Sir W. Robertson and Victory.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 23 October 1917, Page 4

Sir W. Robertson and Victory.

NATIONAL FIBRE THE DECIDING FACTOR. LONDON, Aug. 0. Sir "William Robertson, Chief of tlie Imperial General Stall', in conversation with a correspondent of the "New York Times," said. - ' —• When people asked about the destruction of the German defensive in the field and hinted that it eoidd not be destroyed, they forgot the difference between IS< 1-1 -uhl I!)I7. Three years ago we had our backs to the Germans and were retreating, French and British together, close 1o l'aris, with few guns and many casualties. To-da,v we were away to the north, facing north. We were millions where before we had been thousands. We had driven the enemy before us, we had taken positions which he regarded as matters of life and death, and our guns were hammering him now as lie had never been hammered before. It was too early to say that the defensive in modern warfare was impregnable. Let us wait a few weeks. Some one had got to give way in this conflict. It the nations of the Allies were steadfast, submission must come sooner or later from the Central Towers. Quality and characler were going lo win this war. Adverting to the entry of the United States into the -war, Sir William Robertson said that the Germans affected to feel contempt for the Americans and their participation in the war, but this was due to the urgent anxiety of the Higher Command that the ivill of their own people should not break in this struggle of national tenacities. When a nation, like the United States, of a hundred million people, invenlive, resourceful, courageous .ranged itself on the side of democratic Towers -which were absolutely determined to go hammering autocratic militarism until the world was safe for democracy, the end was certain. America, moreover, should hasten the end. That was tlie crowning mercy of her appearance on the battlefield. She had begun splendidly. She was solemnly earnest, and when she struck her hardest it would be with the supreme object of saving the world for democracy and Europe from further death. "You are confident of the end 1 ?" asked the correspondent. "Who could doubt it and live?" the General replied. But once more he affirmed that it was the fibre, the grit, the nerve of the civilian people that would decide, not only this war, but the future of the world. The Germans had discipline in their blood. All those millions had been forged into a sword for a King. But there was a still more formidable discipiline, the self-imposed discipline of { a free people. What could be more mag- | nificent than the spectacle which Amerf ica presented to mankind, a vast free | democracy imposing upon itself the reI straints and vigours of discipline? This I meant, at this moment, as much to the spirit of this struggle as later its effects would mean to the final grip.—Reuter.