VON HINDENBURG SPEAKS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 742, 3 February 1915, Page 2

VON HINDENBURG SPEAKS.

It is rare that a Commander-in-Chief talks in advance of a campaign upon which he ib entering. Yet that is what General von Hindenburg, commanding the main German armies in the Eastern frontier condescended to do to a representative of the Neue Free Presse just as the last German advance towards Warsaw was beginning.

GenerEl von Hindenburg was characterisically frank. He pointed out the virtues of the enemy as well as their shortcomings, outlined vaguely his plan of campaign, and mentioned certain external factors upon which German success depended. "The Russians are good soldiers," he said. "They have discipline; and in the long run discipline decides a campaign. "But Russian discipline is somewhat different from German and AustroHungarian discipline.. In our armies it is the result of spirit and moral; in the Russian army it is rather the product of dumb, stupid obedience. "The Russians learned much from the war with Japan; their Btrength is in field fortifications; they understand it splendidly—digging themsel/es in. Our soldiers, however, have now learned the art, too. "But there will soon be an end of entrenching, when the earth is frozen hard. That is one of the advantages that a winter campaign will afford ub against the Russians. When they can no longer sneak under ground, it will go ill with the Russians. "As for the Russia superiority in numbers, we need scarcely worry about that. "Superiority in Btrength does belong to the Russians; it is their principal weapon. At Tannenburg —the scene of the Russian defeat in East Prussia they were three to one against us. Everyone knows what avail it was to them. Superior force is not decisive; in actual war it is leas so than formerly. The Russians will not flatten us out; un the contrary, they are Boft Btuff. "All the Bigns go to show that they will soon be in a state for us to attack them. Weapons and munitions are beginning to fail them. Thby are starving. Their very officers are short of food. Moreover, the country Buffers from famine. Lodz is starving. It is pitiful; yet it is good that it is so. Sentimentality has no place in war. War must be conducted without mercy, and the more merciless it is in practice, the sooner is the war brought to an end. It is observable from the way in whicfo the Rusiaans are fighting that they cannot keep it up much longer. In Russian Poland a coal famine prevails, because we hold and occupy the Russian coalfields.

"I do not know whether St. Petersburg gets its coal from Russian Poland, but when the harbours in the Baltic are frozen how will they be able to import coal from England? "The war with Russia jb actually and above all a question of nerve. A General Staff must have no nerves; a nervous General Staff would infect a whole army. If Germany and AustriaHungary have the strongest nerves and can stick it out —and we must have strong nerves and must see it through—then shall we win." The general added that the chief purpose of the previous advance upon the Vistula and Ivangorod had been to destroy the railways leading to Warsaw. That had been successfully done. Their restoration would be a matter of weeks and "that was our plan."