The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20th, 1939. SHORT-WAR FALLACIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 64, 20 September 1939, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20th, 1939. SHORT-WAR FALLACIES

"Majesty.. Germany has lost the War!" These are the words that, "according- to wide report," Moltke, of the German High Command, uttered to the Kaiser on September 10, 1914, says the '"Post." In recording them in his history, Mr Winston Churchill points out that they constituted ''the rugged truth," whether uttered or not. To put this position in another way, thirty-eight days after Germany had declared war on France, the Battle of the Marne, plus the naval blockade, had made German victory impossible. Yet the War was fated to drag on for more than another four years. Extraodinary victories were won in that period by Germany and her allies, but in the long run availed them nothing. Neither did the submarine blockade. The Austro-German premise (a rapid runaway victory, followed by peace) had been shattered beyond repair in the first six weeks of 1914-1918. The same premise —fruitful and fateful cause of many wars—is being tested out to-day on the fields of Poland where three weeks have determined whether the short-war theory is tenable with regards to the Poles. And if it is not tenable, what then? Will Nazi Germany carry on as the successors of the beaten Moltke carried on, year after year? Or will the teaching of 1914-1918 find tardy acceptance?.. .Not even Dictators could sell war to their subjects except by the promise of a brief, easy, almost bloodless campaign, with a rich prize to be cheaply annexed. This promise broke down in 1914, but recently it has appeared to work in Austria (and in Czecho-ISlovakia. On the heroic Poles now rests the hopeless task of endeavouring to fight invaders on every front. The odds are overwhelming and once more the innocents seemed doomed to go down before brute force. But Poland has before her the heartening precedent of what happened to Servia a quarter of a century ago. However her martydom will not spell the short quick offensive promised the German people by their rulers. The western war is only beginning and bears promise of becoming an historical repetition of the four years epic struggle commenced in 1914. In July, 1914, as explained above, the war-party in Vienna, backed by Berlin, had sold war to their subjects on a glowing prospectus, which represented Servia as being swallowed at a gulp—no wider war, no bad after-effects. But within a week of Austria-Hung-ary's declaration of war (July 28) on Servia, Russia had mobilised; Germany had declared war on Russia (August 1) and on France (August 3); and Britain had declared war on Germany (August 4). And by the middle of September, 1914, the Austro-Hungarians had sustained firstclass defeats inflicted by the Servians in Servia and by the Russians in Galicia, while the Germans in France had lost the decisive Battle of the Marne, and their lightning victory in the West had vanished into thin air. Only a blind alley existed where the rapid road to glory had been.