The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1916-11-20
England Is Prepared to Pay
the Price, Says Cores
pendent Palmer
SAYS THE WAR MAY
LAST SEVERAL YEARS
One Long Battle, Reports Observer
just Back from the Front - Recent
Successes a Great Inspiration to the
French Soldiers.


NEW YORK, Nov. 20.-England is
prepared to lose a million men next
summer, if necessary, in that battle of
the Somme which will continue until
the end of the war is the way in which
Frederick Palmer, the war correspon-
dent, sums up the situation as he found
it in the months he has spent in the
field with Gen. Haig's army.
"Thc staff informed me before the
great attack Of July ! that there was
no expectation Of brea king the line
this year he said "Only a victor
ious beginning of the greatest military
undertaking of all history could be
made. Whenever weather conditions
Will permit through the winter you will
read of more attacks, more trenches
and more prisoners being taken.
Next summer the British are pre-
pared to lose a million men if necessary
and they will have twice their present
gun power. They keep on building mu-
milton factories and adding to their
plant in France, which already is so
enormous that it will take at least a
year to move it back when the war is
over. After watching the Somme bat
tie for four months, with liberty to 90
where | pleased, my brain is left
numbed. | wonder how il is that l am
alive or that any one is alive.
The recent French successes at Yer
dun have been an inspiration of vie
tory. Indeed. no foreigner can appre-
ciate the thrill of the news that France
I had rcgained in rush the ground
which the Germans had been months in
taking. 1t was an immortal victory
, and every French soldier realized it.
| saw the men who ST 1rmed Douau.
mont and the German prisoners who
were taken, and what most impressed
| me was that the French seemed physi-
eally superior. | am half inclined to
I think that the average Frenchman has
added another inch to his height since
the recapturc of Douaumont
Sir Douglas Haig has become as
| much of an institution with the British
army as Gen. .Iofire is with the French.
Last spring he was given absolute au-
thority in the field over the immense
new army. New divisions that came
IN France from English drill grounds
| thinking that they were already sol
dIers found that they had much TO
learn from Drillmaster Haig.
in the midst of the close and com
/ plieated fighting of the Somme battle
4 the British have taken $4,000 prisoners
/ and the Germans about 1000. The Brit.
( lsh simply refuse to surrender when any
! group of them get too far forward and
their supports on the right and left are
repulsed. They dig in and fight to the
! last man.
! - After you have watched them fight
/ for months in his thorough, stubborn
way you realize that he means it wher
he says: 1t S much better to die. yor
know, than not to give the German +
/ proper beating.
Recent developments in the precis
/ ion of artillery fire in cooperation with
( the infantry are almost incredible. The
way that 'whirlwind' bombardment
can be laid on a trench and lifted al
the right moment and moved about al
| will these days is like some tcrribI,
magic, and so II is; magic of drill, dis
cipline, experience and unlimited sun
plies of shells.
With drive after drive, under cove,
of waves of artillery fire, the ofensiv,
will be kept up for another year. per
haps two, perhaps three years-or unit
Germany yields. Commanders saw tina
the amount of ground taken is less i'm
portant than the moral effect of thi
continuous pounding of the German. ;