St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 17, 1915

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ssigtot RBS “= 2 * ee “+ en my Scag Ss Ss UNDAY | Beh Spe cates oo SE eft eee s10U5 76 sieeseeeesst + see arts ihishassrs "VOL. 68. NO. 58, | ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY aORRaG' OCTOBER.17, iB. Ben : | ALLIES GAINS IN CHAMPAGNE | MENACE GERMAN ROADWAYS ‘Lens and Verdun Objectives eae om ¥ . . 2 ‘4 : . es A By Frank H. Simonds. (Copyright, 1915.) wo aiid ago 1 described the larger aspects of the: allied offensive in the West, which was then commanding the attention of the world and remains the most important military operation on foot. In a@ general fashion the two efforts, that in Artois and that in Champagne,|- were compared to the similar converging attacks of Hindenburg and Mackensen in Poland, attacks designed primarily to break in the Polish salient and if possible to develop the Russian armies between the two} : - pincers the German armies constituted. Looking at a map, it will be seen that the attacks of the allies in ‘Artois and in Champagne, if pressed home successfully, would cut the railroad lines which supply the whole German front from Lille to the Argonne; that the cutting of the lines nearest the original points of ‘ attack would probably settle the question of Germag occupation of | Northern France. The possibility of the envelopment of a portion of the German armies is plain, but the Russian campaign is a pretty fair indica- ‘tion that Sedans on-a largely increased scale are unlikely under contem- ‘porary conditions of warfare. ‘Not, apart from through the lit- - the central pur- pose of allied strategy which is to thrust the Germans out of France, not by ‘@irect attack along the whole front, but by plercing attacks at two points, there are minor objectives and in- cidental details of — . the present opera- tion which are of real value and in- tle towns, or rather, hamlets, of Perthes-Les Herlus, Les Mes- 1ils and Messiges, names familiar ‘to all readers of the official French reports of many months. Half-way between Les Mes- nils and Messiges is the farmhouse of Beausejour, also well known in all battle re ports. On this front of approximately ten miles the French were fac- ing due north, city of Lens; will relieve . Bee invested around Lens. ‘front of Arras; it may eventually “Yond to the freeing of Lille. In the fashion the success of the -. Champagne operation, viewed only ” from its local sitle, will free Rheims, relieve Verdun and ftféaten the whole German front between. the HB accidental circumstances of the ‘Champagne make it possible to study the Ale from house to house, from village village. In Champagne, on the other hand, the struggle is being fought out in an open. cont oo destitute of populati — tions which recall many + ‘the Ces of our own Civil War. In the old-fashioned sense, there- ‘fore, the Champagne operation more nearly satisfied the notion of a battle than anything in the west since the checks along the Yser and Ypres, exactly a year igo. Germans attempted in French are undertaking far the fight re- of all to de- eld which, fortu- simple. Twenty Rheims the na- » which over much of e older Roman road, mente of Sovain. At Souain “the Rheims road forks and the south- ern branch leads somewhat sinu- \ ously 10 miles due east to Ville-Sur- another, little village situ- with the Aisne. At Tourbe the Rheims road meets the national highway coming north ‘ from St. Menehould and also leading : 2gh Vouziers to the frontier. ur miles north of Souain the Chal- pans road enters the little town of ymmepy, the southernmost point of the Basancourt-Challerange railroad. Three miles north of Ville-Sur-Tour- ; teseh ‘St. eg cng ecm reaches Where the crucial fighting rages battlefield di- : | erstand the operations, one flank resting upon the Aisne, . , a little east of Ville-Sur-Tourbe, where contact was made with the army in the Argonne; the other flank rested on the Souain- Sommepy highway, to the west of which contact was made with the French army covering the city of Rheims. Midway between Souain and Ville Sur-Tourbe the French cen- ter rested on either side of the local road going due north from Perthes to the Cernay-Souain highway, which it met at Tahure, the exact center of our parallelogram. Now, the immediate purpose of the French was to advance until their left flank reached Sommepy and thus cut the Bazancourt-Challerange rail- road, one of the two lines on which the Germans in the Argonne depend for their supplies. The left, there- fore, would advance along the Souain- Sommepy road. They had four miles yto go. The right conforming to the general movement, would advance on the St. Menehoud-Vouziers road from Ville-Sur-Tahure to Cernay. The cen- ter, for its part, would move up the Perthes-Tahure road to Tahure. North of Tahure it would aim to reach the railroad east of Sommepy by various country lanes and roads. The Battleground. E have, then, looking at the French plans of Sept. 24, a contemplated advance of some four- miles, the left and center aiming at the railroad, the right at the town of Cernay, which the rail- road avoids by the wide curve that it makes toward the north after passing in front of the hills above Tahure. | The success of the movement would be established when the railroad was reached or when the French came near enough to it to command it by their artillery fire. It is necessary now to examine the ground over which the French had to advance. Generally speaking, this portion of the Champagne {ts covered