The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24. 1917. GERMANY IN DESPERATION.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 24 January 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24. 1917. GERMANY IN DESPERATION.

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

Since war commenced there has never been such a flutter in the Hun military dovecote as Is evidently now proceeding. The chief characters — Herrs, Counts, Princes. Premiers, big and little Dukes (grand and otherwise ), and Kings — are flitting hither and thither, anxiously concerned in some great plot or scheme, military or political, perhaps both. Mysterious movements, secret conclaves, hushed conferences and fitful meetings are of daily hap in Germany, and everyone seems to be wondering what part of the heavens the Kaiser is going to order down next. They are asking what terrible calamity is Germany going to inflict on the world, and particularly on the armies of the Allies. There is very little occasion for deep concern, however, because Germany's day is past. The first “Der Tag” has fizzled out, and Germany's chance to win the war has departed for ever. In the fun flush of her strength and equipment she fell before the superior strategy of France. Germany has succeeded as a bully over small nations; she met with some success against Russians with empty rifles, but it is most remarkable that since the first few weeks of war, in 1914, Germany has never gained anything on the Western front, against the degenerate French and Britain's contemptible little army. With German perfection of preparations, attained by forty years of hard, determined application, what has Germany done? Looking back one is forced to wonder how she was stayed in her goose-stepping to Paris. ' It has been said time and again that, by every rule, she should have been in the French capital at the time she fixed. What stopped the huge Teutonic war machine? It was the hastily gathered forces of France ancr the contemptible little army that Britain sent ever. If Germany, from <' autumn of 1914 to the winter of 1910 has been unable to conquer or even push back what few men Britain could put in the field, what can she do with the worn-out, half-starved divisions that are now only available to withstand the Allies in their supreme collective might? There need be -

concern about what Germany is going to do; the huge concentration of forces, the collection of fragments over the Swiss frontiers were subject for discussion by the Allied war directors, and Britain lengthened -her line of cefence, allowing the French to move farther southward. Germany had scented the danger of a French invasion and she devoted three-quarters of

a million of money in feverishly completing a strategic railway to Switzerland. If the four hundred thousand Germans on the shores of Lake Constanza are for a march on the Trentino, why have the inhabitants of Alsatian villages on the Swiss frontier been ordered to quit their homes and get on the other side of the Rhine, taking all the foodstuffs they can get together with them? Germany may not be considering a deliberate invasion of Switzerland, but with a French spring from Belfort for the nearest point on the Rhine it may be to her temporary interests to scrap anything that stands in her way of making use of Swiss territory and Swiss feed. At the beginning of the war Germany and her friends had everything in their hands but the British navy, but what does Sir Douglas Haig now most de-

liberately and publicly state? He says, “The tide has turned; time has been with the Allies; we will win a decisive victory, the one sure way to peace; the third year of war will be the Allies’ year; England will not, however, achieve her full strength till the summer.” Russia is ready as she never before was, and the Czar says his armies are seeking a decisive encounter; Brussiloff says he has absolute confidence, based on information and conviction, that Germany will be finally and completely routed in 1917. The French commander, General Nivelle, has said, “With the assistance of my friend Sir Douglas Haig, I will soon obtain complete victory over our defeated enemy.” With such assurances as these why need we be anxious about what tangent Germany is contemplating? We have unanswerable evidence that she is not strong enough to help the Greeks, who she has brought to a similar condition of

semi-starvation her people are suffering; her forces are unable to successfully stand the strain in Roumania; Verdun and the Somme tell their desperate plight on the west front; the brilliant Russian victory in Courland shouts the fact that Germany is a beaten nation. The triumphal march stage has not been reached yet; the Allies will not be at their maximum strength till next summer (European), and in the meantime they are waiting for the opportunity to administer the knock-out blow. That they may receive a few irritating taps while doing so is quite in the natural order of things, but the Allies are now definitely certain of final victory; that victory may be surprisingly near, or it may come towards the end of the year with Germany beaten to helplessness. That it will come Allied countries have no doubt whatever, therefore, whether the meetings of kings, kaisers, grand dukes and those of the high military command in Germany. Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey have reference to military or political matters need no* concern us much, and as no Power on earth can equal that of Britain when peace does come we can well leave the peace we desire to be arranged by those who have been empowered to act in Britain’s interests at the final settling. There is little to bother about in President Wilson’s vacuous, vapid, vapourish verbiage about what we must be allowed to do.