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1 d .tl d I September close d with. days of gimmerng Etiti heat, and nights .calm and cloudless with the hn.est moon gulüen in iI. serene blue sky. The Indian summer has a vital j bearing *'cn the fortunes of the war; f little too late to fxert its Ml beneficent innL.euco' up-n the Cl'i)PS, it is yet 111 time to pro!ong the time available for a con- binuatio:) of the steady Briti'h pressure, aud Uie occasionaf powerful blows, in the salient east of Ynies, cow bulging outward deep Mto thenény's Hues, v.b ich menaces his I tetcnticn 0: the I.;elglan coaAt on the cne hand. and of Lilii,, and the grciat textile regi(.u of which it is the centre, on the ctber. Lat winter the bitter cold. if :t &dded nmch to the suSeriags of the men, I Stress upon the region in the rear of the Somme battle ";i-tes, which wore away pomt after point o: the enemy's fortmed area. ¡ untU the gr",L IIindenhurg retreat of the 6Ming \Va3 conceived—an innovation ot GenÙdn strategy whtch was mcthered by necessity. A hard winter froze the s'II'a.mpy earth 6(. that the enect of irtiHery nre on the enemy's defences waa inte<n'ined. The I asheHs no longer sAuk deep m the semi- liquid where the force of their explo- sion was" smothered. Thù Infantry no t lougor waded to the assault knee-deep in a ctinging piste. The defenders found it poa- "iblé with diinculty to excavate new defences hi the iron-hard earth. This year the season may be milder and that wul count Bgaingt U1> for fog. rain and mud arc the j allies of the enemy. They are all factors which count mostly for the defence. On the whole, the prospects are of a continua.- lion of operations similar to those winch ensued upon the Somme battles until tne Hindonburg retreat of the spring; of 1917, and we may be very well content if a timilar strategy is enforced upon h'm by the Ypres operations of this autumn. It is no Xoyon salient which is in ques- tion here. a corner of territory of M very great intrinsic value, noteworthy chieHy irom the circumstance that it wan the nearest pomt to Paris which remained in enemy hands. The Betgian coast on the one side, and Lille and its environs, its de- pendent rich industrial towns, and further south the coalnelds south of La BAsseo and around Lens, are the prizes at iSmJ.e. Hin- deobnrg ean hardly retire here without the abandonment of som" point whose loes wilt be too patent for it to be represented to the German people as a. new cunning device of the brain of their wooden idcd. For that reason, the enemy is the more likely to hold on tight to every inch of territory in Flanders. The opinion expressed in otner quarter., that the present bi.ttle line n) the West may continue stibst,-trtlal"v unmodi- fiM until the spring of 1918 seems a solid; if disappointms prediction. What has not happened in the dry time is unlikely to happen in the green. In respect to the crops, we do not think thM the weather of 1917 will be decisive in it& indirect innuence upon the war. V\ e need not for some considerable time to come trouble ourselves about the German Mod supply. The harvest of 1917, such as it i8, is gathered tn. and it will certainly be eked out until well into 1918. We would be much better occupied with a new iood economy cMip&igo ourselves; for the effect of the last one haa palpably worn off, the reduction in the price of the quartern loaf threatens to prcw.aB was predicted, a dangerous as well as costly piece of atate policy, a-nd the world supplies, apa,rt from any question of trans- port. are visibly inadequate to the world's needs. The pinch will recur in Germany m ) the late spring, and it will be intensuied ) ext year by .the cutting ofE of the importa from the adjacent ne¥tral." nt,r1e8-.lmpoJ.ts email In themselves, if viewed in rel&tion to the annual consumption of the German peo- ple, but trebly precious aJid eSective on ac- count of the long prevalent scarcity. It wtU be a. tighter squeeze than ever for Germany, even for a people whose endurance of pri.va.tion, such as we can but faintly im- agine, baa been marvellous, a.nd would in other, in far other circumst&nces, have caJied forth from us a just tribute of admi.ra.tion which we must denV to a barbarous people, unre- pentMtt and ruthless. But it would be folly to count upon it for a decision in our favour. At the last desperate extremity, the German fighting forces would be fed, if the civilians began to perish. For all that we can see, the enemy will ngbt to the last, with the utmost power of his strength and his raj'e capacity for sacrince. We can only hope for the victorious peace that we all desire upon military pressure, for other aid will be purely adventitious. The German may be brought to his knees by a combination of forces, economic, for exajnple, but our only sane policy is to carry on the war as if upon lajid alone its destiny is to be decided. Including therefore any question of the cumulative effects of years of scarcity forc- ing a decisive crisis in Germany early in next year; excluding also any faith in the birth of a new fr&me of mind and temper in the German people (the Socialist "V orwaerts" only this week told us thp-t a peace on Mr. 