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CURRENT HISTORY

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

OCTOBER, 1916

THE WAR: MILITARY PHASES

New Aspects of the Conflict THE outstanding events of the last

month were the declaration of war by Italy against Germany, the entrance of Rumania on the side of the Allies, and the practical surrender by King Constantine of Greek sovereignty to the Allies.

The importance of Rumania's decision lies not only in the fresh troops she supplies and opening the gates which heretofore have barred the Russians from Bulgaria and Hungary, but in the moral influence of her action on the neutrals. The Rumanian statesmen from the very beginning have been closely watching the situation; they have had access to the fullest and most secret information; moreover, they have been in a position to observe critically and thoroughly at first hand the march of events, and have not hesitated to confess frankly that if they yielded their neutrality it would be to take sides with the forces which Rumania was convinced would win. Now that they have unsheathed the sword and aligned themselves against the Teutons, Bulgarians, and Turks, the act serves notice to the neutral world that the most formidable uncommitted nation of Europe after two years of investigation feels sure that the cause of the Central Powers is lost.

The action of Greece implies practically the same conclusion. King Constantine undoubtedly intended to maintain neutrality, though the sympathies of his consort and of the entire royal entourage were decidedly pro-German. The FROM THE LIBRARY OF J. H. RYCKMAN

deathblow to his prestige came when the Bulgarians invaded Greek soil and occupied Greek fortresses. A flame of indignation swept over Greece, revolutionary parties were formed in Thessaly and Macedonia, and some garrisons were forced to yield their forts to the revolutionists. Finally, when Bulgaria seized the important port of Kavala, the allied powers saw their opportunity; a large fleet was assembled at Piraeus, and instant demand was made that the posts and telegraph be turned over to the Allies, and that German propagandist agents be expelled from Greece. These demands were at once complied with, and the Allies are now practically administering Grecian affairs. The Zaimis Cabinet has tendered its resignation, and Nikolas Kalogeropoulos, a distinguished Greek lawyer friend of Venizelos, has formed a new Cabinet. The voice of ex-Premier Venizelos is paramount. The elections will be held in October. If they go, as is confidently expected, in favor of Venizelos, the King will face the alternative of abdicating or formally joining the Allies.

Italy's declaration of war against Germany simply gives the formal and final touch to the dissolution of the Triple Alliance and commits Italy irrevocably to a policy hostile to the aims of the Central Powers. She has been practically at war with Germany since her declaration against Austria in May, 1915, but the formal declaration late in August last has political significance, and may have influenced the final decision of Rumania.

Military Developments

HE first impression following the Ru

Stormy Days for Premier Tisza

manian action was that it meant the RUMANIA'S entry into the war caused

THE

early ending of the war, but this opinion gradually altered, and within two weeks it was generally noted that as her enemies multiplied, Germany's backbone stiffened. The grandiose structure of Pan Germanism was shaken, however; the problem of the Central Powers had become one of keeping their empires intact, and to this end they were prepared to fight with desperation, and to expend the uttermost farthing and the last ablebodied man in their realms if necessary.

"The nippers are gripping." The ring of steel begins at Riga and now extends southward in an unbroken line through Transylvania, Macedonia, lower Hungary, Trent, Tyrol, Alsace-Lorraine, Western France, and Flanders, to Ostend and Antwerp. It is being contracted each day, but very slowly, and if this pressure can be resisted as effectually as at present, many months must yet elapse before German soil is reached.

The Rumanians have suffered severe territorial losses on their southeastern border-lands which Bulgaria has long sought-but have advanced with the Russians in Transylvania and Bulgaria. The full manoeuvre of the Rumanian-Russian campaign is not yet defined. The Allies have begun a serious upward pressure from Saloniki, and have already reconquered some Serbian territory. The Italians are making progress, driving for Trieste, the Trentino and Tyrol. The French have the advantage at Verdun, and are gradually recovering the outlying fortresses they lost there. On the Somme the Anglo-French offensive is blasting its way through the German trenches, gaining a few thousand yards every few days, but the Allies have not been able to break the German lines, and at their present rate of progress will be unable before Winter to bend them back far enough to flank them and drive the enemy out of France; but backward the Germans are moving, surely if slowly; it is clear that, unless new forces can be levied and new instruments of warfare introduced, they must in the end be forced to their own frontiers.

