HOW THE WAR WILL END.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 July 1917, Page 4

HOW THE WAR WILL END.

AMERICAN REVELATIONS AND A FORECAST.

“Hear the other side as well,” says the Latin proverb. This sage counsel is peculiarly apt in comparing the realities of the present German situation on the western front with the embarrassed explanations offered to the German public by the Great General Staff. Last autumn, after the Allies had driven the Hun clean out of his great line of defences on the Somme, Mr H B. Swope, special correspondent of the New York World, was in Germany; and he made profitable use of his time in interviewing a number of German military heads on the German situation on the western front.

Lieutenant-General Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven repeated the parrot-cry that'the Allies would “ never break through,” expressed the belief that the Germans would lose “ a few more villages,” but declared that at the rate the French and British were advancing it would take them ” about eight years -to drive the Germans out of h ranee. General von Kirchbach, commanding one of the armies of the gronp of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, spoke to the same effect as General von Freytag. He had lost Ginchy on the day on which this truly intrepid American reporterfaced him, and therefore declared with the greater assurance that the Allies “will never come through.”

An old German quartermaster who had fought on the 'eastern as well as the western froirt said to Mr Swope : “ I’d face twenty infantry attacks from the Russians rather than bring up food to the first lines here. Their (i.e., the British) artillery fire makes it hell. TWO BRITISH AIRMEN. Mr Swope gives an interesting account of how he intervened successfully on behah of two British airmen, Lieutenant Ronald Walker, of March Rectory, Cambridgeshire, aiid Lieutenant C. Smith, of Ceme-tery-road, Yoi*k, who were captured in possession, it is alleged, of incendiary bullets for use against hostile aeroplanes. The commandant oi Cambrai prison, in giving Mr Swope permission to speak to the prisoners, said he might tell them they were to be court-martiSlled and would probably be shot. More humane than this bloody-minded bully, Mr Swope did not impart this interesting information to the captives but instead communicated with Ambassador. Gerard, who atonce took steps to have the English men represented by counsel at their trial. Mr Swope adds'that befbre leaving Germany lie was told that even if the two airmen were tried it was'highly improbable that they would be executed. Mr Swope was immensely impressed by the haughty defiance of the FreiicE towards the German invader in the occupied territory. “In captive France,”' he says, “ there are no young men, and the opposition of the people to their subjugation, though unspoken and unacted, is a flame, and I felt its strength and depth.” The Germans, says Mr Swope, who writes throughout this vivid book as one who is obviously impressed iby Germany’s colossal strength, want peace, but a German peace. They know cannot win; they are likewise convinced that they cannot be defeated. They built largely on the hopes oi a separate peace with Russia based on German infiuencp in the Russian empire under the Romanoffs. German intrigues with Russia were so far' successful that in September 1916, the American author says, there was a meetingat Stockholm between secret emissaries from Russia and German}-to discuss the situation. As for the liberalisation of Germany, Mr Swope thinks it is inevitably coming, and before long, whatever is said to the contrary. And events in Russia, which the author could not foresee at the moment of writing, will certainly expedite the incubation of democra. y iu the Empire of the Hohenzollerns.