January i8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
army was still compelled to exercise prudence and could 
not lay aside its harness. 
In the Balkans the object was achieved, but the 
strategic results were nil since no essential hostile force 
had been destroyed or could be. 
To these three points a fourth was added by the Italian 
front which had been opened up in the spring. In this 
region the Central Empires had envisaged no enterprise 
destructive or bent on conquest. The intention was 
purely defensive, and it was achieved. The adversary 
did not achieve his object. Nevertheless, the Central 
Empires suffered a relative loss of strength since they 
were obliged to oppose to a force that was entirely 
fresh and not the least exhausted, a portion of their 
own resources, to the prejudice of their destructive cam- 
paigns on the original and principal fronts. 
What change clid the campaign of 1916 effect in this 
general situation ? 
In the West, the German army attempted to resume, 
at Verdun, the operations which it had abandoned after 
its defeat at the Marne and its further defeat in Flanders. 
Not only did its attempt come to nothing, but the Allies 
opened a counter-offensive in Picardy and the German 
army was obliged to retire. 
In the East, the Russians also coimtcr-attackcd and 
there, too, in Volhynia, Galicia and the Bukovina, the 
Central Empires were compelled to retire. 
On the ItaUan front the operations were similar to those 
on the Western front. The Austro-Hungarians delivered 
an offensive in the Northern Trentino, planned wth a 
\iew to an ultimate decision. It was not achieved, and 
the It'dUans, momentarily driven from their positions, 
recovered the gi^eater part of them. At the same time 
they, too, attacked upon the Isonzo where the enemy 
M'as forced to retire towards Trieste. 
In Turkey in Asia the Russians defeated the Turks at 
Erzcrum and got possession of Armenia ; the English drove 
their assailants from the Suez Canal ; the Arabs raised 
the standard of revolt against Constantinople and the 
Ottoman success at Kut-el-Amara failed to give the 
victor any decisive advantage over the essential 
Allied forces. As a result of all these contributory 
facts the Central Empires forsook this theatre of 
operations. The battle front was withdrawn to the 
Balkans. There, too, the Allies compelled the German- 
Bulgarian forces to retire a little in Serbian Mace- 
donia. In Roumania the German-Bulgarian forces 
prevailed. 
To sum up, while at the end of 1915 the spectacle 
offered by the movements of all the armies was generally 
speaking, that of an Allied defensive against a Germanic 
offensive, the spectacle at the end of 1916, except on the 
Roumanian front, is that of a general Allied counter- 
offensive and a Germanic defensive with a compulsory, 
slow retirement in the regions of gi-eatest pressure. 
{To be coniitmed.) 
Alsace and the Rhine 
By Henry D. Davray 
FROM the industrial point of view, Alsace is 
by no means of less consequence than Lorraine, 
and it will be easily realized why Germany 
is no more wilHng to give it back to France than 
she is ready to relinquish the iron mines of the Moselle 
area. A short time before the Franco-Prussian War of 
1870, deposits of rock salt were discovered not far from 
Mulhouse, at a little place called Dornach, but a more 
important discovery was made furtlicr south, in the 
forest of Monncbruck, nearly at the foot oi the now famous 
Hartmansweilerkopf, when, in 1904, potash salts were 
found in layers that had a thickness of i6| feet. 
The proved deposits were estimated to an amount of 
over one million cubic yards, with a value of 
£2,400,000,000. With the abundant riches of potash 
salt at Stassfurt, near Magdeburg in Saxony, and of 
Leopoldshall in the Grand Duchy of Anhalt, Germany 
thus acquired an absolute monopoly for the production 
of ingi-edients which are the essential components 
in chemicals and above all in explosives. 
The entire potash area covers an expanse of 15 million 
square yards, and it has been estimated, on the basis of 
the average thickness of the layers, that the workable 
deposits amoimt to 1,300 million cubic yards. The 
available reserves represent a total of nearly 1,500 million 
tons containing 300 million tons of pure potash of a 
gross value of £2,400,000,000. All these estimates 
are only a rough minimum, as it may be that the deposits 
stretch out beyond the already proved area, and, on 
the basis of the present world consumption, the ex- 
traction of the potash salts might last for perhaps five 
centuries. These salts are an essential component 
part not only of explosives, but of all chemicals required 
for artificial fertilisers, for the manufacture of soap, 
matches, mirrors, potteries, for photographv, printing, 
pharmaceutics, etc. They are applicable to "a thousand 
uses in commerce. 
Lorraine with her coal and iron deposits and Alsace 
with her potash salts, have been powerfully helping 
Germany to rise to a leading position in the iron and 
chemical industries and to secure that industrial su- 
periority which fostered her faith in her power to attack 
her neighbours, to crush them quickly and to annex 
the new territories she had been coveting for years. 
In their secret petition to the Chancellor, on Mav 
20th, 1915, the six great industrial and agricultural 
associations of the German Empire lay stress on this fact : 
Coal is the most decisive means for exerting polit'cal 
influence. The industrial neutral States are compelled 
to submit to those of the belligerents who can provide . 
their supply of coal. 
Then after complaining that they cannot do it suffi- 
ciently at present, they add that even to-day they are 
obliged to resort to the production of Belgian coal " in 
order not to allow our neutral neighbours to fall com- 
pletely under the dependency of England." 
We have thus the irrefutable demonstration that the 
industrial, political and military strength of Germany 
is derived to an enormous extent from the possession 
of the territories extending from the left bank of tlie 
Rhine to the Belgian and French frontiers. The 
annexation of these territories has been the military 
goal pursued by the enemies of France for several cen- 
turies. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
Richelieu aimed at " closing the kingdom," by giving 
it its natural frontier, the Rhine. He succeeded in getting 
back Alsace and the Lorraine bishoprics : Metz, Toul and 
Verdun, whose people spoke French as they do to-day. 
Following the same policy, Louis 'XIV, pushed the 
French frontier forwards to the North and got a large 
part of Flanders and Hainault. In order to close the 
valleys of the Seine, the Marne and the Oise, which are 
the natural routes along which all invaders have come, 
the famous engineer Vauban built, from the Rhine 
to the North Sea, a formidable belt of fortresses which 
defended the valleys of the Moselle, the Meuse, the 
Sambre, the Lys and the Scheldt. Por a century, all 
attempts to break through this powerful rampart were 
futile. 
When, at the time of the Revolution, France had to 
face the coalition of her Eastern neighbours, the Con- 
vention gave the Republican Generals these simple 
instructions : " Remain on the defensi\-e wlierevcr 
France possesses natural frontiers : take the offensive 
wherever she has none." So well were these orders 
obeyed that in a few weeks the armies of the Republic 
had reached the Rhine all along its course. The Prussians, 
checked at Valmy, had beaten a hasty retreat, and, within 
a fortnight. General Custine, with 13,000 foot, 4,000 
horse and 40 guns had swept down the Rhine to Mayence 
bringing freedom and the rights of man to the bewildered 
populations. Meanwhile General Dumouriez conquered 
Belgium and Holland. The Swiss cantons of Basle 
and Porrentruy claimed their reunion to France, who 
had then, from Basle to its mouth, the Rhine as a frontier. 
In 1794, the King of Prussia signed a separate ])cace 