the sudden collapse of the recently patched-up peace between the Hungarian Government Party, led by Premier Tisza, and the four groups forming the Opposition, led by Counts Michael Karolyi, Albert Apponyi, Julius Andrassy, and Stephan Rakovski. The Opposition attacked the Premier fiercely for the failure of the Foreign Office to avert Rumania's participation on the side of the Entente Powers, for the advance of the Rumanians into Transylvania, and for the critical food situation in Hungary. Scenes of great excitement were enacted at the session of the Hungarian Diet on Sept. 5 and at subsequent sessions. The Premier was greeted by the Opposition forces with shouts of "Resign!" ExPremier Andrassy urged a change in leadership in view of the serious position in which the country found itself. Premier Tisza, however, showed no disposition to retire. Meanwhile the Bulgaro-German invasion of Rumania in the Dobrudja district lessened somewhat the vigor of the Opposition's attacks. The leaders even expressed themselves to the effect that the adding to the Cabinet of some Ministers without portfolios from their own ranks would satisfy the Opposition. The latter scored a victory on Sept. 13 in the withdrawal from the Government Party of Count Bela Serenyi and his resignation from the office of Minister of Agriculture. The political situation in Hungary is so dependent upon the position of the army that there is certain to follow a political crisis in case of further Russo-Rumanian successes across the Carpathians.

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10,000,000 out of Hungary's 20,000,000 population, then tried to dominate the Slavs and Rumanians within the boundaries of Hungary-and these include Croatia and Slavonia-disfranchising them and dictating to them in many ways. This treatment by the recently liberated Magyars of the Rumanian element in Transylvania was given by the Rumanian Government as one of its chief reasons for entering the war on the side opposed to Austria-Hungary.

Yet Hungary's position is exceptionally hard: though practically an independent kingdom, she has no independent army, practically no control over the valiant and hard fighting Hungarian regiments in the Austrian Imperial Army. According to the agreement, (the Ausgleich of 1867,) which binds the two parts of the Dual Monarchy together, there is only one War Ministry in the empire, that at Vienna, and it is practically beyond the control of the Budapest Parliament. Hence the sharp discontent in the Magyar capital; Hungary sees her eastern provinces given up to the Rumanian invader, knows that there are many valiant Hungarian regiments who might have fought to keep that invader back, but is unable to send them to the frontier passes. They have already been dispersed along other fronts, nominally by the Vienna War Ministry, but really by the Great General Staff of Germany, in accordance with German, not with Hungarian needs and strategy. After keen discontent, a compromise has been reached at Budapest, under which the critics of the Opposition have agreed not to quarrel under the enemy's guns.

The Forces of the Hellenic Armies

RUMANIA, with a population of about

8,000,000, affirms that she will be able to put 800,000 men of all arms into the field, in furtherance of her national ambition for a Larger Rumania of 12,000,000 souls. Even if her armies lose heavily, the nation, should it be success

ful, will greatly gain. Greece had, before the two Balkan wars, a population of 2,600,000; these wars gave her new territories with a population only slightly less, so that, in 1914, she counted some

four and a half millions; about equal to the population of Ireland, with about the same area. If she is able to do as well as Rumania promises to do, she will be able to put into battle something over 400,000 men, or, let us say, ten army corps.

We may reach about the same result in another way. Each belligerent nation which had universal military service has been able to put into the field an army six or seven times as numerous as her peace army, by drawing on all reserves. But Greece has a peace army of 60,000; six times that number will give us 360,000; seven times that number gives 420,000-much the same result as before. Since military service in Greece is compulsory and universal, with very few exemptions, practically every man in Greece above the age of 20 has had a full military training, and has been trained well. The Greek service rifle is the Mannlicher-Schoenauer; the field artillery is armed with Schneider-Canet guns, very similar to the famous French "75." As for leadership, King Constantine, whose courage was questioned in the disastrous war against Turkey in 1897, showed himself in the Balkan wars of 1912-3 a soldier of considerable force and skill. And, as incentive in this war for nationality, there are still large colonies of "unredeemed" Greeks at many points throughout the Turkish Empire, notably in the splendid historic territories of Ionia, facing Greece across the Aegean Sea.

