The twice-a-week Twin Falls times. (Twin Falls, Idaho) 1916-1918, 1917-06-21
Remarkable Mobility of Britain's
Army Defeats Strategy
of Hindenburg.
TRACTORS The Big FACTOR
German General Staff Failed to CAL
cuIate Quick Repair of Roads and
Immediate Advance of Light
and Heavy Artillery.
Hy JUDsoN c. wELLIVER,

denburg-that the British were able to
keep instantly and constantly right on
the heels of the retreating Germans
after the recent evacuation of the ter
ritOry back of the Bapaume-Peronne
line. The thing didn't fall out at all
as the German general staff had fore
seen. Those masters of the art of
war had carefully calculated that when
they yielded a very little ground after
having first destroyed villages, blown
up roads and furrOwed the terrain with
trenches and shellhOleS it o take
at least a series of weeks for the British
to bring up their forces and prepare
for a new attack. This was the whole
strategy of the establishment of the
new Hindenburg line.
The weakness of Hindenburg's cal
culation was tina he knew too much
about the established and accepted
rules of war and too little about Eng
fish and American ingenuity in pro-
ducing the new types of war machine
which make it possible for an army
nowadays to move faster than it ever
could before.
Caterpillar tractors, as big as a re-
spectacle locomotive, make it possible
to do things with even the biggest
howitzers that were undreamed of
even when this war began.
Tractors the Big Factors.
1 have seen a couple of these levia-
thans taking Il ten-inch howitzer over
a road that had been theoretically de
stroyed" three days earlier, almost un-
der the fire of the enemy and actually
within their own range of the nearest
enemy positions, at the rate of seven
or eight miles an hour All the horses
that ever were Communicated couldn't
have been harnessed to do that job,
simply because they couldn't hq~e got
themselves through the mud, to say
nothing of pulling something after
them.
1 studied for several days the meth
DDS by which one army was fairly leap
ing on the trail Of another, and it
seemed to me the greatest wonder that
the war had developed. The steel
works of Birmingham and Bethlehem
and Pittsburgh were doing it. But even
before their giant contraptions could
perform. the road must be ready for
them. This reconstruction of roads is
just plain, back-breaking, awful
! iIllAtIA nut Will An0EhAAANCNAAAe Va
ganized and predigested drudgeryl
one would imagine that there must
have been tens of thousands of huge
motortrucks just back of the British
line. everyone of them loaded to the
last ounce of capacity with rock in
graduated sizes, with massive timbersi
piles, steel bolts and nuts and spikes
and hammers and sledges and every
4 thing else requisite for the DAD build
ing to the front. Nothing had been
forgotten. and although the evacuated
- region was a horror of mud and utter
desolation. the evidence of absolute
organization. of perfect arrangement
of precise and vet thoroughly elastic
and adaptable plans was to be seer
everywhere.
The emergency engineers who man
age these things are wonder in theil
way. They seem to know by instinc
what will be required of them. Blu
it isn't instinct so much as it is tn
complete knowledge of the terrain
that has been brought back to them il
the photographs taken by the hyini
corps observers. Everything ~ OF
hand. everything is in its right place
every man understands just what
expected of him, and when they NOV
forward there is seldom a hitch. In
evitably. it is fearfully expensive busi
ness, n sometimes there. is over
preparation for the sake of certainty
Light Gun Move Quickly.
The lighter and more mobile guns @
course go forward earliest. They ar
built especially for this kind of e1
perience and can get over half-buil
roads with an agility and safety tha
could not possibly be believed if on
hadn't seen the performance. Th
French "75s'' are particularly useful !
this style of quick advance, but tn
British light guns, as now built, al
hardly inferior.
The handling of the 6. 8. 10, u an
even 15-inch howitzers is, of cours
most impressive. Hitched to their cate
pillar tractors, they jog along. keepir
pace with the light field pieces that al
drawn by well-trained horses. n
big guns, as now constructed, are II
~ last word in mobility. No need to wo
l nv about building emplacements II
them. They can be fired from any so
of ground, and If things get too no Il
them in one place they can be couple
up and hauled off to another. Alor
with the big runs 90 complete Outh
Z of reU,air material and machinery,
that if anything goes wrong it can
n attended to without a minutes della
u Nothing known to moder war is
= pampered. so delicately nursed, as
big field howitzer. unless. perhaps