HOW LONG ?

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2345, 30 December 1914, Page 6

HOW LONG ?

POSSIBLE DURATION OF THE . WAR PKEDICIIONS OF FAMOUS MEN Many attempts have been madei to predict the possible duration of the war. \ The Kaiser himself told his soldiers that it would be over before, the winter set in, or "before, the leaves begin to fall 1" That was when the advance on Paris had not beon checked, and the plan of the great German General Staif was working out with mathematical accuracy.' ... • ,/.--' In , England there lias been a pretty general prediction that Christmas would Bee the end of the fighting; while, on : the other hand, wo have had Lord Kitchener's reference to'- a '."threeyears' war." Since'that statement was made ' there lias J been nothing to lead us to alter, the opinion that Lord Kitc'hener knew what .he was preparing for, unless it was Mr. Asquith's statement, made some little time ago, to the effect that the .war may not last as long as was originally thought. Mr. Winston' Churchill has gone so far as to predict that the completioin of Lord Kitchener's army of a million men would "turn the scale and decide the issue"; but that does not take us very far.

Germany has to be beaten, and anyone .who thoroughly appreciates what Germany Btands for is very dubious in predicting a long-drawn-out struggle that may'run into four or five years. Exhaustion of' Reserves, . . Lieutenant-Colonel Roiistam Bek, writing in the London "Daily Express," thinks that the war will end when Ger-. many has used up all her available men. He holds that once she uses up -'her strategic reserves Germany is nearihg • the end. In this connection he says she has started to do this, and goes'on: "I do not want to say that Germany, has sent all her able-bodied men to the front. There is plenty of German male population in the country; but that all the-soldiers are at present on the battlefields, and that the . strategic re- A serves nave already been touched, is an absoute trutH. Oie must remember that the strategic reserves cannot be replenished once they are expended. So that if both Germany's armies be seriously defeated now on each front, we could consider that we have' dealt with the whole German army/including' its strategic reserve, or, in other words, that we have won the war." Two "Six-Months'" Advooates.^ Admiral Sir, E. E. Fremantle is of the opinion that no war can last long in Europe under present conditions. At the outset he was of the opinion that the war would not last' more than six months. Now he thinks, if. the' Allies are determined to break Germany ,and get rid of the German menace for all timo, that fighting may drag out until the middle of 1915. ' Major-General Sir Alfred . Turner, K.C.8., thinks that the war will last atleast six month's, even longer. -He does not hold that -the Germans can be worn down before' April. Ho will not for a moment admit that there is the possibility of it going on for two or . three years, for he says : "I think the immense' and ever-increasing economic pressure precludes the possibility of such a duration." No Light Task. Lord Curzon, of Kedleston, eaye:— "We are in for no, light or easy or soonterminable campaign. 'I am shocked when I read in the papers that some people are of the opinion that this war will be over by Christmas, arid that our soldiers will then be returning home. "In my judgment more ; than one Christmas will pass before the soldiers return home. We are fighting an enemy of desperate courage, :or immense tenacity, of great power in artillery, greater than anything dreamt of in the world before, and inspired by a national spirit quite as keen as .our own. Th<j whole German people seem to be inoculated with the poison which has been poured into their brains by the German philosophers. "We, in this country, should not flatter ourselves that there will be division betweeii the German Emperor and the people, or the war party and the peace party. Germany is .united, and we must realise that we have to fight tho whole nation."