STRUGGLE FOR VICTORY.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 9 March 1916, Page 3

STRUGGLE FOR VICTORY.

PEACE AND DOLLARS

EARLY in the war the Bulletin had a suspicion that when the little misunderstanding was cleared up it would be found there were 15 Kaisers. Later intelligence indicates that this was a conservative estimate. There cannot be fewer than 20. Consider what we have heard about him during the last month: He was in a bad temper; he had a cold in the head ; he was having a row with Yon Tirpitz ; he had, variously, a sore throat, enlarged tonsils, a pimple somewhere or othei, cancer of the larynx, influenza; he had been operated oil and was at the last gasp ; had not been operated on and was taking exercise as usual; was very ill and quite well; was unable to take any nourishment, but fed with the Imperial Chancellor. Now, as all these things cannot happen to one person at the same time there is overwhelming testimony in favour of the 20-Kaiser theory. Also that theory gives us some justification for swallowiny holus-bolus all. the yarns, stories, predictions, perjuries, guesses and estimates that drift along from day to day about the Kaiser, the condition of Germany, the situation generally, and what is going to happen next if something else doesn't occur meanwhile. Incidentally all this talk about the Kaiser suggests that -we find it much more comforting to think of his ills than of. our own shortcomings. It is time we changed all that,, and realised that the allies will derive more profit from bashing, the enemy than from bothering about his bread card or his frame of mind. The essential point is that the German has to be heaved out from where he is. He has not been heaved; and until he is heaved he remains unbeaten and powerful for evil. Moreover, definite information about what the British Navy is doing is of far more importance thaja indefinite news about what the German outfit isn't doing. Apparently John Bull, though having a strangle-hold on the German is not exerting it to the full extent, out of deference for Uncle Sam's trade with Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland And as an enormous volume of this is going round the corner to the Hun, the suspicion, arises that Britain's naval arm* is not helping to suffocate the German with as much enthusiasm as the circumstances demand. Of course the howls of Brother Jonathan and Johannsen and Sveborg and the rest would be fearful to listen to if Britain started real suffocation, but these could at a pinch be accepted with more resignation than the knowledge that Fritz is getting sausages from Chicago. News dribbles along the Bear continuing to leap on the enemy, of marching and countermarching in the Balkans, of the Montenegrins being chased along the skyline, of battles raging somewhere near the place Adam and Eve called home. But for us it all means very little except that the later movements of the Germans have, not xbeen held up and that the end as a long way off. All of which maketh glad the heart of the benevolent neutral of whose feelings we must be so careful and filleth his cash-box.