by scattered thickets of pine and spruce, the soil is sterile and chalky, the villages are small and poor. The main natural features are the suc- cessive ridges of‘relatively low hills, between which small streams flow down to the Aisne to the east. Now, it was on one of these ridges that the French had established themselves in the terrific fighting of last March, when a three weeks’ struggle had netted them perhaps 1000 feet gain on a 10-mile front. This ridge, which the French held, followe:! the Souain-Ville-Sur-Tourbe } highway. The-Jerman first line was established something like a mile to the norti., on another ridge material- ly er than that of the French. In ftlon to the general line of hee os the Germans had. occupied a number of detached summits and them into veritable aaa McAdoo Tet the Post- “Dispatch of Administration’ s Plan to Put New Shipping Bill Before “Congress Export Crisis, Arising Through eok of Vessels to Carry Our Gicioda to Nations Which Wanted Them Has Cost Our Producers Many Times the $40,000,000 Congress Was Asked to Appfopriate 18 Months Ago, Says Secretary of Treasury, Who Believes the Costly Lesson Will Not Be Lost on Us—Amount to - Asked for Next Will Approximate $50,000,000. That Sum Would Provide for Us an Incomparable Mercan- tile Marine in Time of Peace and Insure for Us Ample Transport and Supply Facili- ties at Our Call if We Should Evér Have'to Go to War. HAT the Democratic administration ‘will in- troduce another shipping bill in the next ship-purchase bill last spring, after a strong Re- publican filibuster, is assured practically by a William G. McAdoo to a Post-Dispatch corre- spondent, dufing his stay in Kansas City Fri- day. The statement was given out in response the administration on the merchant marine ques- tion. The war in Europe had so changed the shipping situation, Secretary McAdoo said; that further legislation on the subject would provide, as one of its chief features, for the creation of a strong naval auxiliary, to be used in the merchant ma- rine service to extend American commerce in time of peace, but to be under control of -the Secretary of the Navy instead of the Treasury Department, as the bill of this spring provided. The Secretary of the Treasury emphasized vig- orously the declaration ‘he made to the Business Men’s League in St. Louis ‘that it was absolutely necessary for the commercial welfare of the “Unit- ed States to have a large increased native carry- ing service on the seas, if our commercial rank is to be maintained. His statement follows: “The terrible events of the past year in. Europe, and the atute situations which have arisen in our foreign rélations, have brought forcibly to the front the necessity for greater naval and military preparedness than our people have heretofore be- lieved to be necessary for the national safety. Our geographical position maks it unnecessary for us to maintain such formidable military establish- ments as those of the great Powers of Europe. The most indispensable factor in any sensible pian of national defense is a powerful navy, capable. of striking with effect—both offensively and defensively—supplied with essential naval auxiliaries in the form of American merchant ma- rine and manned by American seamen ready and willing to fight for the Stars and Stripes against any enemy on the face of the earth. HIS IDBA WHAT A NAVAL AUXILLIARY FLEET SHOULD BE 66 NAVAL .auixiliary is a fleet of me?- A chant vessels so constructed that they ~ may render essential service and as- sistance to our battleships and cruisers in time of war and serve the needs of our commerce in time of peace. A navy, no matter how strong iu, battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats and sub- marines, is only partially equipped without a merchant marine auxiliary. ‘It is 2 fact, and every naval expert will so testify, that a mer- chant marine naval auxiliary is just as essential to the effectiveness of the navy, considered as a complete fighting machine, as the guns upon the decks of.our battleships and the seamen upon whose skill and valor the effectiveness of those guns depends. | “Why is this. so? Because battleships and cruisers and torpedo boats and submarines have to be furnished at sea with coal, provisions and supplies of all kinds. Fighting vessels cannot earry sufficient supplies to remain long from their home bases, and they must have these essen- tial auxiliaries in order to enable them to stay at sea and engage in effective offensive and de- fensive operations away from their home ports. “We cannot, with safety, rely upon our ability to purchase or charter suitable naval auxiliaries when a crisis appears. The very. essence of pre- paredness for the navy is to have these vessels of suitable types and construction where we can put our hands om them quickly. “To prove this I need only to tell you what happened when war with Spain broke out in 1898. We had no naval auxiliaries—no army transports. We were utterly unprepared. We had to go into the market and buy immediately pted to our purposes, and, of course, we paid fabulous prices for them. When a man or a government has to have something the other fel- low has got, and that fellow knows that this something can’t be gotten from anybodv but him- self, he exacts the highest possible price. and gets it. This is human nature. The navy alone bought.at that time 102 vessels as naval auxili- aries and paid, in round numbers, the fabulous sum of $18,000,000. for them. There is no officer of the navy who knows about these purchases who won't admit that most ofthese vessels were junk. The Navy Department sold 25, or one- Congress, regardless sof the defeat of the statement issued by Secretary of .the Treasury tc a request for a definition of the attitude of (. nnd and every kind of boat that could be hastily: WILLIAM G. McADOO. Fight on Mercantile Marine Bill Waged by Private Ship Subsidy Grabbers By WILLIAM G. McADOO. HE real fight in this merchant - marine controversy is a fight for subsidies. What are subsidies? They are gifts from the United States to favored cor- porations, firms and individuals who operate ships. 