HINDENBURG'S BOOK

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 166, 9 April 1920, Page 7

HINDENBURG'S BOOK

c "THE GERMAN THE LORD OF THE BATTLEFIELD" TRIBUTE TO THE COLONIAL TROOPS By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Rec. April 8, 11.10 p.m.) London, April 7. .Von Hindenburg's book, "Out of My Life," is mainly concerned with the operations on the East front, where he was Commander-in-Chief till 1916. He tak-s the Junker view that England was mainly blamable owing to commercial jealousy, but says the war was also duo to French Chauvinism and Russian greel. He regards the German as iho lord of the battlefield, though he admits a great deterioration in later years. The French were, he says, better fighters thai the English, and their artillery was responsible for the worst crises. The elite of the English army were the m-lo-ni \1 trcops. Tho Americans were bravo but. unskilfully led. Hindenburg pays an indirect tribute to the Australians in justifying Germany's assistance to Turkey because they thus "kep''. a hundred thousand of the finest enemy troops away from the European fronts." He mentions the Villers-Bre-tonneux reverse as filially destroying the hopes of a decisive victory. Finally he regards tho attack on August 8, as Luderdorff did, as "Germany's <lay of doom." Hindenburg says: "This was our first great disaster, from which, there was no recovery." .

Tie book concludes with a stirring call to young Germany to prepare for the future— Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.