GERMANY, A “HOLLOW STONE.”

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 3 August 1917, Page 2

GERMANY, A “HOLLOW STONE.”

THE GRINDING PROCESS. “ I am confident that things can never be as bad for the infantry as they were last August,” writes a young officer from France. “The dead are not too numerous to bury, and the Huns will not stop long enough to resist any attacks in the same place. The trenches will never again be a tangled mass of mud and shell-holes which are full of dead. Thank God, we are moving forward, and I really feel optimistic. When I have read Of wonderful new inventions and heard of gigantic attacks which will be irresistible, I have frequently felt that the end of the war was not niore 1 than a couple of months away. But my hopes were soon shattered. However, I have now come to my senses, and I realise that one action will not end the war. We have tried to break the stone with one blow of" the hammer, and w r e have certainly chipped it. We have broken many hammers in the attempt, but we have discovered that the quicker way of destroying the stone is by grinding. Now the stone is really showing signs of decrease; nobody really knows how Tong the grinding will have to go on,, hut I firmly believe that the stone is not so big as it looks, and is in reality hollow inside. I think we shall come to the hollow this summer, and then it will only be a question of days before the I stone is smashed into smithereens.”