WAR NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 5 September 1917, Page 3

WAR NOTES

CLIMAX IN FRIGHTFULNESS. There is widespread belief in Germany that the Kaiser’s Government is holding in reserve for use of a last resort a terrific explosive, the force of which is so tremendous and the damage it can inflict so frightful that 'oven the Prussians have hesitated to make use of it. It is said that a small bomb can annihilate everything within a Rodins of 2000 feet. Prussian military experts arc quoted as having stated that ten aeroplanes armed with the explosive could fly over a city and destroy it within a few minutes, surpassing in frightfulness anything that the world has yet seen. The reason the German Government has not yet used the alleged explosive is ‘‘fear of a Niagara of criticism and indignation from the outside world.” KAISER’S AMERICAN .INTEREST. What will be the fate of the huge private interests of the Kaiser, the Kaiserin, and the other members of the German Royal Family in the United States? asks Mr. Hayden Church in the Sunday Times. All told, these amount to many millions sterling and the question of what will become of them now that- the United States has declared war is one that may well be keeping the War-Lord and his fellow royalties awake at night, even grunting, what is improbable that any one of them was previously able to defy insomnia! The Kaiser also had, until the beginning of the present war, extensive landed interests in Canada, especially in the western provinces of Dominion—being, indeed, one of the largest landowners there. These lands ■were, naturally, not held in this name, but in those of certain Germans who secured Canadian naturalisation. As soon as the war. broke out, the Emperor, fearing the sequestrations, or confiscation of his landed possessions in Canada, caused steps to be taken to transfer them to one or more American syndicates, and it was the negotiation of these transactions that constituted the real object and purpose of Dr. States in the fall of 1914. A BATTLE OF RIVERS. ‘‘This has become almost a battle of the rivers,” said Mr. Lloyd George in a speech at Glasgow a few weeks ago, referring to Britain’s vast shipbuilding enterprises. ‘‘The Elbe and the Vistula and the Rhine are arrayed against the Clyde, the Wear, the Thames, the Medway, the Tyne and the Tamar. The Clyde built ships and the Elbe said: ‘We will build craft which will sink your ships,’ and the Clyde said; ‘We will build ships for every one you sink; nay, more, we will also build craft which will chase your ocean vermin out of the deep.’ In this struggle we back the Clyde.” The British Empire was looking to the Clyde Mr. Lloyd George continued. France.— gallant, brave enduring France—was looking to the Clyde, Russia was looking to the Clyde, the world was looking to the Clyde, the democracies of the world were looking to the Clyde; and he was sure they would not look in vain.