THE GERMAN MIND

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2681, 29 January 1916, Page 3

THE GERMAN MIND

'AN AMERICAN ANALYSIS,

Under tie heading, "Imperial Psychology," a striking editorial article appeared in. the "New York Times" of October 30, dealing with.'the AustroGerman venture in the Balkans.

"The German mind," says tha "New f York Times," "is no more to be ne- | glected than the German.'stomach.' It | requires to be nourished. The drama- | t.ic interest in war must be sustained, j The eye of popular imagination must 1 not be allowed to roll at will about tho | horizon, as it does in England. Hope ' must be focussed.. "War, as a proving picture, must preoccupy the mind outwardly, and save it from -falling in upon itself. When the drama takes a wrong turn, or when it ceases altogether, another film must be snapped on in the place of the one that has turned out to be disappointing. Thus the mass imagination of Germany- has been officially fixed, now upon this picture and then upon that. the first film was the capture of. Paris—'unfinished. The next film was the crushing of tho Slav—unfinished. Another was the mastery of the sea by submarine—unfinished. : "The picture now running is tho union of. Europe and Asia through a Turco-German corridor. The enthusiaSiiv of th~e people-for it is in proportion to their previous.disappointments. . It is extravagant. That is what au Imperial Department of War Psychology is for... .... If the. German imagination were not preoccupied with pictures and. phrases tlie {truth might' be perceived that, although-. Germany '-fright lose the whole . war in. this Balkan' adventure', she cannot-win; it' there.-_- In Russia she lias lost momentum, and. lias a dangerous- lino to defend. On. August 2 the German armies, took Mitau, 25 miles from the important Baltic port of Riga, the fall of which then seemed foregone and imminent. It has not fallen yet. Five weeks ago the Bus-, eian army eluded the triangular trap prepared for it at V ilna-, and fell back upon Dvinsk. That was, perhaps, to Germany the most terrible disappointment of the war, bo far. . .Her armies proceeded then to take Dvinsk, which commands the railroads to both' Riga and Petrograd, and they are taking it still. That is on the East. "On the West, what was gained by the September drive of. tho . AngloFrench forces has not been recovered. Jn tho meantime control of the Baltic Sea appears, to have been lost. English submarines now occupy it, and are destroying the only commerce that suivived between Germany and the;world —namely, that with the Scandinavian countries. ' "Those are pictures to broo upon. The German mind must be saved from that. The Balkan campaign is a wonderful distraction. It is a, high piece of strategy also. The Allies, to resist it, have ,to put forth an amount of energy vastly greater than the Germans put-into their offensive'/ To transport an army around Europe by 6ea, land it on tho Balkan Peninsula, move it many' miles through difficult territory, and bv single railway lines, to meet an enemy that has only to cross the Danube River into Serbia—that demands more than man for man, and involves great risks on tho part of tlio Allies. Therefore tho Germans were tactically very shrewd to open a theatre hi which their advantages were so great. But those are not the tactics of the Germany that bewail tho war. It is tho strategy of a fighter who spars for time, after having failed in threo main attempts to destroy his enemy. The Allies could lose the Balkans without losing the war. This only the Imperial Government knows in Germany. Proof that it knows is that it talks obliquely of iaca."