Evening star., 1916-01-02
BY FRANK n. SIMONDS,
Author of The Great War.

Copyright, 1916 by the Tribune Assoclation)
To strike at Britain through Egypt
is no new strategic conception. Ma
poleon tried it in the closing year of
the eighteenth century. His early
successes there were considerable. He
took Alexandria, won a battle under
the shadow of the pyramids. from
which many centuries, as he reminded
his soldiers, looked down upon them.
He captured Cairo and ruled in Egypt
for some months. What is even more
interesting at the present moment is
the fact that he took an army of more
than 10000 French soldiers across the
desert into Syria, won victory at Ell
Arish. on the Egyptian boundary. but
met the first great defeat OF his lie
before the walls of Acre, a defeat at
the hands of British fleet and gar
rison reinforced by British troops
For many years the dream of stri X
ing the British through Suez and with
the aid of Turkish troops. German led.
has been discussed in all the various
volumes of the German writer's, VINO
have been forecasting the fall of the
British Empire. For these writers the
Suez canal has become the exposed
have seen the fate of the British en-
pire settled along the waterway tnat
De Lesseps constructed to connect the
east with the west.
Having hacked their way through
Serbia to the Golden Horn, having in
the years before the war and in the
months since it broke out pushed the
construction of the Bagdad railway,
ming from the Bosporus. facing Con-
stantinople. to the edge Of the sinai
desert, which, save for single break
in the Taurus mountains, provides
TRANSPORTATION by rail for heavy ;o,at art'i, .
little more than a hundred miles from
the Suez canal itself. From the foot
OF the Dead sea there stretches west
ward over the deserts. by roads. the
children of Israel may have used In
part in their great migration to the
Promised land, desert route. destitute
Of water save for a few wells. which
the Turks and the Germans must ioi-
low from the Mecca railroad, which
they are to quit near the Dead sea.
New Railroads.
For some fifty miles westward. that
is from the Dead sea to the frontier
town of Ell Arish, on the Mediter-
ranean, where Turkish and Egyptian
territories meet, the Germans are re-
ported to have pushed a new line in
recent months. Wonderful stories of
a double-tracking operation on the
Damascus line, from Damascus to the
Dead sea; of piping parties carrying
Suez; these have been spread abroad
in recent months. but they deserve
little credence. Turkey is hardly able
to push railroad construction while
her ports are all closed and her con-
nection with Germany by rail still
lacking.
What is certain is that for a thrust
against Egypt from the Syrian region
the Germans have available at their
backs the Mecca and Bagdad railroads.
and that they have doubtless collected
much material and ammunition against
the time when the arrival of German
officers and arms at Constantinopie
would omen the way for the return to
the attack upon Egypt: for it must be
renlenl bsred that last winter the Turks
alone made desperate dash to the
fighting beIore they were actually
canal and put up some fairly stiff
repulsed.
Some time in the next few months it
is reasonably certain that n great
army VIII be pushed west along the
road Napoleon followed toward Egypt.
There have been estimates of 100000
Turks. German led, which are pre-
posterous. On the other hand, there
is 10 reason why the Turks. some
what relieved of the strain upon their
numbers incident to three campaigns
that against Russia IN the Caucasus,
against the Anglo-French forces at
Gallipoli, against the British expedition
in esopotamia-cannot collect 10000,
perhaps 100000, fairly good troops for
an Egyptian expedition.
To munition such a force at the end
of 1900 miles of single track railroad.
about the span between the Dead sea
and the Bosporus. railroad that is
broken in the Taurus by u difficult
transfer over rocky mountain roads,
often snowblocked for days in winter,
will not be an easy task: it may be i'm
possible to supply a force as large.
But. taking things. as they appear.
there is a reasonable chance that the
Teuto-Turk force will number between
100000 and 100000.
Where Napoleon Marched.
Conceiving that this force can be con-
centrated a El Arish, on the Egyptian
frontier, there then lies before it some
hundred miles of march across a bIaz-
ing desert, with almost no points Of
water. This is the route Napoleon fol-
lowed. and the old histories preserve
picturesque engravings of the great
of his columns across this waste. Some
thing like ten days this march took
Napoleon, who. it should be recalled,
had with him just above 10000 men.
questlonably be harried by the British
troops. The wells would be rendered
unfit for use, and it would be necessary
to carry the water needed with the
army. On the other hand. there is no
real obstacle to the construction of a
light railroad behind the army as it
advances. Thus the German leaders
might take leaf out of the book of
Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan and
to Khartum. At the end of two or three
months of operations there is no rea-
son why the Germans should not sue
ceed in extending to the very edge of
the Suez canal a light railway con-
Meeting with the Mecca line south OF
the Dead sea, provided only that the
British choose to wait for the invasion
behind their own fortifications at the
edge of the canal.
BY contrast, it must be remembered
that the British are able, il they choose,
with far greater ease and resources at
their command, to extend the railroad
that now reaches the canal at Ismailia,
coming east from Cairo, eastward
across the desert. to any point they
may select as a place for making their
defense of the canal. What they have
recently done to prepare against the
attack we know little about, but it Is a
fact that the British have faced or
such attack. and for more than a year
have known that a second and more
serious thrust was likely to come.