WHERE GERMANY HAS FAILED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1335, 10 December 1914, Page 3

WHERE GERMANY HAS FAILED.

(By W. H. Fitchett.)

By arrangement with the publisher of Dr Fitchett’s new shilling book, “The First Three Months of the War,” we publish this article by Dr Fitchett on Germany’s failure. : Germany is, by the agreed judgment of the civilised world, responsible for the war. It could have arrested it at its birth with a word, it could stop it now almost with a gesture. Austria, though it began the struggle, and in mere numbers is the greater of the two Powers against whom the rest of the world is fighting, is hardly remembered. The whole issue of the war is bound up in the fortunes of Germany; and the logic of events shows that Germany is suffering defeat. In mere slaughter it must have suffered greater loss, many times over, than any of the other Powers, Many things make this certain. The fact that it is fighting on two fronts, its method of attacking in close and solid masses, and the indifference of its leaders to the loss ot life in the rank and file—all help to make this certain. Mr Hilaire Belloc estimates that the German armies alone have lost 1,750,000 men in killed, wounded, and missing—a rate of loss exceeding 100,000 —a whole army, that is—for every week of the war ! How can a Power maintain the struggle when its very blood is being drained awav in such a volume ? WHERE GERMANY HAS BROKEN DOWN. It is possible to condense into half-a-dozen sentences the things in which Germany has visibly failed : (1) She chose the pretext, and the moment, for the war with such bad judgment that it failed to bring in Italy as an ally, and so split up the Triple Alliance. Germany was thus left with Austria alone described by popular judgment in Germany itself as “a corpse on Germany’s back” —to contend with France, Russia, Great Britain, Belgium, Servia, Japan —to say nothing of Montenegro and Portugal. (2) For the sake of gaining a few days in time by marching her troops across Belgium, Germany paid the terrific price of war with England on land and sea. Then she threw away the lime she had gained at this cost by the blunder of her method iu attacking Liege. (3) She failed in her stroke at Paris, the point to which her whole strategy was directed. As a result she had to retreat, is now fighting on two fronts at once, has lost the initiative on both, and is threatened with invasion on both. This is all she has achieved at a cost in killed and wounded estimated at 1,750,000 ; or nearly ten times the whole cost of the war of 1870. (4) Germany called out its last line —the Landsturm —iu the first week of the war. It has already, that is, put every available man iu the field. But Russia and Great Britain have vast resources yet untouched.

(5) Germany has put herself in quarrel with the moral sense of the world by the revelation of the principles on which she acts in public affairs, her contempt for treaties, and the fact that her own pledge does not bind her. Her treatment of Belgium has arrayed the human conscience itself against her.

It is to be noted that the experts, almost without exception, regard Germany’s defeat as certain. We take some American opinions, as they cannot be suspected of bias: “A Germany,” says Mr Frederick Palmer, “which has got only to Amiens by September ist—the day set tor the fall of Paris—is a losing Germany ; a Germany that by October ist has not taken Paris and demoralised the French army unless the Austrians defeat the Russians, is a beaten Germany,” “Even if the outcome of the battle of the Aisne is as favourable to Germany as it is permitted for her most ardent sympathisers to hope,” says Mr Arthur Bullard, the war correspondent of the “Outlook,” “I cannot see that there is any chance of Germany’s winning in the long run. Her one chance was in the ‘dashing attack.’ There was no German writer, military or economic, who 'before the war saw any other hope of German success. A sudden, smashing blow to Fiance was the sine qua non , ‘This dashing attack’ has not come off as planned. . Both in economics and military arithmetic the number of men in the field time is Germany’s worst enemy ; it is Russia’s best friend. And I believe the time Germany has already lost is fatal.” Any reader who wishes to get a clear-eyed view of the war cannot do better than secure a copy of Dr Fitchett’s new shilling book, “The First Three Months of the War” from which this article is quoted, i/i in stamps, sent to T. Shaw Fitchett, 376 Swanston Street, Melbourne, will bring a copy bv return post.