Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-07
THE GUILT OF JUDGES
AT COMING WAR INQUIRIES
Who Is Actually Responsible for the Fearful
Waste and the Tragic Mistakes in
France and Elsewhere?.

| INNESlIGAIlONS into the conduct OF
the war will be plentiful from now on
Sir Sam Hughes, former Minister of
Militia in Canada, has shocked the peo-
pie Of the provinces with the assertion
that many thousands of the dominion's
soldiers were sent needlessly to death in
| vain attacks.
Congress before IL adjourned was
working up. feverish enthusiasm for
army probes, which will be renewed at
| the next session.
In every country that participated in
the fight against Germany ugly and re-
voting stories of failure and confusion
will be told Most Of them will be true.
But the tragedy of the matter is that
the great and terrible significance Of
| such revelations will be lost through the
efforts of men who will be sure 10 make
party or personal issues of war inquiries
The lives of soldiers were wasted in
every battle. Men died terribly of dis
ease and neglect under every flag. On
every front they were sacrificed without
results. To suppose that it could have
been otherwise is to cherish hypocritical
delusions.
Almost from the first the war was
beyond the control of the men who
fought in it. Actions of incredible vio-
lence ragged often on lines twenty-five
miles long. Victory and defeat became
matters of chance or accident. Certainly
there was ineficiency in many commands
and many bureaus, and it ought to be
punished. But the greater fault must
always lie with those who permitted the
war to be, since the war became a thing
that could not be managed. stagger-
ing, cropping, dsordered conflict in which
no human intelligence could maintain
anything like perfect order or complete
coordination of units.
Unexpected weaknesses developed
under pressure too great for human en-
durance, wild things were done in des-
perate emergencies, systems of operation
devised with infinite care and pains broke
down and became piteously futile under
combination of events that no one could
have foreseen.
1t is because war itself is so hideously
wrong in an age of science and ma
chinery that the sleek probers will be
able to uncover horrors and failures
without limit when they sit down to
cruelty the spirits of men whose great
est fault was that they were unequal to
strain that never should have been put
upon thc"n.
War cannot be waged in an orderly
manner any more. 1t is not even fight
ing. 1t is a slow, deliberate pulping of
men by foundry methods.
Valor and daring no longer count for
victory. Those who have the deadliest
guns or the vilest gas or the greatest
weight Of steel are the winners. Slaugh-
ter occurs at unexpected places because
of these newer methods of fighting and,
of course, hospital methods prove made
quate. The vastness of modern armies,
the scope Of actions and the destructive
ness Of modern artillery have made the
assured cooperation Of essential units
impossible.
To assume that war can be waged
without brutal waste and endless mis-.
takes of judgment is to exalt a lie and
parade it as shining truth. And that is
what a good many of the war probers
will do.
Officers and departments that failed
to create perfection out of chaos will be
virtuously arraigned for judgment and
sentence will be pronounced upon them
by men who stayed at home and escaped
the Aightmare realities of French battle
GolJ. anJ IN +bo arJ ebo,,toJ Jor,-. A.