Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 1918 WAR PATIENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 4 September 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 1918 WAR PATIENCE

The wav of the war has called often for a degree of patience it was, perhaps, difficult fo show. While this was so in this far off outpost, how much more so it must have been for those in Franco, and other sorely tired places of Europe. Before Marshal Foch’s decisive offensive at mid-July tile outlook was very lowering. All sorts of eventualities were possible and there was not a great deal of assurance that all would bo well. Anterior to the second battle of the Marne in July the situation on the western front was disturbing certainly. A press correspondent- writing from Paris in Juno last said that patience is the virtue above most others which the sorely' tried French need in these terrible days and patience is being preached, at the civilians in particular, by many writers. One of them in the Paris “Matin,” thus points his moral by reference to the enemy. “We deal no longer,” he says, “with battles of a day, but battles of a year. Victory belongs to him who knows how to wait. Let us not be inferior to our adversaries, who before us. have bad to and have known bow to wait. 1915 bad brought, them successes—and then followed their reverses in Russia and in France. They wore patient and they conquered Sorvia. 1910 gave them first a victory and then a definite cheek at Verdun. To some gains in Russia succeeded their sorrowful series the offensive of BrnssilofF and the Frenco-British victory on the Somme, they did not despair. Again they were patient, and they overwhelmed Roumania. In 1917 the balance oscillated once more. There was the German reply on the Somme. There were the hard struggles on the Aisne and in Flanders. Always the enemy endures. His tenacity persists. Tie repairs his griefs bv a victory in Italy. The battle of 1918 has just begun. The attacked fronts gives wav, and are reformed. It is a moving battle. If is concerned no longer with territory, but with two armies who must continue the struggle until one of them, crushed seeks mercy. Tho one that will be vanquished is the one which at a given moment has no more reserves. The rest does not matter. AVill it. be the German army or the army of the Allies? To-day the Germans have the superiority in numbers but the divisions they are throwing in regardless of the cost cannot be renewed indefinitely. The Allies have behind them a practically, inexhaustible, reservoir. A people numbering 100,000,000 have entered the lists. Its soldiers crossed the Atlantic by thousands. In a few months it will have redressed the. inferiority. In a few more months it- will have give.n us a crushing advantage. The last reserves are on our side. Victory is assured us if we can but wait. Hold on! Wait!. Final success is coming.” This advice symbolises tho new spirit of Franc.e, an unquenehod and unquenchable determination to fight on to the victorious end. The brilliance of Foch’s strategy has opened tho way to the final success. A New Zealand soldier writing to a friend locally put, the French spirit of hopefulness info ths following colonial expression of high resolve: “As for the war, I think the old Hun is doing his dash this year', and is certainly not making much of a success of it. I thing that when once our mob take the offensive properly they won’t stop till they finish.” The New Zealanders are endeavouring to fulfil this prophesy to the letter. They are going strong, and their great achievements in common with the Allied success generally is the reward for the patience shown, and the confidence in the prowess of the legions fighting si. resolutely for the safety of humanity.