The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917. THE WAR ON LAND.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 9 May 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917. THE WAR ON LAND.

(With which is incorporated The Taikapo Post und Waimarino News).

The Hindenburg line is becoming something of an uncertain quantity; Blunted and turned up at the ends, cracked and bent all along where it is not actually broken and pierced. The line to which was given the names of Hun mythological gods of war is as surely doomed as man is to die; it has had a short life and a merry one. From its birth the work of millions has helped to keep its surroundings interesting and lively, and almost before we realise it, it is in its death throes. Life has been wasted like water to maintain it, and with it goes the last real hope on land the German High Command lias of ever being able to secure any sort of a draw in the greatest and most bloody Bluff the world knows anything about. A hole -wa& drilled in it by British scldiers, Australians filled it, and not all the power Germany can summon is able to fish these men of Kangaroo land out. The Hindenburg line battlo is nearly over; the French men are raking Hun prisoners in at (he rare cf ten thousand a week, and have been doing so since the middle of April. The British have been working with similar results, making the total return of prisoners about twenty thousand a week, or sixty thousand for the last three weeks. Germany's h'.sf hope, the mobilisation of everything that moves, cannot go far or last long at this rate of destruction. The superiority in the science and art of soldiering and war has, despite

] Germany's forty years' start, passed to the British, and their enemies are being swept 'from the- field as one might sweep pieces from a chessboard. There is one general, universal understanding by all the belligerent commands, and that is that the last, the final round is being fought. Which ever side wins toe round that is now proceeding, it it is fought to a finish, will secure victory. The Hun has fought, and is fighting desperately, but he is hopelessly over-matched; he cannot stand up to the punishment he is receiving, and he is now being 'literally thrown over the ropes. He is trying all his old tricks and many new ones to trip his foe and to land a staggering blow, but all end to his own disaster. He is beaten on land ' and no one knows it better, no matter how his backers in Berlin may boast. The French have secured victories from Soissons to Craonne that must ' be preludes to .still greater victories. I They have fought into positions from I which they dominate more important * positions. The British farther north are daily driving the Germans from their way and have made a serious breach in the much-damaged Hindenburg line. In fact, as Sir Douglas (Haigsays, the British are well ahead I of timetable time.

THE WAR ON SEA. On the sea it seems as though there is going to be some disappointment. It was thought that a naval battle was in store beside which even the Jutland affair would b,e only a frog-pond fight. Now, it is said that the bottle containing the German Navy is to have the cork thrust tightly home by the united efforts of America and Britain. The whole North Sea, along all coasts where German warships have hitherto been able to get out, is to be densely and systematically mined at a cost nothing below a hundred millions. No doubt there is a business aspect to this proposal; the American is all there for a good

deal, if it involves hundreds of millions it becomes so much more enjoyable and interesting, and we must admit that the British are not too stupid in figuring out a bargain. Is this driving in of the North Sea cork the initial step towards taking possession of the whole Hun Navy without giving it even a fighting chance? Perhaps not, for every ship would be taken out into the deep waters of the Baltic and sunk rather than anything so ignominious should befall them. That does not, however, exhaust the probable profit side of the new cornering movement; there would be no loss of British and American warships and men in such naval hari-kari. This proposal to mine the whole North Sea •staggers one wi(h its possibilities; it is a sort of cornering in war procedure of such magnitude that only American minds would be likely to evolve; a case of the glories of naval warfare being over-shadowed, superseded, and displaced by , miserable modern market-rigging methods. The one great difference is that human life takes the place of money as the prime object, although the money asspect is nothing inconsiderable. If the German Navy can be rendered helpless, and all roads to the open sea rendered impassable to submarines by this mining scheme, we need have little fear for the life of our sailors or for the warships they man. It is too early, and the information is too meagre for anyone to realise the full importance of, or to gain anything like an approximate idea of what this huge mining proposal means. The cost of it will appall even those who are accustomed to wallowing in money figures, and, above all, we may be fully assured that American finance and. British cannyness would not favour any scheme involving such a bewildering! y enormous initial outlay if the returns were not fully commensurate with the risk, and reasonably certain. It seems that to effectively mine the whole North Sea will not only solve the submarine difficulty, but that it will also render our Navy Othello-like—its occupation gone. When America and Britain enters into a deal involving an outlay of hundreds of millions, big profits are humanlv certain.