WHEN THE END MAY BE EXPECTED.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 227, 17 November 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHEN THE END MAY BE EXPECTED.

By H. G. WELLS.

London, Sept. 16. In my recent journey along the front from the Adriatic to Arras • found no question more abundantly discussed than the question when tho war will end.

.My. friend, Captain Loyson, of tho French army, makes me declare that I pledged my reputation as a prophet that the war would end next June. The opinion I txpressed in the glow of Lovson's festivities was that the Germans will make a public official bid for peace before the year is out, probably in November, and that the Allies will get tho peace they want by June. Since then an interviewer induced General Brussiloff to say that we shall get our peace in August, which exactly fits Lord Kitchener's opinion of a three years wa'r. My opinion, however, has an authoiity, behind it i'most as good as General Brussiloff. ;t. is not by any means merely mine. Now, what ate the main factors i this calculation? Upon the eastern, western. Italian, and Balkan fronts th.s Central Powers are being beaten. Thero may be temporary set-backs, but the broad fact remains. One cannot go near the fronts and doubt it. On the Somme 1 have seen it with my own eyes. The Geimans there aiv entirly baten in the air. They have lost the advantage of ground along tin whole front of the Sum me offensive. They have been shoved out of lines they prepared and strengthened for nice than a year and a half, and are back amidst inferior defences They arc often now in hastily-made earth trenches. Their officers, as well as the men, are dispirited and surrender readily. Their artillery is now overmastered, and, while the Allies hf>ve their aer )- planes as eyes, the Geiman guns are blind. Also thov are outmunitioned. BASED ON MINIMUM TERMS. This, mind you, is upon a front oi their maximum strength and effort. What is happening upon the otlm fronts the maps and the tales of prison, ers tell.

The calculation of the end of the war is really on a calculation of how Ion,; it will take before the Germans will accept the minimum terms the Allies will concede. The calculation of when they will propose pence, however, is m more difficult one. The Germans are fighting for the terms they have been after ever since the battle of the Alarne. They are fighting in the hope something will happen —some peace movement in the United States, some trouble between the Allies and the neutrals, some dissension among the Allies —that will save them from the minimum terms upon which the Allies insist. ALLIES' CERTAIN DEMANDS. Whether this is likely to be, here, at any rate, are some items that seem imperative to me. 1 take it that the Allies will insist on : For Belgium, restoration, indemnity, and a rectified frontier; for France, Alsace-Lorraine and free navigation of the Rhine; for Russia. Constantinople and Armenia; a dismemberment ol Austria in the interests of Italy. Routnania, Poland, and Jugoslava, and the cession of Germany's lost colonies.

I do not think the Allied Powers n.v disposed to concede easier terms than that. Nor is this all that will satisfy them.

My list omits various points of great interest and importance. It says nothing about the security of Britain st sea, compensation for sunken shipping, Poland, Bohemia, nor Bulgaria, but tlie.se issues need not detain us in a calculation so sketchy as the one we arc making. HOPE FOR ACCIDENT. These aic, so to speak, collateral questions. They will bo settled in ;• parallel manner at about the same pa.-e as tho others. And none of these points will be settlel to the satisfaction of the Allies until certain military ends are achieved Germany will cling to the hope of some showy, temporary success or some accident that will bring abo.it neutral intervention to save her from the full measure of tho consequences she challenged in August, 1914. This year the Centr:! Powers have made three snatches at such temporary successes. They concentrated enormous efforts upon single points, points upon which it was unnatural to expect such concentrations, not in tho hope of changing the ultimate destinies of the war, but of snatching an arguable advantage. They have made three great lunges —the tirst year of the war; the Verdui offensive the second yeir, and the muca weaker Trentuio offensive; and in the third year is the .Silistria offensive, perhaps the last attack of all.

None of these thrusts has altered the fact that the German defences on the great main fronts, east and west, ire crumbling, bending, and approaching the point of rupture. The moment • t rupture on the west cannot come muc:i later than November.

Now I argue that Germany will almost certainly make her first offer before that first rupture comes and wliil? she can still claim to hold Belgium and a largo piece of industrial France. She will, with her eye on America, offer f trade Belgium and some inadequate compensation in theo ccupied districts of France and iri Alsace, but not ill of Lorraine, for the return of her te - enies.

