LAND & WATER 
June 1-1, Kji; 
which may render all purely occidental calculation valueless, 
and that is the clement of uncertaint)- with regard to the 
situation upon the Eastern front. As it is, the negative effect 
of that situation has been serious. We saw in a former 
article to what an extraordinarily tenuous line it had per- 
mitted the encmv to reduce the troops watching thenorthern 
half of the Eastern front. He has left between the Pripet 
and the Baltic very little more than one man to every two 
yards, and even though his forces are necessarily more con- 
siderable in \'olhynia and Rouniania, the whole of the vast 
extent between the Black Sea and the Baltic is held by forces 
which, German, Austrian. Bulgarian and Turkish combined, are 
far less than the German forces upon the Franco- Belgian front 
alone. As things now stand we can still count, however, 
upon at least the continuation of tbat state of affairs. It has 
hurt us negatively, but there has not yet been any positive 
evil resulting frornit. not any calculable accession of strength 
to the enemy through the Eastern situation. 
For the rest the operation is universally admitted in private 
and pubUc accounts to be the most successful of its kind. All 
the tests of success in affairs of this sort can be applied and 
found to answer true. 
Take the chief test of all, co-ordination : The accurate 
timing of every movement worked better in this last offensi\e 
than it has ever worked before. Confusion iisually comes 
here, not in the reaching of the hrst objectives, but in the 
next steps to the second and the third. In this case all three 
steps went exactly according to the time-table. 
•The excellence of the air service was the most remarkble 
factor, perhaps, of all, Acurate and intense bombarding from 
the air of the enemy's aerodromes, of the nodal points in his 
communications.'and of his dumps, had immediately preceded 
the action and had cut the ner\es of the defence. 
The co-operation between the various arms, ])articularly 
the double co-operation between artillery and aircraft and 
and infantry and aircraft reached a perfection which it had 
not reached before. . 
The aircraft must also have the honour of having directly 
and completely checked the enemy's counter use of the same 
arm. This superb work of the Flying Corps was remarkable in 
one detail of capital impf)rtance, to wit, that the offensive 
aircraft so efficaciously covered the artillery machines that in 
live days not one artillery machine was lost. In other words, 
during all those five days the checking of the artillery fiie, 
wliich was the essential ]ireparation of the victory, could be 
conducted without interruption. 
Incidentally, the battle as a whole emphasises the now 
decisive importance of the air. Not of a command of the air. 
which is impossible, but of a permanent superiority in the air 
maintained throughout the course of a prolonged preparation 
and, as it were, acknowledged by the enemy. 
Granted a similar moral for land fighting, the product of 
a similar civilisation ; granted a common science (which all 
white nations have), then the production of artillery and of 
numitionmcnt for it, the training of infantry and their value 
in attack and defence, will be largely a matter numerically 
calculable,and also perhaps on the material side, a matter of 
access to raw material. 
But with the air you have factors which are not measurable 
and which at once differentiate between rival forces. National 
character will distinguish- -perhaps more and more as time 
goes on — between the races or nations which excel in the 
adventure of flying, in the rapidity and accuracy of tliis most 
rapid form of observation, and in the element of daring. 
It is a matter worthy of prolonged examination that this 
country should have been, as it has proved to be, the leader 
in a thing so novel, and that now as the third year of the 
(Jrcat War draws to its close, the superiority of the linglish- 
man over the German in the air should be so incontestably 
proved. 
The Turkish Strength and Its Disposition 
A depaitnient of the war which requires study, is the pro- 
bable strength of the Trkish aimy and its disposition. 
The four Allies who are our enemy in Eastern and South- 
eastern Europe are, in the main, watching. They have 
suffered no recent reverse. They are not in strength to attempt 
any present great movement. But the Turkish armies in Asia 
are not in this situation. One of them has suffered a severe 
reverse, and lost the political centre of Bagdad ; the other 
lias maintained a successful defence in front of (iaza ; a third 
finds its task in Armenia quite changed through the action 
of the Russian Revolution. 
We have, therefore, here great possibilities of movement 
and change. It has occurred to everyone that the new 
Russian situation might release considerable bodies of the 
enemy on the Armenian front for work elsewhere, and that 
therefore the two distant British forces, that on the edge of 
Palestine and that in Mesopotamia, may either of them meet 
in the near future with much stronger opposition than they 
have felt in the imnu'diate past. 
