World War

On Nov. 2I, 1914, Basra was captured, but the rising stream of Turkish reinforcements compelled the Indian Government to add a second division. The Turkish attacks in the spring of 1915 were repulsed, and the British commander, Gen. Nixon, judged it wise to expand his footing, for greater security. Townshend's division was pushed up the Tigris to Amara, gaining a brilliant little victory, and the other division up the Euphrates to Nasiriya. Southern Mesopotamia was a vast alluvial plain, roadless and railless, in which these two great rivers formed the only chan nels of communication. Thus a hold on Amara and Nasiriya covered the oilfields; but Nixon and the Indian Government, in spired by these successes, decided to push forward to Kut-al Amara, a move which was 18o m. further into the interior but had a partial military justification in the fact that at Kut the Shatt-el-Hai, issuing from the Tigris, formed a link with the Euphrates by which Turkish reserves might be transferred from one river line to the other.

Townshend was sent forward in August, defeated the Turks near Kut, and his cavalry carried the pursuit to Aziziya, half way to Baghdad. Enthusiasm spread to the home Government, anxious for a moral counterpoise to their other failures, and Nixon received permission for Townshend to press on to Baghdad. But after an indecisive battle at Ctesiphon, the growing superiority of the Turkish strength compelled Townshend to retreat to Kut. Here, isolated far from help, he was urged to remain, as several fresh divisions were being sent to Mesopotamia. Kut was in vested by the Turks on Dec. 8, 1915, and the relieving forces battered in vain against the Turkish lines covering the approach on either bank of the Tigris. The conditions were bad, the com munications worse, the generalship faulty, and at last on April 29, 1916, Kut was forced to surrender. However unsound the strategy which despatched Townshend on this adventure, it is just to emphasize that the actual achievements of his small force in face of superior numbers, with inadequate equipment and primitive communications, and utterly isolated in the heart of an enemy country, wrote a glorious page of British history. When these handicaps are compared with the four to one superiority in number, and highly organized supply system of the force which ultimately took Baghdad, the comparison explains the awe in which Townshend and his men were held by the Turks.

The Home Front 1915.

Perhaps one of the most significant landmarks of the transition of the struggle from a "military" to a "national" war was the formation of a National Ministry in Britain which occurred in May 1915. For the prototype of

Parliaments to abandon the deep-rooted party system and pool the direction of the war was proof of the psychological upheaval of traditions. The Liberal prime minister, Asquith, remained, but the real lead began to pass insensibly into other hands, notably those of Lloyd George. Churchill, whose vision had saved the menace to the Channel ports and made possible the future key to the deadlock, was sheaved, -as already had been Haldane, the creator of the expeditionary force.

Political changes were general in all countries, and were symp tomatic of a readjustment of popular outlook. The early fervour had disappeared and been replaced by a dogged determination which, if natural to the British, was in strange contradiction to popular, if superficial, conceptions of the French temperament.

Economically, the strain had yet to be felt severely by any country. Finance had shown an unexpected power of accommo dation, and neither the blockade nor the submarine campaign had seriously affected the food supply. If Germany was begin ning to suffer some shortage, her people had more tangible omens of success to fortify their resolution than had their enemies.

Verdun, 1916.

In 1914 the centre of gravity of the World War had been on the Western front, in 1915 it shifted to the Eastern front, and in 1916 once more moved back to France. Although the Entente had dissipated some of their strength in Salonika and Mesopotamia, the rising tide of England's new armies and of her munition supplies promised the power for an effort far larger in scale than before to break the trench dead lock. Measures had also been taken to keep these new divisions up to strength. By the end of 1915 the British force in France had risen to 36 divisions through the entry into the field of "Kitchener's Army," as well as of the territorial divisions. Although the principle of voluntary enlistment had not yet been abandoned, the method was systematized and based on a na tional register. This scheme, launched in Oct. 1915, under the aegis of Lord Derby, aimed to reconcile the demands of the army with the needs of industry, calling up men by groups as they were wanted, and taking single men first. But the response among the latter was not adequate to preserve this graduated principle and in Jan. 1916, by the Military Service Act, the volun tary system—system is hardly the correct term—was replaced by conscription.