MAKING WAR EASY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 383, 9 May 1908, Page 4

MAKING WAR EASY.

Not very long ago Mr H. W, Lucy told of meeting in an English country house a German officer who openly avowed that he was spying out the cuintry. No doubt it is difficult, if not impossible, to stop this kind of work by individual officers, but to a civilian mind it ought not to be possible for bands of foreign officers to hold staff rides in Jvngland. However, the war correspondent of the Daily Telegraph declares that it has been well-known for the last three years that foreign officers hold staff , rides in the Eastern counties, and make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the country through which a raiding force would probably seek to make its way. As tourists, and on staff rides, German officeis have been coming to England in increasing numbers of recent years. At first individual officers came, and spent a few weeks at places along the coast, taking b cycle rides into the interior. Then, seeing that the authorities did not mind, they came in groups, undertook staff rides, and carried out schemes of campaigns on English soil. Of course Germany is perfectly friendly, and according to after-dinner speeches by high personages, war between the two nations is out of the question, but it is very convenient to have all this information about one’s neighbour in the house. It is said that landowners have repeatedly warned the War Office of these happenings, hut nothing has been done. On the Continent it is very different. British officers who, unprovided with papers, seek to follow manoeuvres, are liable to be harassed and detained by the police. “ How many hours would it he, if a British officer with a friend or two, undertook a staff ride along the German frontier, before the police ran them in for conducting an unlawful enterprise ? Not many hours would elapse, as everybody who has travelled must know right well. . • . War is a costly game, at least as played by the United Kingdom, and it smacks of folly to make it too cheap for those who may look on without much sympathy when we are engaged at it, or themselves come in and take a hand.” Mr Haldane’s disposition to deride the whole thing is not shared by his best soldiers. But what is the Intelligence Department doing that it does not furnish overwhelming proof of this extraordinary state of things ?