LATE WAR TALK.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 193, 23 April 1915, Page 7

LATE WAR TALK.

GERMANY ON THE DOWN GRADE. The war has been in progress just •six-months. ,The dream of "Deutschland über Alles" was a standing army large enough to crush France in three weeks, strong enough, having done that, to meet and defeat Russia; but the difficulty was, that the Germans never quite figured out how this could b 3 done if England went into this war because she was heart-sick by the constant menace of Germany's threatening sea force, and the constant Zeppelin threat, while the violation of the neutrality of Belgium forced her to tak© a position. The present situation demonstrates how much Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg hates British navalism. It also demonstrates that General Bernhardi was right in just one of his forecasts. He declared most positively that, if Germany wcra to tight France, England, and Russia at the same time, Germany would go down to defeat. In the present state of affairs, brought about by the mad German determination to drive neutral commerce from the seas, Genera] Bernhardi must be looked upon as a true prophet.

A TRAITOROUS KNIGHT. ______ <s I have before me 'essays written by a traitor to his native country, Sir Roger Casement, the author of the essays of that name. The articles were written on the assumption that war between Great Britain and Genua ay might be localised between those two Powers alone—England fighting to retain the mastery of the seas, and Germany fighting the battle of Europe,the battle of free trade, the fight to open the seas of the world. To quote: "The war of 1914 is England's war. For years she has been planning hew she could, without danger to herself, destroy the peaceful menace of German prosperity. The fight may be fought on the seas but the ate will be settled on an island." So much for these : half-baked plagiarisms of Machievellj | MASSACRE AND PILLAGE. ! Numerous are the atrocities report- ; ed. The Germans have executed the peasants wholesale a s spie. u . in spite of the fact that they have usually lacked the slightest proof of their guilt. Alleged spies have been hanged in a j spirit of sardonic humour en the road- j side crosses and peasants' shrines.ancl the bodies of well known citizens have been set up at the street corners; to terrorise the inhabitants. In .one, of the streets of Soissons the invaders ripped a picture of the Virgin .from its frame, and replaced it by p. portrait' of Kaiser Wilhelm 11. The villagers say that th e enemy seems particularly anxious to obtain boots and shoes. They rcb the footwear [of'"the living as well as the dead to such an extent that tha peasants bury .their \ shoes asd go about barefooted rather |

BIG GUN DAY,

Sunday was the day of the "75" in Paris, and there were so many cannon in evidence if not in action that it was small wonder that the morning, which broke grim, ended with the rain coming down heavily. Nearly everyone you met had a "touch of influenza,"'-and-you made off with the speed of a retreating German fleet to escape the germs. But in spite of all this and 'the weather which was as gloomy as the Germans must have been when they heard that the Kaiser's Government had decided to double the tax on beer, nothing was allowed to interfere with the s ale of ths souvenirs, the proceeds of which will do much to alleviate the suffering of those whose bread-win-ners are at the front, voicing through th e mouth of the "75" the protest of, France against the barbarity of the Huns on land and sea. The sunshine in the faces of thousands of pretty girls who sold souvenirs more than made up for the absence of Old Sol. ) Parisians were joyful, and remembei--ed only that Kaiser Wilhelm is at his wits' end and that the "Bodies" are many miles from Paris! I