count von Schlieffen in 1905 for the invasion of France. That is modified to the extent that whereas the von Schlieffen plan contemplated Germany having to fight on two fronts, Germany is now fighting on one. Roughly speaking von Schlieffen's plan was to seek a decision against France by a great enveloping movement across the Meuse, through Belgium and beyond the zone. of French frontier defences. From this it will be plain that the invasion of the Low Countries for the purpose of "protection" as claimed by the enemy, is in fact just the same assault on the neutrality of ihe Low Countries as was contemplated by the German strategist thirty-five years ago. Von Schlieffen's successor, the younger von Moltke, accepted the plan in principle, but as years passed after 1905, and the offensive spirit developed so strongly in the French army, it was modified to the extent of strengthening the German left wing in Alsace-Lorraine. To this von'Schlieffen was to the end of his life bitterly opposed, always insisting that risks should be run in that area in order that the right should be made as strong as possible. Nevertheless, the plan, as it developed in August, 1914, involved the throwing into Belgium and France of seven armies consisting of ten cavalry, seventy-two active and reserve divisions, six Ersatz divisions and fourteen Landwehr brigades.
Germany at the time was ahead of the rest of the world in the provision, and tactical employment of machine guns, and heavy artillery, and her plan of campaign was in fact a judicious combination of offensive, and defensive methods. The story of how that scheme was eventually brought to naught and the Germans defeated after more than four years of bitter warfare, is already well known. The Allies passed through weeks, and even months of anxiety as the various German offensives were worn down, and the initiative finally wrested from German hands. The position in this war is somewhat different from that in the early days of the last. The perfection of solid defences by both sides in the shape of the Maginot Line and the Western Wall has, to the greatest extent possible, removed those risks which von Schlieffen was prepared to run. There is also the absence of German preoccupation in the East which existed in 1914, and the sweeping movement contemplated by von Schlieffen is being undertaken with even greater forces than he provided for. Hence the severity of the enemy blows in the early days of the present battle. The employment of large forces, of mechanized troops, and the aeroplane, has imported new considerations into present day concepts of war, in almost the same manner as twenty-six years ago. Then what was expected to be a war of movement was eventually reduced to a positional struggle in which trenches and stabilized positions played their important part. Nowadays all that has been reversed, and at any rate for the time being the war has turned out to be one of movement, and that at a speed which has never before been contemplated. The struggle in the "Battle of the Bulge" has been described as an enormous melee, with speedy tanks behind each others lines, and rapid changes from the offensive to the defensive and vice versa as the temporary fortunes of the struggle dictate. Swift thrusts of tanks and armoured cars are being made and advances claimed which may never be consolidated. They in turn are being met with similar moves of the Allied mechanized forces and at the present all that can be said of the encounter is that it is becoming a dingdong struggle in which, at any rate for the moment, the enemy seems to have secured some advantage.
Thus Monday saw slight advance of the Germans northwestward from the bulge along the Guise, Landrecies, Maubeuge front where the enemy has been held and also in the direction of St. Quentin and Laou, where the enemy claims to have made some progress which, however, has not been confirmed by any Allied communique. It would not be wise because of that fact to assume that the German claims are untrue, for there is always the possibility that the difficult task which the Allies have of blocking the holes made in their defensive system, will take rather more time than has elapsed up to the present. There are reports to the effect that the Allied high command are contemplating a pincer-like movement involving offensives from the Guise, Landrecies, Maubeuge front on the north of the bulge, and from the Aisne between Rethel and Rancourt to the south. That may still take some days before it comes into operation, but with the Germans proceeding in a manner calculated to involve them in' a Jong, narrow salient, such a pressure on their flanks may have the effect of robbing them of the gains they have already made. The position then is that in this present battle only the first stage is approaching completion. The Allies have still to complete the task of holding the enemy's advance and preparing for the counter-offensive upon which alone depends the decision as to whether the Allies will have won or lost the first round.
Should they fail in their counter attack they will have lost the first great action of the war, but, as it has already been pointed out, this will not mean that the war itself has been lost, for from the Allied point of view it is only just beginning. Should they succeed in holding or even driving the Germans back from the positions they have gained, the damage done to them, and the effect such a success would have upon their moral, might very well justify the contention that so far as the enemy is concerned, it has staked its all on an enormous gamble, and that the loss of this battle will mean for them the ultimate loss of the war. Von Schlieffen wanted an early victory. Herr Hitler wants one so desperately that he has adopted the scheme which he has in the manner he has. It is for the Allies to deny him the initial success of which he is in such need, or at any rate to make it so expensive for him that the undertaking of other great offensives will be rendered all the more difficult.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.