April 5, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
•'9 
at all impossible for him to "refuse" — that is with- 
draw — the end of his line by Laon and still .to maintain 
himself. He would lose the advantage of the high and 
badly eut up and wooded ground upon whieh he had 
been depending, but he would still maintain hisj; hinge 
unbroken — though he would have withdrawji .'Jt for 
safety! He would at the same time lessen the sHajpness 
of his angle when his new line meets his old one. 
But in the matter of St. Ouentin it is otherwise. You 
must there h()Id the town if you can or lose the whole 
hne. It is no good merely retiring, for if you do'lhe whole 
line is bent. Of, course, he has ample local reserves. If 
he thinks his hew line so vital to all the rest of the war 
that the possession of it is worth great losses in men, he 
can counter-attack there, and save that line for a short 
time. But he is handicapped by two things : first, by 
the now patent fact that he miscalculated the rate of the 
pursuit and secondly, by the fact that he can never have 
intended the St. Quentin line to be permanent. That 
is, he had no intention of holding it until he might (as 
he hoped) call a " draw " at the end of the war. 
The St. Quentin line may be compared on a much 
larger scale to what the Bapaume Ridge was a month ago. 
He did not then think it worth while to lose a gfeat' num- 
ber of men in a last desperate effort to hold the 
Bapaume Ridge, though he certainly intended (as his 
quite recent works proved when the Allies reached 
them and could examine them in detail) to hold 
that ridge for some considerable time while he was 
retiring behind it. He was shot oft" it in spite of himself. 
He vras therefore compelled to his first retirement imd«i- 
.conditions more pressed than he desired. Now if Ive 
loses St. Ouentin, and with it the whole of the St. Quentin 
line, he will only be rejiieating this piece of misfortune 
\ipon a larger scale. Hfe* will be losing — with very 
great consequences iff-'-the necessity of a further much 
larger retirement — a line- which he intended to hold 
for some considerable time. It is for him to judge 
whether he will, in this his last year of full activity, use 
the men necessary to save that line. It is a dileuuna, 
for he does not know into what expenditure he may not 
be drawn, and he knows that everything lost here is lost 
for good — for his loss'ei of this year, 1917, can never be 
macle up. If he has prepared a great offensive elsewhere 
in the immediate future, he will perhaps, very un- 
willingly, sacrifice his St. Ouentin line tor fear of losing 
more in trying to hold it. If he plumps for holding it 
the Allies will make him pay a very heavy price, the 
extent of which he cannot now calculate. In either 
case he is suft'ering the initiative of his opponents. 
The Operation before Gaza 
The operation before Gaza has got a good deal con- 
fused in the public mind through the three versions 
re'cei\-ed and on account of the extreme bre\'ity of the 
despatches. With the exception of the all-important 
element of numbers, however, it would seem not difficult 
to appreciate the main lines of what happened. ' ' 
From Cairo fn Egypt up into Syria the main road of 
tra\el goes, and has always gone, along the sea coast, past 
Kl Arish through Rata and so up to the considerable body 
of water— just now in full depth— which runs down from 
the Southern hills of Palestine through the \-allev of 
Beersheba to the Mediterranean sea, which it enters near 
a small elevation called "The Calf's Hill." Thisiody of 
water is known as the "River of Gaza" or '| Wady 
(iuzzeh,"from the town of Gaza just to the north of it, 
about five or six miles away. And Gaza, which! is the 
. first spot of real green in the edge pi the desert, standing 
on and around a hill about 100 feet high and once probably 
a port, but now three miles from the sea,4s and has always 
been the (iate of Syria. 
It is the meeting place and market of the desert on the 
one hand and fertile Syria upon the other. The threat 
to and attack against the Turkish power in Syria, the 
advance against the Turkish forces there (which is the 
action continually complementary to the twin action far to 
the East up the Tigris valley) caii only be conducted from 
the Egyptian base by the use of aii advancing railway 
to supply the British force, the railhead was already 
nearing this first great obstacle on the road, the river of 
(laza, when Sir Charles J)obell determined to seize that 
obstacle in order to cover the advance of the railway. 
On the morning, of Mondav last,.. March 26th, the 
operation of seizing the ri\er niouth and the place where 
'Mediterranean 
Sea 
■JifiUS 
Ml. 
;hcha- 
'^Oir-es-5eba) 
/ JLajii BecLtL 
the main road crosses it, was determined upon. But a 
dense fog coming up frorti the sea prevented active 
operations. When these became possible in the late 
alternoon of that Monday (when the fog lifted) it was 
found that the river was not held ; but tliat the Turkish 
forces imder a German Commander by the name of Kress 
stood between it and the tov('n of Gaza. These forces were 
at once engaged, though under great difficulties, because 
the only water supply available at the moment was 
what each man could carr^r^with him. The enemy would 
appear to have retired towards Gaza before the Britisii 
attack and it was probably the division forming his 
rearguard which was destroyed : for losses amounting to 
8,000 are the equivalent of destruction to a division 
which was presumably far from full strength and which also 
lost its whole staff and commanding General Officer. 
The iinpossibility of further advance, which coiisisted in 
the lateness of the hour and in the difficulty of water 
supply, forbade an attack upon Gaza itself. The ad\anced 
bodies of the British dug themselves m south of the town. 
On the morning of the next day, Tuesday, the 27th, the 
Turks violently attacked these trenches and were every- 
where repelled with heavy losses. But on the morrow, 
Wednesday the 28th, the infantry of the advanced British 
force ',was withdrawn to the northern bank of the river, 
of \vhich it remained in possession. Probably they were 
so withdrawn for the sake of water. The cavalry remained 
in touch with the Turkish troops just in front of Gaza 
and the Turks showed no disposition to attack again. 
The total British loss in killed was 400. The total num- 
ber of prisoners taken was 950, including the Divisional 
General and his whole staff, as well as certain pieces 
including two Austrian howitzers. Small bodies amounting 
in dlf to something less than 200 men have been returned 
as missing, and the General in Command presumes in this 
last dispatch that these were probably detached portions 
which fought their way in to Gaza itself and were cut off. 
Meanwhile the interest of the operation lies in the fact 
that it shows us how far the railway for operations 
against Syracuse has ad\'anced and at the same time 
what a threat is now directed against the railway to 
Beersheba from the North. 
Beersheba was the enemy's railhead and principal base 
for his attacks on the Suez Canal. It is certain from 
the present position of the British forces on the Syrian 
front that this railhead will have to be abandoned. 
In order to avoid the rough moorland foothills of the 
great limestone plateau which forms the Holy Land, and 
overlook the Philistine Plain on which Gaza stands (this 
mobrland of foothills is what has been known as the 
" Shephalah ") the railway has had to make a great elbow 
westward and is thus within easy striking distance 
of the British force in its present position, for there can 
be no continuously held entrenched' position to cover it. 
H. Belloc. 
