THE HUSTER SAUSAGE MASQUERADE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 237, 22 December 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE HUSTER SAUSAGE MASQUERADE.

An ingenious person of the name ct Hu.-ter is reported to have invented a sausage made without meat. The Huster sausage has no doubt all the appearance of a sausage, and it is all right until the consumer comes to consume it. Then he finds, according to the chronicles of the time and district, that, though it may have all the appearance, it has none of the substance, and that it fails to sustain. Very appropriate, in regard to the boastful utterances with which he acconi|)anied his soca'lcd proposals, is the analogy which Mr Edmund Dane, an English writer, makes betwe3ii Germany and t!:e Hustfr sausage. Germany, he says, still offers to the world the aspect uf a great military empire, but thj proportion of substitute is large and growing, and the proportion of origiiu'.l and genuine substance is, compared with what it was, sniall and shrinking "Substance" here may be «sd as another term for Germany's righting forces, and "substitute" as an-

other term for Germany's propaganda. The comparison perhaps ssems homely, but it is not unjust. The smaller amount of substance is blown out by the substitute until it looks as big as ever, if not a little bigger. Incidentally, iic- notes the curious, and at first sight strange, contrast presented on the ono side alike by events and by the German army orders reports and correspondence which have fallen into our hands, and on the othfr by thj insinuations of relatively undiminished strength put forward with increasing insistence. Just now. while the air is thick with Hoilweg's thunefcred boasts and threats, the contrast is more striking than ever. The writer formulatrs an exhaustive statistical analysis of Germany's manpower, and his conclusion is that neyond all question Germany has embodied her strength to the last man, including in that term both the immature und the elderly. The same certainly applies to Austria. In that country any individual of the male sex who can stand on two legs and carry a rifle his boon made liable to military service. " Right up to June of this year,'' he proceeds, "the enemy conducted tha campaign on til* principle of forcing the pace. Wc know the kind of tactics indulged in—mass attacks, because the Gorman infantry as a whole had not been trained up to the level of successful attack in open ord?;, —and we know the cost of these mass attacks. The figures of the first five months cf t!ie attack on Verdun are typical—as nearly as possible, 3 to 1. They are typical of Mons, of the Mam?, of the Aisne and Rhfims, of Ypres; and they are not less typical of the East front battles—Dvinsw, for instance, the Verdun of the Eastern campaign. So much for tne war up to June of this year. What of the war since? The sama expens o tactics, btcause the horde style of fighting is that to which the enemy has committed himself, and another half-million gone as prisoners. Despite all this, the attempt is made to persuade us that the meat is still in the sausage. Simple indeed must be the indirid ml who is taken in by such jflw

pudenec." Reverting to his startingpoint. Afr. Dane argues that "the conditon of the German forces on the West i; precisely the condition we might expect to find were every word of what has here been said true. That condition is the proof that every word is tni3." Assuming Mr. Dane to have correctly estimated the position, it inquires nn fanciful imagination to arrive at the conclusion that peace at the present juncture is the one thing desired in Germany above all others. But it is the one thing which she must on no account be allowed to have until she is prepared to put an end to the Huster sausage masquerade and pay the full and fair price for the boon she sreks.