The new Greek Premier, who organized a Cabinet on Sept. 16, is Nikolas Kalogeropoulos, one of the cleverest lawyers of Greece. He holds the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Paris. He is regarded as friendly to Venizelos, and though he announces that Greece will maintain "benevolent neutrality" toward the Allies, it is believed this cannot continue long.

A Lost Italian Dreadnought USELESS and needless to speculate

on the cause of the loss of a fine Italian dreadnought named in honor of the most universal genius of Italy, Leonardo de Vinci, reported to have sunk in

the harbor of Taranto under the instep of the Italian boot. The cause is obscure.

The fact of the loss remains.

This fine battleship was one of a group laid down from 1909 to 1912, six in number, and several of them bearing splendid historic names: Dante Alighieri, Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare, (Julius Caesar,) Leonardo da Vinci, Duilio, and Andrea Doria-named for the authors of works as various as the Divine Comedy, the Commentaries on the Gallic War, and United Italy. Two of these ships, the poet and the statesman, displace 19,000 tons and carry a primary armament of twelve 12-inch guns; the other four were built to displace 21,500 tons each, and to carry thirteen 12-inch guns; among these is the Taranto wreck.

Italy began, in 1914, a group of still larger battleships, four in number, to be called the Cristoforo Colombo, the M. Colonna, the F. Morosini, the Carracciolo. These new ships were to displace 28,000 tons, excelled by only two ships in the British Navy, the battle cruisers Queen Mary and Tiger, the first of which went down at the battle of Jutland; equaled, in the German Navy, by the battle cruiser Derfflinger, by the Lützow, likewise sunk in the battle of Jutland, and perhaps by two or three new ships, one called after Field Marshal von Hindenburg. The four Italian superdreadnoughts were designed to carry a primary armament of eight 15-inch guns, a stronger primary battery, it would seem, than any in the United States Navy, though paralleled by all the newer British and some of the newer German ships. But Italy has always had a liking for the biggest guns. She was said at one time to have primary batteries of 17-inch guns on some of her warships, and it was said that these were the biggest calibre guns ever mounted on shipboard. But just what stage of completion the Cristoforo Colombo and "her" three sister ships have reached, it would be difficult to say. By the way, is it not, to say the least, an odd fact in nomenclature, that Dante and Caesar, George Washington and Kaiser Wilhelm are all spoken of as "she " when their names are given to ships?

Germany's and England's Losses in Men

IN the month of July, 1916, the Germans

lost 121,824 men, divided as follows: Killed, 21,196; died of sickness, 2,062; missing, 15,334; severely wounded, 17,807; wounded, 5,654; slightly wounded, 50,157; wounded but remaining with units, 9,614. The total German losses, exclusive of colonial forces, from August, 1914, to August, 1916, are 3,135,177, of whom 784,400 were killed or died of wounds or sickness, 357,617 missing and prisoners, and 425,175 severely wounded.

In August, 1916, the British lost in killed, wounded, and missing 4,711 officers and 123,234 men. In the first two years of the war the British casualty list of officers alone aggregated 41,219. Up to Jan. 28, 1916, the British losses of men were 525,345. No cumulative list of losses of men since that time has been published, but, assuming that the ratio of losses of officers to men has remained constant, the number of men killed, wounded, and missing in the twenty-four months is about 1,000,000.

The Munitions Miracle

THE miracle wrought in the produc

tion of munitions in England is reported by the Minister of Munitions as follows: The output which before the war took an entire year to produce is now turned out in periods as follows: Eighteen-pounders, 3 weeks; field howitzers, 2 weeks; medium-sized shells, 11 days; heavy shells, 4 days. The monthly output of guns has been increased twelve fold over the pre-war production, machine guns fourteen fold, rifles three fold, small-arms ammunition three fold, high explosives sixty-six fold, and trench bombs, thirty-three fold. In one week of the western offensive the British consumed more light ammunition than was produced in eleven months before the war, while all the heavy ammunition manufactured in eleven months before the war would not have met the requirements of the army in Picardy and Flanders for a single day. Today 2,250,000 persons are employed in England as munition workers, of whom 400,000 are

women.

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