force. Behind this front the whole life of the belligerent nations was being turned more and more to the task of maintaining supplies of food, munitions, and, above all, men to supply the places of those who day by day were killed or mangled.[1] The Germans had had the luck to possess a considerable number of big siege guns intended for the frontier fortresses; these were now available for trench smashing with high explosive, a use no one had foreseen for them. The Allies throughout the first years were markedly inferior in their supply of big guns and ammunition, and their losses were steadily greater than the German. Mr. Asquith, the British Prime Minister, though a very fine practitioner in all the arts of Parliament, was wanting in creative ability; and it is probably due to the push and hustle of Mr. Lloyd George (who presently ousted him in December, 1916) and the clamour of the British press that this inferiority of supplies was eventually rectified.[2]
There was a tremendous German onslaught upon the French throughout the first half of 1916 round and about Verdun. The Germans suffered enormous losses and were held, after pushing in the French lines for some miles. The French losses were as great or greater. "Ils ne passeront pas" said and sang the French infantry—and kept their word.
The Eastern German front was more extended and less systematically entrenched than the Western. For a time the Russian armies continued to press westward in spite of the Tannenberg disaster. They conquered nearly the whole of Galicia from the Austrians, took Lemberg on September 2nd, 1914, and the great fortress of Przemysl on March 22nd, 1915. But after the Germans had failed to break the Western front of the Allies, and after an
- ↑ "The smart society of G. H. Q. was best seen at the Officers' Club at dinner-time. It was as much like musical comedy as any stage setting of war at the Gaiety. The band played rag-time and light music while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff officers, with their decorations and Army bands, and polished buttons and crossed swords, were waited upon by little W.A.A.C.s., with the G. H. Q. colours tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings under their short skirts, and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts of light-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets, of intrigues, and scandals in high places! Such callous-hearted courage when British soldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed, and shell-shocked in places that were far, so very far, from G. H. Q."—Phillip Gibbs, The Realities of War.
- ↑ But see Roch, Mr. Lloyd George and the War, and Arthur's Life of Lord Kitchener.
