THE FLANDERS STRUGGLE.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1918, Page 4

THE FLANDERS STRUGGLE.

AN AMERICAN VIEW.

New York, Oct 19. Mr Frank Simouds, in a review of the military situation, writes in

tlie New York Tribune on “the larger meaning” of the British offensive. He says : We are seeing the slow but sure decay of one of the great .military machines of human history, but the very greatness of its power and its fame blinds 11s now to the truth of

its present condition, just as the Napoleonic legend long took in a Europe accustomed to Napoleonic victories won by veterans of revolution even when Napoleon was facing veteran troops with ill-trained

youths after his great lieutenants and best soldiers had perished in the victories between Marengo and Moscow.

When there was next to nothing left of the army in Northern Virginia hut its magnificent reputation it still seemed invincible to the doubters in the North.

The greatest single service of the British at Ypres is the demonstration they are giving to the world of

the decline of German moral and German might. We are still under the shadow of our old fears and our apprehensions, which were just three years ago and two years ago, hut now are childish. The Flanders battle is one of the decisive battles of the war, just as the series of struggles in 1864 were sure forerunners of the Confederate collapse. This is what the Flanders battle means.