GERMANY’S MILITARY LEADER.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 22 September 1917, Page 6

GERMANY’S MILITARY LEADER.

Germany, no doubt, controls and usee \vithout pity or scruple, a vast mass of human material. A very clever article n the "Atlantic Monthly,” however, ascribed the new ahd sustained energy on the part of Germany to a single brain, perhaps the ablest and mjost masterful yfet employed in the war on the German side, that of von Ludendorff. Ludendom" is Chief of Staff for Marshal von Hindenburg, and is visibly outracing his chief in popular esteem. " Hindenburg, ” said the writer in the "Atlantic Monthly,” "is old; he is stiff in brain and body. All he asks is for an army and an enemy." But Ludendorff has subtlety as well as strength. He has been for some time the forgotten great man of the war; but he is becoming visible. Ten of Hindenburg’s portraits a few months ago, used to be sold to one of the Kaiser’s, and a hundred of any other general; but Ludendorff’s portraits begin to rival those of Hindenburg in popularity. With the usual cruelty of public opinion Hindenburg’s successes, it is now whispered, were due to Ludendorff, It was he who won Tannenberg, who planned the famous battle in the Snow, who found a way to break the Polish quadrilateral. It was certainly he who suggested and carried out the great scheme of conscripting every German, old or young, Tieh or poor, for the service of the State. That scheme in England, under Mr Neville Chamberlain, proved a failure; in Germany under Ludendorff, it wos a complete success. Luderndorff it is whispered, is for the Germans the true Moltke of the war. It is even suggested that he may prove a new and subtler Bismarck There is of course,, miich' exaggeration in all this. The German imagination is hungry for a triumphant hero, who would give victory to the Fatherland. Moltke, nephew, of the genius who won the wax of 1870 failed in this war and was dismissed. Falkenhayn, in his turn, failed and disappeared, Hindcnburg, since his victory is slow in coming, is beginning to,dwindle in public reputation. But Ludendorff,

chiefly because he is new, is the figure round which German dreams and German hopes are crystallising. He took in hand the task of speeding up the supply of munitions; and it is claimed that he achieved a success in that realm equal to that of Mr Lloyd George in England. “New munition factories were opening daily; old ones were spouting smoke 21 hours a day An American correspondent, taken to one of those plants, returned to Berlin almost breathless. He swore he had seen a store of shells so vast that the lanes through it were seventeen kilometres long. All ordinary train service to the West was suspended for days, while train after train of shells passed through Berlin. The production of big field-guns, it is whispered, had leaped to 600 a month."