The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, JULY 1 1916. THE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 153, 1 July 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, JULY 1 1916. THE WAR.

(With which is incorporated The Tai hape Post and Waimarino News.)

I Awe-inspiring to an > extreme though the boom of the countless cannon lms been on several occasions during this 'Avar, notably before Verdun, at the Donajec, and more recently in the Bukowina, it bears no comparison with that which is lifting 1 K. x curtain on the last scenes in this the most terribly significant of all the world's crises. The magnitude of the bombardment, its volume of sound, its sky-clouding effects, and more particularly its appalling frightfulness and deadiness of work in the destruction of human life and fortifications, is unparalleled, and no language can adequately describe it. A faint idea of its intensity, and •Of the destruction that is being wrought by it, may be gathered from the fact that it is heard in England; that it sounds as loudly in the ears of Dutchmen in Holland as to create the belief that it is taking place so near as the DutchBelgian frontier. Right across the whole nation of Belgium the deathdealing boom of British cannon in France reaches the stolid, imperturbable Dutchman. This mightiest of all sounds conveys the intelligence that the days of the German chamber of horror is Hearing disintegration and annihilation, and that the smaller nations of the earth are being given the right to work out their own destinies in their own way, undisturbed by the nightmare of PrusSianian militarism. The opening of the Allies' great offensive is in progress now, without any doubt. Germany sought to maim it by subjecting Franco to such punishment as would detach her from her friends. At Verdun she jsaerificjd hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve her end; for several months Germany has poured out German blood in tiie. final spasms of her dying agony like water. Costly though it has been to France to defend herself, her losses have probably not been , half so serious as those of her enemy. We now begin to understand that it

mattered very little if Verdun did fall!,' so long as the" price in German blood was exacted; but Germany had left her supreme effort till too late, a disastrous miscalculation of her powers of assault. The time for the Allies' co-ordinated offensive, she knew, was drawing near, and we now realise that was the cause of her desperate efforts and her wanton, heedless sacrifice of German blood. Suggestions of opening a road to Paris were mere subterfuge and bluff; Germany know, as we can now comprehend, that there was no road to Paris for her armies. If Germany has not already lost her prestige the world ovir it is now fast departing. The world knows that Verdun has no significance only that which is detrimental to Germany.- If this fort had fallen, the country between it and Paris is composed of equally strong barriers to German advance, and, as already pointed out, the cost, if persisted in, would have left the Kaiser without a soldier to accompany him into possession of the coveted prize. Germany had not the price in blood to pay for Paris, and the greatest of military and economic experts, belligerent and neutraL in eastern and western continents, say this is no longer conjecture, but is proved conclusively. To know this is indeed gratifying, because it indicates that Germany is no longer the stronger side;* she must resort to the early wearing down process that the Allies were forced into in their weakness: but the parlousness of German arms is more fully obvious when it is realised that wearing down tactics can only be successfully adopted by a growing power, a power that has greater resources in men, money and munitions. Germany's enemies in their days of attrition had these things, Germany has them not. For this reason victory for Germany is impossible; the most favorable termination she can now hope for is a deadlock, and that seems hopeless from the number, equipment and determination of her enemies. The utter defeat of the Central Powers now seems certain.' Viewing Austrian operations dispassionatelv it must be obvious that '. * i Austria is overmatched and beaten. ; Her armies are being driven pell! mell ; before the Russians in-* Hungary and before the Italians. Germany has had to send trooj.>s to assist her ally purely to save her own army from destruction. The Balkans situation we can view with calmness and confidence; whatever feeling favorable to Germany Roumania may have had must now be dissipated by the huge victorious Russian armies on many miles of her frontier. Turkey counts for very little, racked as she is with internal rebellion and war; a house divided against itself cannot stand. Hindenburg is unable to achieve any I success on the northern Russian front with the men ho has available,. and with his navy crippled so that it cannot-render assistance as in his mere palmy days. It will probably prove disastrous to German arms if men are taken from the western front. View the war how one will, doom faces Teuton arms on every front. It is too early to discuss what is likely to prove the kernel of Allied strategy in France. We know that Germany is dazed and troubled: that she is concentrating men where she think? the death blow is to fall. The terrific British bombardment from thousands of cannon distributed over an eighty-mile front has boomed for weeks, and may continue for weeks more: Britain is doing with shells what the Germans tried to do with human blood. The tidings of what this bombardment has i

'.'"''■mpllshou will so">n boom throughout the world, and the people of all the earth will once more breathe freelv.