'Asquith's terms is feasible only in the event of & complete overthrow of German military 11 power), we are thrown back u it1 the balance of military power. In 1917 that was rudely altered to the great immedia-te detriment of the Allied cauae. The Russian a-rmiee, never so well led, equipped. &nd more numerous, were paralysed by a Revolution which, seeking amongst other things to avert from Russia, the disaster to which Czardom was secretly preparing for her, iirinicted in its blind and frantic attempts at a remedy a di?aater al- most worse still, of which none can sec the end. We need not this week go fully into the situation in Russia, where there has been set on foot a long sequence of causes which all promise the effect of calamity. It is eumcient for us that the Russian people overthrew in a day the Govcrn-meatal ma- chinery which, with aU its defects, made her at least a most formidable military power, and have since sat gazing, with the helpless wonderment of children, at. a specta-cle of ruin that they have been so far totally in- competent to" repair.  So the enemy :n 1917 baulked the Allies in the West, won, in eSect, decisively in the East, and maintains a great territorial con- quered grzp-,re which be has kept not only intact almost everywhere except at the fringes in the Went, but even richly ex- panded There were signs, it is true, thao if the Allies had failed to exert an offensive power sumcient to enect even a pmall instal- ment of their programme of tbe liberation of their own territory, the Germans were equally at the end of thc'r own tether, and that they oould do uo more than maintain precariously a balance of power renting on a knife-edge. With the isolated caae of Riga as an exception, the Germans were content to maintain passively their position in the East. They have failed until to-day even to overpower the resistance of what was left of the Humanja-n Army, whJcb baa ,;ucces.;sfxilly rcpsUfd the campaign planned to secure the remainder of Moldavia. They failed to fol- low up the Rusfiaa hordes who streamed &wav into the heart of their country to join in the scramble for the land expropriation irom the estate'owaers. They have nowhere fhown any sign of the ability to coDect a mass M tree,pi< sumcient to attempt any major enterprise. Di.pei-sed over a line of enormous length, their forces in the Rast are sumcient only to garrison the regions conquered m 1915 and defended in 1916. But the eutire Eastern campaign of 1917 has re- presented for the Gen-nans n victory whose magnitude cannot yet be estimated. It was not, after all, essential to the Ger-! toan strategy that their conquests should be maGTUued (with the solitary exception of the taking of Ri[:'l). It was sumcient that they tthooM be held. Not oniy have they been held, but they a.re in no immedia-te danger of their possession being even seriously dis- puted. The Eajt in 1917 ceased to oppress the German mind; it saw rather the hght- ening of a. great burden of carp. The West was now the only remaining strategic arena. wherf danger menaced, and it was upon the I West that the enemy wzre free to devote all their energies and resources. A mere df-tensive in the West in 1917 absorbed the entire power oi the enemy, a.nd if that defensive wa.s, on the whoie, successful, it. conta-ined no promise that the inherent stre.igth of the Gennsn defensive was capable of stai-idiii, up ¡¡.;<lln¡;t, great new forces thi'o.wn into the held. And py. what we may regard -is the dispensation of Providence, at a time when the issue of the w:<r rema.irs dark and doubt- ful, when the fullest enargi&s of i'rance a-nd Britain have been gripping with the ioe, with no decisive is.ue, or o\er much pro!r.j,je of a decision, on the scale which we require. tnc zreat Republic ct the West ca&ta in her lot \v!.h u. 'inn der-ipion of Mr. WilRon ma.y well have saved the world. As mutters, promise, America, s nulita-y aid, powerful ih the spring, should be dangerous to the enemy, in the weight of numbers asseniule(i by the Americans, in < the summer of 1918. That is, considering j the present battle front atone, and ignoring ) th, qcestion of the aid brought by America, in the oration of an aerial a.rma.da, which shoutd be él.yaila-bte by the spring, alld which fillatilci (inaile the Allies" trv ftn d. really adequate scale the poi<entia.!ities of war in the air upon a vasb and syetematic scats. We ?oe in trench 'warfare no inherent impossibiJJty of securing a victory of tra- mendous riagiiitude, if suScient forefs are available, and by the summer of 1918 the í Americans should be able to provide us with reinforcements capable of wholly upsetting the balance that remained in 19n so de ceptively even. If the British New Armies were hardly in the 6eld within two years of the date when a commencement wail made with their formations, it may be argued that America's experience may repeat that paraUe.L It is of conrae plain that 1919 will enable America to place in the field an aimy to be counted in three or four millions, but there are several reasons why hope that a year before that the American armies will have attained decent proportions. The Americana start with our experience, with an ample machinery to ) equip .their armies, with the fullest know- iedge and realisation of what is wanted, ? with a? more extensive nucleus and frame-I work in their own RcguJar Army and Na- tiocal Guard than wa imagine, and with the Bower of the manhood of a nation of 100 TniUiona thrown into the 6e]d against the jaded and war-worn body of the Ger- man Army. Failing a decision in 1918, nothing will remain to us but to comply with the spirit of our ideals, which are of such a nature that the cost of realisation may be bound- less. We are committed neck-deep by the utterances of our statesmen, and our con- ccioneneesa of the danger to the world 'm- plied in Germa.n domina-tion, to the cm shirty of Germany, And vast as has brea the cost of our attempt to attain that end, it Is only conjecture that sets a limit to the sacrifices that may be needed in the future. We have the means; a)! that matters is an in- Cexible determination. ? ?—————

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