3 Why should we give away millions of dollars of the people’s money each year to favored ship owners over whose rates and service we have no control? Wouldn’t it be more sensible for the Government to spend these millions in building up a splendid naval auxiliary merchant marine which can be control- led and operated in the interest of the people? If we adopted subsidies, wouldn’t corporations and individuals with the strongest and longest pull get most of the money as they always have done when free money has been distributed by the treasury in the ‘‘Good old days of special privilege?’ : Every shipowner and every ship monopolist wants subsidies. Of course they do. They would profit by them and they are going to make a desperate fight for them in the next Congress. i, fourth of them since,the war for a total of $1,167,638 F OUR LESSON IN SPANISH WAR HAS ALREADY BEEN FORGOTTEN “R UT we had to take anything we could 3 get and pay any price the ship owner , ‘| or broker asked, in order to send our fleet jugt a little way from home—to Cuba. This ( is the penalty we paid for our failure to create a real naval auxiliary. Unhappily we have learned: nothing from that painful lesson and are in worse condition today than we were in 1898, so far as merchant marine naval auxiliaries are concerned, but because our navy is much larger and its requirements more exacting. “In addition to the $18,000,000 spent by the navy, the War Department spent millions for vessels to transport troops. If we build a real and efficient’ naval auxiliary, we shall have the right kind of vessels to supply the army. with transports when it needs them. — “We have not today under the American flag sufficient vesselg to give our navy, in case of war, the support and assistance which are indispens- able to its efficiency. “I am informed by the Navy Department that we could draw from our present merchant mar- ine approximately 700,000 gross tonnage :of ves- sels that could be converted into naval auxiliaries. This leaves us with a’deficiency of about 500,000 , gross tonnage to meet the needs of our navy as it stands today and without allowing for growth. It may be claimed in, this connection that our merchant marine has grown-so rapidly in the past year that we are justified in relying on it to keep pace with our naval requirements, so that we could draw from it what ‘we want in case of war. oi “The increase in our merchant marine in the past year is due to the liberal act passed by the Congress: after the European war broke out, known as the ship registry bill which author izes anyone to register a foreign-built ship under our flag by complying with the conditions of_the act. While the German cruisers were in the Atlantic and Pacific, a considerable number of vessels of English and other registry, many of which were owned by American citizens, were transferred to the American flag. SHIPS RUSHED TO OUR REGISTRY . MAY NOT REMAIN WITH US E have no assurance, however, that OW these ships will rémain under Amer- . ican registry after peace is restored in Europe. Even if they do, their crews are com- posed mostly of foreigners who are under no obligation to fight for our flag and are not likely to volunteer to do so in any emergency. It is, of course, out of the question to rely upon citi- zens of foreign powers to fight our battles upon the high seas. We must not rely upon foreign ships and foreign crews which may have taken the benefits of American registry merely for safety and insurance against attack while the war is raging in Europe and which may desert us as soon as that danger is past. “As a part of our naval program of prepared- ness we should provide every element of a well- equipped, highly efficient, and perfectly balanced ‘rraval fleet and organization. —S ee The ships, both of the fighting lime and of the auxiliary line, should be the best that American skill and sci- ence can produce, and the men who are to fight the battleships and operate the auxiliaries must be trained American seamen, imbued with our na- tional spirit and knowing no allegiance except to the United States. So vital is this that, whereas a few years ago we permitted foreigners to enlist in our navy, the law now compels the enlistment of American citizens: only. “Our neglect to provide in the past the neces- sary naval auixiliaries gives us, however, one great advantage. By building them now we can develop a type that will be better than anything the world has yet produced. We can construct a more efficient arm of this character than any nation on earth possesses, and, while we are con- serving the national safety by increasing the power of our national fighting machine, we can, at the same time, put into commerce a class of ships which will give to our people in the ex- pansion of our foreign -trade advantages over every competitor. VESSELS SHOULD BE HIGHEST TYPE THAT CAN BE BUILT 66 HE vessels should be designed by the T best marine and naval architects in this country. They should be passed