The New Year of 1915 opened gently along the battle front in France below Arras. The first large movement in 1915 began on January 8, at Soissons. This city lies on both banks of the river Aisne and was in the possession of the French. The French forces attacked during a drenching rain, pushing up the rising ground to the north with their heavy guns, regardless of the soft ground which rapidly turned to deep mud and slush. They succeeded in carrying the first line of German trenches on a front a mile wide, thus gaining the top of the hill, which gave them an excellent position for their artillery. The next day the Germans counterattacked, but failed to dislodge the French.
Nothing occurred on Sunday, January 10, 1915, but on Monday, about noon, January 11, the Germans came on with great force. The delay on the part of the Germans was due to their awaiting reenforcements then on the road to Soissons. For four days there had been a steady downpour of rain which had not even stopped at this time. The River Aisne was much swollen and some of the bridges had been carried away, cutting off all supplies for the French, who were slowly giving way but fighting desperately.
On January 12, 1915, and on the 13th the French were driven down the slopes in a great rush. This predicament was a terrible one—the onrushing Germans 500 feet in front of them and the swollen river making successful retreat impossible, with the ground between almost impassable with mud and slush. French reserves had improvised a pontoon bridge across the Aisne at Missy, in the rear of their now precarious position. This bridge was just strong enough to carry the men and ammunition; but not the heavy guns. The retreat turned into a rout—a general stampede for the bridge and river.
The slaughter was terrible, the river swollen as it was seemed choked with floating soldiers. The few who safely got across the bridge and those who were successful in reaching the farther bank of the Aisne alive, reached Soissons eventually. The German gain in prisoners and booty was enormous and their gain in ground advanced their line a full mile, on a front extending five miles to Missy and a little beyond. The Germans strongly intrenched their new position without loss of time.
Farther along this front, in the neighborhood of Perthes, a less important engagement took place. The Germans, under General von Einem, opposed General Langle de Cary and his French forces. The results of this engagement were negligible.
On January 18, 1915, a savage attack by the Germans was successfully repulsed at Tracy-le-Val and on the 19th the French made an assault upon the German position at St. Mihiél, in the Verdun section without gaining any ground. Farther north on this section the French pressed on and gained a little ground near the German fortress Metz; but the very vicinity of this fortress counterbalanced this gain.
On January 21, 1915, the Germans recaptured the Le Prêtre woods near St. Mihiél, and next day the belligerents fought a fierce engagement in the Vosges without advantage to either side. Prince Eitel, the second son of the Kaiser, commanded an attack upon Thann in Alsace on January 25, 1915, but was repulsed by the French defenders.
On January 28, 1915, the Germans made some gains in the Vosges and in Upper Alsace, but in their attempt to cross the River Aisne on the 29th they were unsuccessful.
January 30, 1915, brought some successes to the Germans in the Argonne forest, where throughout the month the most savage fighting was going on in thick underbrush and from tree tops.
PART II—NAVAL OPERATIONS
CHAPTER XXXII
STRENGTH OF THE RIVAL NAVIES
Sea fights, sea raids, and the hourly expectation of a great naval battle—a struggle for the control of the seas between modern armadas—held the attention of the world during the first six months of the Great War. These, with the adventures of the Emden in the waters of the Far East, the first naval fight off Helgoland, the fight off the western coast of South America, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the exploits of the submarines—held the world in constant expectancy and threatened to involve neutral nations, thus causing a collapse of world trade and dragging all the peoples of the earth into the maelstrom of war.
This chapter will review the navies as they gather for action. It will follow them through the tense moments on shipboard—the days of watching and waiting like huge sea dogs tugging at the leash. Interspersed are heroic adventures which have added new tales of valor to the epics of the sea.
The naval history of the great European conflict begins, not with the first of the series of declarations of war, but with the preliminary preparations. The appointment of Admiral von Tirpitz as Secretary of State in Germany in 1898 is the first decisive movement. It was in that year that the first rival to England as mistress of the world's seas, since the days of the Spanish Armada, peeped over the horizon. Two years before the beginning of the present century, Von Tirpitz organized a campaign, the object of which was to make Germany's navy as strong as her military arm. A law passed at that time created the present German fleet; supplementary laws passed in 1900 and 1906 through the Reichstag by this former plowboy caused the German navy to be taken seriously, not only by Germans but by the rest of the world. England, jealous of her sea power, then began her maintenance of two ships for each one of her rival's. Germany answered by laying more keels, till the ratio stood three to two, instead of two to one.
Two years before the firing of the pistol shot at Sarajevo, which precipitated the Great War, the British admiralty announced that henceforth the British naval base in the Mediterranean would be Gibraltar instead of Malta. Conjectures were made as to the significance of this move; it might have meant that England had found the pace too great and had deliberately decided to abandon her dominance of the eastern Mediterranean; or that Gibraltar had been secretly reequipped as a naval base. What it did mean was learned when the French Minister of Marine announced in the following September that the entire naval strength of France would thereafter be concentrated in the Mediterranean. This was the first concrete action of the entente cordiale—the British navy, in the event of war, was to guard the British home waters and the northern ports of France; the French navy was to guard the Mediterranean, protecting French ports as well as French and British shipping from "the Gib" to the Suez.
What was the comparative strength of these naval combinations when the war started?
From her latest superdreadnoughts down to her auxiliary ships, such as those used for hospital purposes, oil carrying and repairing, England had a total of 674 vessels. Without consideration of ages and types this total means nothing, and it is therefore necessary to examine her naval strength in detail. She had nine battleships of 14,000 tons displacement each, built between 1895 and 1898—the Magnificent, Majestic, Prince George, Jupiter, Cæsar, Mars, Illustrious, Hannibal, and Victorious—with engines developing 12,000 horsepower that sent them through the water at 17.5 knots, protected with from nine to fourteen inches of armor, and prepared to inflict damage on an enemy with torpedoes shot from under and above the water, and with four 12-inch guns, twelve 6-inch guns, sixteen 3-inch guns, and twenty guns of smaller caliber but of quicker firing possibilities.
Her next class was that of the Canopus—the Goliath, Vengeance, Ocean, Albion, and Glory—2,000 tons lighter than the first class named above, but more modern in equipment and construction, having been built between the years 1900 and 1902. Their motive power was heavier, being 13,500 horsepower, and their speed was almost a knot faster. Increase in the power of naval guns had made unnecessary any increase in the thickness of their armor, and consequently ranged from 6 to 12 inches in thickness. Their armament was about the same as that of the older class, but each carried two more torpedo tubes.