The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1917. WHEN WILL WAR END

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 August 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1917. WHEN WILL WAR END

(With which is incorporated The Taihape Poet and Waimarino News).-

With the experience the world has had of Germany; of her perfected preparedness for war; of her system of espionage, reaching to every corner of the earth where i,t could be. w r orth while; of her having forces of reservwaiUng for “Der Tag,” to don the uniform and to seize possession; of their amazing revelation of strength, as evidenced right up to the present day, one is inclined to say, “bah,” to the announcement that Ihe Hon. Mr. Massey nao telegraphed all over New Zealand yesterday. A *few weeks ago Mr. Massey intimated that he was no prophet but he ventured to say the war would end next yea”. Having once started the prophecy bus! ness he has rapidly grown bold and now he launches out with what, in the circumstances, is somewhat sensational He is speaking under the influence of some undiscovered great panjanjooram in Britain, and had we not learned by ample experience not to take our Prime Minister always at his word we should certainly have cause to jubilate. At present we arc casting about for :he Premier’s intentions; we mean that Mr. Massey point blank denied, in Parliament, that Cabinet had ever considered the question of sending boys of nineteen to the front, and subsequently was forced to admit that Cabinet had not only considered the question but had decided upon bringing the proposal before the House, and that the Bill had actually been printed while he was denying that the subject had been considered even. Our Prime Minister is studying for the Diplomatic Service, and one has never to take such a student seriously. Of course, the war is going to end sooner than some people expect. Most people have come to look upon it as something in the nature of Tennyson’s Book. There are, however, very few brooks that nm on for ever, and nobody but a few theiving profiteers will be sorry If the Ministerial prophecy about the war should have more truth in it than others from the same source. Another statement equally as reliable as Mr. Massey s came about the same time; it is that Germany is making preparations for two more years of war. Inter

alia, it says that if Germans will make up their minds to fight for another two years, hated Britain will be suffeilinjg from starvation Gerpnany is suffering now, and the Allies will sue for peace. There is much more comfort in this made in Germany stateent, and probably more truth, than in that about the war ending. It is at least an admission that the German people are in a very bad way at breakfast and dinner time, and that ■with all their frightfulness and murder of innocents, they cannot win the "war during the next two years. It is an admission that submarining is a failure that ‘‘ my g?orious army,’ ’ is nowhere when meeting a British army of similar strength, and the little story is so loosely constructed and so stupidly tolG that we are prepared to believe that it indicates more correctly, when the war is likely to end than Mr. Massey ’& mysterious information does .The German yarn discloses the belief, in Germany, that if the war cannot be won in another two years it cannot be won at all. We believe Germany means that and we are glad to have arrived at some finality about our beliefs as shaped on German statements. The war will' end sooner than some people think, but some people think it is going to be a parallel to the thirty years war of history. These people, however, did not give due weight to the fact that man has wonderfully progressed since then as a slayer of man. At the rate we kill to-day, there wouldn’t’ be enough men to hold out. We are inclined to pin our faith on the German version of the end —that It will come sometime within , the next two years. The Massey story purports to be sec-ond-hand; we do not argue that secondhand things, and even sayings, are never any good, but as we have been told what some great authority has said, why not allow us to have our opinion of the value of the source of the statement? It would give a force, to it that can never result from the Prime Minister’s iteration of it. We are quite optimistic enough to believe that the rate of slaughter, and the unprecedented waste of treasure must operate in bringing the end near. A beaten Germany; a bankrupt Germany a helpless and iretrievable Germany is not what the Kaiser wants, and directly he finds that the continuation of war means all that, he will find the best and most rapid way to end it. tVe hope that Mr. Massey’s guess is a good one, for, of course, with the innumerable prophecies at present inundating the. world, one of them is fairly sure to be near the mark. It is very difficult to see through this war with sufficient clearness to upmistakeably distinguish the end; the barrage is yet too thick, the end. may be far and it. may be very near.'