Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1917-09-19
EDITOR
War as a Mechanical Operation
dallas TEX Morning News


How much like a mechanical operation far
is under the conditions that obtain on the western
front is cogently suggested by the comment Of Gen
eraI Maurice chief director of military operation
at the British war Office. on the hattr uf Flanders
To the lay mind. what has l""u are, ~; '.~.vI h.
two days fighting seems little and ir1rlIu.cr I'n
General Maurice tells that This tt!r HrvrrtI","S
attained "a definite line of ohjccryc:, The u"A
move, he explained. is ITO determines anor or "|.""
tive, and then, after the customary process 4"
preparation, to proceed similarly y achieve it,.
The "customary process of pr"l ""a'j":." = t.
blast the enemy out Of the new lines into which II
has been driven. This is an artillery task 4
means outlay of explosives that, in ole day. vii
probably exceed the total required to win war t.
or twenty years ago. And them with lie cH"n..
blasted out, demorulihd ami more or less ..I"'a"'1
the infantry will move forward To IoSsr>> U>el
| of the position won by the artillery.
Mr.. Roger Babson, one of this country's foremoS
statisticians, presented some surprising figures th
other day on the casualties of llo,rru Warfare a.
lit is carried IN on the western front. They Wert
surprising because of the low rate of mortality tina
they disclosed. He showed, for example. that, f0
every man killed so far twenty whine hav" escaped
Even the chance of being wounded is made to ap
pear very much less in the cold light of statistics
than it seems under the lurd light with which thu
lreportorial descriptions of battle invest the opera
ltion. Fourteen men out of every fifteen. Mr.. Bah
son says, "have been safe so far. which must meaI
that only one in fifteen of the men engaged in thu
war during the three years it has run have beer
wounded seriously.
These surprising figures are made less incredible
Eif the mechanical character of military operations
is duly impressed on the imagination. They ait
one in trying to appreciate what has been otter
observed, that modern warfare, at least such
fare as is being carried on on the western front
calls for more labor than fighting, more endurance
to the pains of toll than to those of wounds. Orators
and rhetoricians will probably never be persuaded
to cease measuring the magnitude of war in term:
of blood but the blooded statisticians are APP
to prefer sweat as the individual uman contribu
ton that most accurately expresses the fact. And
of course, only small part of this oblatOn is made
on the battlefield. Far the greater part of it i:
made hundreds and thousands of miles from
the points where its force is exerted There was
noteworthy but probably unremarked circumstance
in the address which the kaiser issued the other day
on the occasion of the wars third anniversary. L
was his exhortatiOn to the men and women anC
children in the fields and shops of Germany, an eX
hortation which rivaled in length and fervOr that
which he addressed to the soldiers the trenches
A parenthetical alluson the utmost recognition
the workers have received in any of the preceding
imperial allocutions. Now they are commended
and besought as seduously and ferventy as are the
men in the trenches Perhaps political considera
lions may have had something to do in moving the
kaiser to this unwonted degree of graciousness to
A. CHI 60 D,,+
they can hardly have been the only motives. That
the kaiser for the first time felt the expedience and
fitness of appraising their contribution at value
so nearly equal to that of the fighting men must
evidence in him growing sense of the fact that q
bead Of sweat is not to be much less cherished by
war lord than is drop of blood.
When this pre-eminent war lord, the man who, il
his reputation does not belle him. makes war the
highest proof and exhibition. of human herOsm
thus exalts the effort of the obscure and begrimed
iaborer to plane little if any lower than that
of the bedecked and helmeted fighter we should
seem to have come within visible distance of goa
marked by dreamers; to have come, in other words
10 the eve of a establishment which will perpe
tuate peace by stripping of most of the glores
with which it has been invested by imagination
One need not disparage the heroism of the men at
the battlefront to shrink warfare to the proportions
of huge mechanical operation, whose outcome
fixes as much a superiority of the sordd forces OF
finance and industry as it does of courage and for
titude. Perhaps war will lose its popularity, its
vogue when it comes to be stripped of the mask and
gaudy habiliments with which it has been decked
by the imagination of orators and poets who rhap
sOdize it in terms Of blood. Once the world comes
to envisage war as so largely mere mechanical
operation whose cost is to be calculated in terms
of productive energy it may set itself proSIv to
some computations from which it will get a fixed
determination tO have no moro of II