The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, January 9, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1345, 9 January 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, January 9, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Tint question of German losses must necessarily be largely a matter of mere speculation until the war is over, for the official lists are being issued in such a way as to render anything like accurate computation impossible. On the subject of the wastage of the German Army, Mr Hilaire Belloc contributed an interesting article to Land and Water, in which he gives an estimate based upon the casualty lists of the Prussian Army alone, issued up till the middle of September, We must read bis conclusions in the light of the additional fighting that has taken place since be wrote. As regards the numbers actually killed and missing, Mr Belloc accepts the lists as substantially accurate for the Prussian Army, which represents some 60 per cent, or so of the whole ; but he considers, and gives good grounds for his view, that they under-rale the number of wounded by counting only those very seriously hurt, while they make no allowance for those thrown out of the line by fatigue or muscular rheumatism, from which both the armies are suffering terribly. Moreover, the lists do not include the cosualties of the battle of the Marne, since when the losses of an army which has continually made violent attacks in trench warfare must have been very heavy, Mr Belloc finally concludes—after careful calculation —that Germany’s wastage in loss, wounded and missing must be put at over a million aiid three-quarters up to the first week in November, losses which until a week or so prior to that “have fallen in the main upon the trained troops of the enemy, and with especial severity upon his body of officers.’’ This, Mr Belloc states, “is the chief military feature of the struggle at the present moment, that, in a service peculiarly dependent upon cadres, certainly a third of the officers have by this time disappeared.”

A “British Mother” in a letter appealing for recruits in the Auckland Herald says; “Do our young men give one thought to the dife disaster threatening our Mother Country and our colonies ? I hardly think so, else, why are our streets full of men ol military age ? Are the men afraid to go and face the enemy and to fight tor the further existence of our great nation ? Some, we know, leel ashamed to have to remain, hut to those who have health and are able to go but shirk their duty, to those I quote the words spoken by Demosthenes to the Athenians in the dark days of Greece : ‘Go yourselves, every man of you, and stand in the ranks, and either a victory beyond all victories in Its glory awaits you, or, falling, you shall tall greatly and worthy of your past.’ We women glory in the courage of our brave men.”

Since the war broke out there has been a great demaud for the works of Treitscbke, Nietzsche and Beruhardi. To the great majority of Englishmen, Treitscbke, despite the immense influence he has had upon modern German thought, has, up till now, been a closed book. The war, however, has led to the translation of his works into English, and in “Treitscbke; His Life and Works” we are given an insight into the life of this remarkable German professor, whose teachings have permeated the whole German people. In his essay on ‘ The Army,” he tells us that “not only the life ot man, but also the right and natural emotions of his inmost soul, his whole ego, are to be sacrificed to a great patriotic ideal; ’ and “herein lies the moral magnificence of war.” To do away with war would be to cripple human nature. No liberty can exist without armed force, ready to sacrifice itself for the sake of freedom. A State which cultivates its mental powers at the expense of its physical ones cannot fail to go to ruin. War brings to light, he goes on to say, all that a nation has collected in secret. It is not an essential part of the nature of armies to be always fighting ; the noiseless labour of armament goes on equally in time of peace. The entire value of the work done for Prussia by Frederick William I. did not appear until the days of Frederick the Great, when the tremendous force which bad been slowly collecting suddenly revealed itself to the world at large. The same waa true of the year iB6O. And had Treitsehke lived he might have added the same is true of the year 1914. In writing on International Law,” he has a law for peace time and a law for war time. It is legitimate, he says, to carry on war in the most drastic manner, the ultimate aim -=• P eace ,TT W 1 thus be established as speedily as possible. “First, therefore, pierce the enemy to the heart. ~ e subject of spies, w'e read ; we all know that in modern national warfare every gallant subject is a

spy.” Turning to the essay on "Freedom,” we are informed that nowhere is the tolerance of different opinions so much at home as with the Germans, "We learnt it in the bard school of those re : ligious wars which this nation fought for the salvation of the whole of humanity. Ours, too, is the noblest blessing of inward freedom; beautiful moderation.” And what of England ? Treitchke says : " England’s commercial supremacy had its origin in the discords on the Continent, and owing to her brilliant successes, which were often gained without a struggle, there has grown up in the English people a spirit of arrogance, for which Chauvinism is too mild a term.”

Thk loss of the Formidable is now admitted officially to have been due to German torpedoes, fired by a submarine. She is the first battleship so destroyed. The list ot British vessels which have succumbed to submarine attacks so far aie : sth September, Pathfinder (cruiser) ; 22nd September, Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue (armoured cruisers) ; 10th October, Hawke (cruiser) ; 31st October, Hermes (cruiser); 12th November, Niger (gunboat); Ist January, Formidable (battleship). This is a total of eight vessels in five months, and not a first-class ship is among them.