tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6519665561624985779.post791093806794872311..comments2024-03-28T11:44:50.425-07:00Comments on The Mad Padre's Wargames Page: Diplomacy Game: Fall 1904 Move ResultsMad Padrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00410143683610813671noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6519665561624985779.post-81732833978741894482014-11-10T12:36:40.115-08:002014-11-10T12:36:40.115-08:00A War on Two Fronts! Why?
A commentary by Genera...A War on Two Fronts! Why?<br /><br />A commentary by General Sir Erasmus Blatt, geo-political and military correspondent for the Rioters News Agency.<br /><br />In my last epistle to the Daily Dissembler, I predicted great events in the Mediterranean - and I could not have been more right. Hostilities have broken out between Italy and the Porte, but they have not redounded to Italy's advantage. Stymied in the Balkans, of which the Sultan is now the absolute master, the Peninsular Kingdom now finds its major naval port occupied by a sea-borne Turkish Army, its Tunisia fleet cut off, Rome threatened, and the Adriatic sea lying open.<br /><br />Whence is Italy to find help? Not from France, that much is clear, for, without warning, Italy has taken from the Republic its sole Mediterranean naval base. That enables Italy to expand its forces (in Rome for certain, though whether fleet or army, indications are as yet unclear).<br /><br />Why has Italy embarked upon a two-front war, with never a reliable ally upon whom to call? Possibly Italy had reason to fear the revival of ancient Turkish ambitions in Europe, and sought to get in his strikes early. That Turkey has long harboured such schemes is now apparent. Italy was right to fear them. But how that squares with the latter's gratuitous attack upon France is hard to fathom.<br /><br />Possibly it has more to do with the strange inertia shown by the Republic in the last twelvemonth or so. Was Italy seeking a more substantive aid that was not forthcoming? What is that fleet doing in the Western Med? Well, one can imagine what its likely next mission will be - supposing it is not scuttled, withal, during the winter months!<br /><br />Waking up in the North, France's attempted crossing of the Upper Rhine into Bavaria has been rebuffed with almost contemptuous ease by a Wehrmacht yet capable of striking hard blows in defence. We might have suggested that a broader front approach, a parallel invasion of the Ruhr from Belgium, would at least have established a bridgehead into German territory from which Munich could have been taken with few difficulties. But the Army in Belgium received orders of an altogether different import.<br /><br />Are we seeing now the first cracks in what has hitherto been the adamantine Detente between the Republic and the Island Kingdom? Has France seriously to apprehend an Anglo-Saxon descent upon the low countries in its possession? England proved during 1905 to have kept faith, but now France has opened up the possibility that the Detente is approaching its end. This will not have passed by the notice of British High Command. That France must disband a unit, and England has the capacity to build one leads one to suppose that the latter will have much the less to apprehend from the schism.<br /><br />That England and Turkey are operating in tandem has now been confirmed by events - their recent combined operations to keep the Czar out of his capital. With the capacity for the commissioning of three units during the winter of 1905-6, the Sultan is emerging as a very powerful potentate indeed. <br /><br />Turkey has but one serious rival for pan-European hegemony at this juncture, and that rival is its ally. Russia is going under completely, Germany eking out a postponement of its eventual dissolution, Austria-Hungary consigned to the dustbin of History. France is paying the penalty for tarrying too long over its non-interventionist policy (if policy it were), and, though initially successful, Italy finds itself in a two-front war with just broken reeds by which it might save itself from an inundation.<br /><br />Nevertheless, it is not unknown for the New Year to bring forth entire new developments and relationships. Anno Domini Nineteen-hundred and oh-six promises to be another year of great events.<br /><br />This day, 1 January 1906Archduke Piccolohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15533325665451889661noreply@blogger.com