The Chattanooga news. [volume] (Chattanooga, Tenn.) 1891-1939, 1920-04-10
chanlcS OF u,
fHy 0EoRoE b. MILTON. IR.A

10y 0GON0E MtG toNs JH.)
with its ponderous murderous scientific
machines, or the splendor OF victory In
Philip Gibbs latest work. Now It Can
Be Told, just issued In America by
Harper 4 Bros. It IL the man and not
terrible blood-lust Of war feeding on
the minds and fesh OF the peoples en-
gagged in Il. And. through Il runs the
unanswered question:: Why. oh why,
must our clean 6ne boys be fed into
the jaw Of this horrible monster"
The war has produced no finer writer
than Philip Gibbs. from the start a
correspondent at the British front for
a London newspaper. He has the SYM
pathetic understanding Of the war. with
and griefs. successes and stupidities as
Henri Barbusse. But he has greater
genius than Barbusse, In that he does
not condemn or give up. he. merely
chronicles In sore ana chastened
far his best. The shackles Of the
censor have been lifted. and with their
lifting Gibbs uncovers the veil which
has 50 long hid the titanic plumbers Of
the British stan in the early years OF
by thousands that British generals
might learn the art of war" The
nightly slaughter Of Loos and Sir John
French are brought together: the nick
mar name &c, q . "9ur old murderer .u,l which
from his men: Festubert and Neuve
ChappeIle, and those horrible days In
Ypres. makes one feel with Gibbs that
there should be some means OF pre-
world to welter through.
IT is not alone the crash Of the ar
irving shell. the pig-like squeal that
men gave 40 the bayonet entered their
BODY o Or the. way the cid serFesns
edath :despising boy. by making him
stick" a recently captured German
land afterwards the sergeant said that
Archie was as good a 'sticker as he
had which Gibbs saw. The war
lines at q. a. O. with it's tennis courts.
red-tabbed cane whiriing staff officers
and blindly optimistic generals. was in
his full view; he gives us a hint of
how al Snd y he dssp:ss Il w
bitter hatred. Or looked upon It With
the scorn Of utter resignation There
was a flooded unused trench In Nv
Mems Lang Of no tactical value: Take
Ssstruction 'G Protested an Is . ssrsd
colonel. Take it anyway" And Trey
did. and destroyed they were. Little
wonder that Gibbs refers to an officer.
regular army general"
0OtUTN6 dCtICSs
The costly frittering away Of men
In minor attacks during the battle OF
the somme brought this comment: at
seems clear that our high command
was too prodigal in its expenditure of
the army corps and divisional STATS
had not established an efficient system
OF communications. 1t seemed to an
outsider like myself that a number
Of separate. battles were being fought
without reference to one another in
different parts Of the field. II seemed
as though our generals. after con-
ferring with one another over the tele-
phones, said: All right, tell So and-so
to have q 90 at Thiepval,' or To-day
we will send such-and such a division
to capture Delville wood or, We must
get that line of trenches outside of
Brazentin' Orders were drawn upon
the basis Of that decision and passet
down to brigades. who read them as
the sentence OF death. and obeyed them
with or without protest. and sent three
of four battalions to assault a place
which was covered by German batteries
round an arc Of twenty miles, ready to
open out q tempest Of Ore directly A
rocket rose from their infantry and to
tear up the woods and earth In that
enighborhood II our men gained ground.
II the whole battle line moved forward
the German IRE would have dispersed.
but in these separate attacks 1t was
a vast concentration of explosives which
pIowed up our men," The America
army in the Argonne had the same ex-
perience of the terrific waste from
piecemeal attacks. Montfaucon, Ro-