She will seem in that way to give France much siie wants and desires, while giving nothing to England, less than nothing to Russia, and will hope that this will produce dissension among the Allies. .She counts (juito wrongly upon certain fatigue in France. She judges other countries by her own psychology. She cannot understand that the Frenchman is neither knave nor fool nor faint heart.

She probably will also make some quite large offer to Italy—lstria an 1 Dalmatia, for example—complicated bv conditions calculated to produce trouble between the Italian and the Siav. She will also make a proposil about Poland planned to make friction between American and western libera! ideas on the one hand and Russia on

the other. This i.s her obvious course, but 1 am (onvineed that all the Allies know their Germany too well for these schemes to succeed, and the theory that America can be fooled by sham reasonableness is unsound. I infer that the Allies will not halt their attack while engaged in rejecting these suggestions. I think there may be a sort of Dutch auction of the Gorman proposals as 1!)17 opens. Hut 1 do not think that, until Sofia has been called off. until the I'iiviaus ;>ve actually in Constantino- • r- French and English in Lor-

1.-: ne, ibe Italians over the Julian Alps, at: ! the eastern Allies near Vi- . hi,a Germany will come down to the ! ■ k of the terms we must have I " t 'Ties my computation well or. I.i '• -<t year, and involves the spring i.uupa .in. I believe, the German western front very ne-ar giving now. They are taking great risks. Tho.ro may be no end of

prepared positions behind the present line, but they have little else besides prepared positions. They have no grej-L reserves of men or stuffs. Their actu: I strength is now all in the lin\ They may be clever enough to get bat-K presently to the second line of tho Meuse, say, and hold that for a time, but every day a declining moral.? makes such withdrawal more difficult for them.

The present system of offensive, as it has tie on developed by the innate military genius and systematic instincts of the French, supported by our magnificent infantry, is bound ultimately to go through any line the German; cam put up. We certainly eight months from the time the west front breaks will be on German soil, and the Russians coming through Varna and Trebizond, are not, I reckon, eight months from Constanta, nople. In eight months the Italian? may have gnawed their way through the mountains to Innsbruck, and wii! also be near Lalbach in the east Trieste is theirs for the taking. Sofi l in eight months' time will either Lo occupied by the Allies or at peace. I submit that this is a. reasonablo horoscope so far as the military aspects RO- Why I think Brtissiloff made an over-cautious estimate is because 1 have just seen the French and English, tho guns, air work, and German prisoners on the Somme front.

There make lie unexpected accidents that may produce delays and modifications. The British have to do very amateurish things—l use the words in their worst sense. There has been no stringent weeding out of second rate commanders, and so there are still risks of some amateurish blunder for us. Such blunder may cost us moro men and more wealth than we need expend, hut it. will not seriously affect the end. The adverse treacheries of the Balkans may not yet be exhausted. Good men may have to die for that. 1 have supposed nothing will happen at sea but the continuance of the blockade, but I do not think anything can happen at sea that will not accelerate rather than delav the end.

The Zeppelins have done their worst, and by the scale of the war it is ridiculous.

SCENTS REVOLUTION IN GERMANY.

There is no question of the steadfast loyalty of all the great Allies. Everybody I talked to seems convinced that tho Central European Powers will keeo their solidarity until the end, and that there is r.o chance, fcr example, of a revolutionary movement in Germany. lam not convinced of that, ft is one of the things one i'cels rather than reasons out, but my impression of tlmpossibility of a real insurrection in Germany may he put in figures —a one m ten chance during the war and a one in three chance within a couple of years after the war.

The German Government obviously fears its people far more than anv other Government in the world at the present time. It takes more pains to manipulate public opinion. But that fear will tend rather to prolong than shorten the war, because even weak Governments nave their firmer grip during actual war conditions. A Germany in urgent danger of revolution will probably rght even mor* tenaciously than a Germany united against its enem'es. This possibility of revolution, though interesting in itself, may, therefore, be ruled out of the present estimate. Consequently my guess for the date of peace still remains not earlier than April, most probably by June, 1917. — "'Chicago Tribune."