upon and approved by the Navy Department, and the contracts for their construction should be let to American shipyards to the extent that such shipyards can. build them, and our own navy yards should construct as many of these vessels as their capacity will permit. I wish to empha- size the importance of building these ships in American shipyards and in our own navy yards. It is just as important a part of naval prepared- ness to have adequate shipyards for the purpose of constructing and repairing vessels as it is to have the vessels themselves and the men to man them. We must pursue an intelligent system of building up our shipyards and our navy yards as a part of the vital problem of naval prepared- ness. “When we have built the 500,000 gross tonnage of merchant vessels as naval auxiNaries, the ques- tion is, what shall we do with them? “If, on the other hand, we operate these ships under some sensible plan and expand our for- eign trade, we will do the most intelligent possible thing from every standpoint. The operation of the ships will keep them in fit condftion to re- spond to the immediate call of the navy in case of need, and we shall, at the same time, create a large corps of trained American officers and seamen, and the direct earnings may show a handsome return on the investment. Even if a loss is incurred, it will be a small price to pay for preparedness and the national safety. , “While thus preserving the ships and creat- ing a highly efficient naval: reserve, we can en- lurge our foreign trade and carry our influence, both financial and commercial, into the open mar- kets of the world. I believe that the prosperity of this country depends upon the maintenancé and expansion of our foreign commerce. What could more clearly wore this. than the history |Kaiser’s Fifth Son, in Book, Depicts Horror oe Glory of War in France —- eRy Translation of Prince the French Effort to Break His Army in February and March. aa iY The pare Dispatch Reprints Herewith' a. Completé Oscar’s Brochure on == *. o—- ee RINCE OSCAR, brochure of the war. Louis. given the title of Lieutenant-Coilonel. mother. Imperial reins. The Battle of HE battle of Champagne is over aft- er a victorious outcome for us Germans. The wheel of revolves swiftly indeed in these days when the whole world is in arms. New battles, new vit- tories push form- er ones into the background, and it is only natural that the shining deeds of arms of our advancing armies with their almost incredibly gigantic successes should draw all eyes and obscure the heroic efforts that were put forth in the con- flicts in Cham- pagne, which failed, however, to obtain such spectacular re- sults. The past has already begun to weave her veil and in her train comes very soon her sister — For- getfulness. But we, we will not, we may not forget. Not only because the battle of Champagne was the greatest and longest de- fensive conflict that history has hitherto recorded, and our arms were victorious; not only from thankfulness to our heroic leaders and troops with their super- human: accomplishments, their in- credible endurance—for another rea- son we cannot forget. That is our many, many brave dead who gave their lives with in- comparable self-sacrifice and truest loyalty for King and fatherland, for Kaiser and empire, for home and people. As a child I once stood reverently before a gigantic grave in which lay an unknown hero of the past. Hill 196, north of Le Mesnil, in, Cham- pagne, is likewise such a gigantic grave. Not an unknown hero from the forgotten past, no; many brave men of our brilliant army, much noble blood of our beloved Germans slumber there beneath French sod. - It is our brothers, sons and hus- bands who lie there. The many hill covers and which they them- ‘courage in superhuman combat to their last breath, they call to us: “Never forget how we died and for what we gave up our lives so joy- ously!” And we, while we bow live, while Fac-simile of the title page of Prince Oscar's book. | dent how immeasurable would have been for the whole | events prove, is at least as important as the vi nenburg, at the Masurian thousand silent heroes whom that selves defended with incomparable son of the Kaiser William, has just written @ The Boston Sunday Post has obtained it cable and, through the courtesy of that paper, the Post- ts herewith permitted to give the booklet in full to its readers. It had never before been translated and this is the first publication of in a. s oy “The Winter Battle of Champagne” describes the great fight in ai Ohampagne region, where Gen. Joffre, the French Commander in Oneéf, made a partially successful assault on the German lines in the vicinity of Perthes in February and March. It is of particular interest now mtg the French are today making their new “drive” in the same district. * Prince Oscar was attached to the headquarters of the German shnd army and, therefore, was in the hottest of the fight. The Prince is the fifth son of the King, and in military circles te ~, ~ He married, shortly after the toar began, morganaticalty, with the full approval of his imperial father, the peautiful Countess Ina von Bassewitz, the former maid of honor to his The Kaiser consented to his son's marriage beneath him decause there is little likelihood that he will ever bescalled upon to take the Champagne BY PRINCE OSCAR OF PRUSSIA, Lieutenant-Colonel, Assigned to the General Staff of the Army. SEES eae 8 HHL it ‘ “Our victory in Champagne fis HHH the gigantic difficulties and followers had to cere we eee 2 our r swords betore Pee toe ee