Whether this development will occur or no nothing can tell 
us but the event. Meanwhile, it is greatly to the purpos(^ to 
examine the probable situation of the Turkish armies as they 
were just before the successful advance through Mesopotamia 
and the Battle of Gaza. I say " probable," because there are 
many doubtful parts in the scheme. There has not, I believe, 
been a full identification of all the divisions, and there is a 
great deal of guess-work in the whole matter, but the general 
situation would seem to have been somewhat as follows : 
Though the Turkish divisions in the field were 
numbered up to 50 and perhajis just over 50, the cffectKe 
strength is believed to be equivalent to not more than 45 
divisions ; certain of the divisions with numbers below iifty 
having been broken up and used to repair other divisions 
which remain in being. Of these 45 divisions nine could be 
accoimted for in liurope. We may take it that these nine are 
still to the West of the Bosphorus. There is no sign of with- 
drawal of the two divisions in Galicia, of the divisions, in 
Macedonia, or of the divisions in Rouniania. 
This should leave some 36 divisions for the Asiatic business. 
Now the first thing to grasp with regard to these Asiatic 
armies is that they were disposed under the old state of affairs, 
before the Russian Revolution, in three main categories. 
These three main categories were : 
(i) Comparatively small forces operating at distant points ; 
guarding Palestine, sent against the revolted Arabs further 
south ; holding the front which co\'ered Bagdad ; operating 
in Persia. 
(2) A certain number of divisions kept in reserve right be- 
hind the armies in Syria and in the region of Diarbekir. 
(3) Far the most important, a large group of divisions 
preparing" for what was regarded as the the main military 
task, the resisting task of the expected coming pressure 
of the Russian armies based on Erzerum and Trebizond. 
Roughly S])eaking, these three groups were numerically — 
that is without regard to the quality of the various units — 
in the following proportion : 
llie first category, the armies actively operating against 
the British, and the revolted Arabs in Persia, etc., give us 13 
divisions all told. The reserve zvas oi about eight divisions. 
But not less than 15 divisions constituted the main force in 
Armenia facing the Russians. 
In other words of the total number of divisions at the 
disposal of the Turkish F-mpire in Asia, not less than 41 per 
cent, were necessary under the old conditions to the holding 
of the Armenian front, only 35 per cent, were accounted for 
by all the various fighting elsewhere, and the very con- 
siderable proportion of 22 per cent. — nearly a quiuter of the 
total forces — were kept back as a reserve mainly for the 
support of the anxiously watched line which was withstanding 
the Russian jircssure based on Erzerum and Trebizond. These 
round figures show us how overwhehning a factor in the situa- 
tion under the old conditions was the Russian advance from 
Armenia towards Anatolia, and everything, of course, turns 
now upon the extent to which this situation has been reversed, 
releasing at once troops from the Armenian front, and from 
the reserve which was kept mainly to reinforce that front. 
It is not without interest to go into the details of this 
organisation, although it has already pei haps been modified : 
The nine divisions which are still in Europe were made up 
of two divisions in Macedonia, .five in Roumania, and two 
(the 19th and 20th of the 15th corps) in Galicia. Of the 
remaining 3O in Asia, the great group in Armenia was formed 
thus : 
The Ilird army under Veliib Pasha consisted of two corps 
the nth and the 1st. But each of tjiese corps contained an 
abnormal number of divisions. Instead of the two divisions 
which are normal to a Continental Corps, the Turkish nth 
corps contained no less than four divisions and the first corps 
three. This llird army reposed its left uiwnthe Black Sea and 
stretched its right to opposite Erzinghan. The llnd army 
continued the line southward from the neighbourhood of 
lirzingham to that of BitUs, and was under the command of 
Izzet Pasha and consisted of four corps the 2nd, 4th, .— th ? 
and i6th Corps, each corps consisting of the normal two 
divisions and the Ilnd army, accounting for eight divisions. 
In Mesopotamia and Persia was the Vlth anny composed ol 
the two divisions of the 13th corps, acting in Persia and the 
three divisions of the i8th, which faced the British advance 
upon Bagdad. These five divisions were under Halil Pasha, 
I believe. Of the eight divisions of reserve, two were in the 
region of Diabekir, two in Anatolia, and perhaps fom- in 
Syria. The remaining eight divisions watching the Palestine 
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