HINDENBURG's LATEST MOVE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 75, 23 December 1918, Page 4

HINDENBURG's LATEST MOVE

Whatever its actual significance may be, the message in which von Hindenburg is quoted as intimating that he proposes to establish a new front half a dozen miles behind the neutral zone cannot be taken to mean that Germany is about to resume hostilities. Assuming that the will existed, such a resumption is .definitely beyond her power. The terms in which the message is cast are a little puzzling, for it is not easy to see what object Hindenburg would serve by establishing a military front in the region indicated, about a dozen miles east of the Rhine. The conditions which preclude a renewal of hostilities by are not, however, in any respect in doubt. As compared with the day on .which she sought terms she is poorer by the loss or her fighting fleet ami submarines, a very larg_e part of her artillery and munitions, ■ road transport, railway rolling stock, aeroplanes, and accumulated stocks of food. In addition the Allies are in full possession of the three most important railway crossings over the Ehine, and hold in each case a bridgehead with a iadius of about 19 miles east of that river. Even if no account is taken of her internal political upheavals, it is sufficiently evident that Germany is helpless at the feet of the Allied armies. When fuller, information is afforded it will no doubt appear that Hindendurg's action is directed to the, suppression of the Bolshevik elements which are striving to gain as complete a control as similar elements gained in Russia. One of to-day's messages states that Hindenburg is associated with Ebert, head of the Provisional Government, and Scheidemann, the leader of the Majority Socialists, in a counter-revolutionary plot. At the same time Mr. Dosch Fleurot sends the news from Borlin that during the past five days that city has' been filled with returning troops, fully armed, who are in no mood to trifle with the Bolshevik elements. It ishardly in doubt that these messages indicate Hindenburg's real objective.