Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1917-06-01
Remarkable Mobility Of Britain's
Army Defeats Strategy
of Hindenburg.
TRACTORS THE Big FACTOR
German General Staff Failed to CAL
euiate Quick Repair Of Roads and
Immediate Advance of Light
and Heavy Artillery.
BY JUDSoN C. WELLIvER,

denburg-that the British were able to
keep instantly and constantly right on
the heels of the retreating Germans
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
var had carefully calculated that when
they yielded very little ground after
having first destroyed villages, blown
up roads and furrowed the terrain with
trenches and shellholes it would take
at least 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 that he knew too much
about the established and accepted
rules of war and too little about Eng
lish 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 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.
I have seen a couple of these levia-
thans taking a ten-inch howitzer over
road that had been theoretically ode
stroyed" three days earlier, almost I'M
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 have got
themselves through the mud, to say
nothing of pulling something after
them.
l 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 ii. 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
drudgery; but what magni6cently or
ganized and predigested drudgery
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 timbers,
piles, steel bolts and nuts and spikes
and hammers and sledges and every
thing else requisite for the road 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 yet thoroughly elastic
and adaptable plans was to be seen
everywhere.
The emergency engineers who man.
age these things are wonders in their
way. They seem to know by instinct
what will be required Of them. But
it isn't instinct so much as Ii is the
complete knowledge Of the terrain
that has been brought back to them in
the photographs taken by the flying
corps observers. Everything is on
hand, everything is in its right place,
every man understands just what is
expected of him, and when they move
forward there is seldom a hitch. In
evitably, 1t is fearfully expensive busi-
ness, and sometimes there Is over
preparation for the sake of certainty.
Light Guns Move Quickly.
The lighter and more mobile guns Of
course go forward earliest. They are
built especially for this kind of ex-
perience and can get over half-built
roads with an agility and safety that
could not possibly be believed IL one
hadn't seen the performance. The
French "75s" are particularly useful in
this style of quick advance, but the
British light guns, as now built, are
hardly inferior.
The handling of the 6, 8. 10, II and
even 15-inch howitzers is, Of course,
most impressive. Hitched to their cater
pillar tractors, they jog along, keeping
pace with the light field pieces that are
drawn by well-trained horses. These
big guns, as now constructed, are the
last word in mobility. No need to wor-
ry about building emplacements for
them. They can be fired from any sort
of ground, and IL things get too hot for
them in one place they can be coupled
up and hauled off to another. Along
with the big guns go complete outfits
of repair material and machinery, so
that II anything goes wrong 1t can be
attended to without a minutes delay.
Nothing known to modern war is so
pampered. so delicately nursed. as a
big field howitzer, unless, perhaps, 1t