GERMANY'S BOY POWER.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 24 September 1917, Page 6

GERMANY'S BOY POWER.

1920 CLASS SOON. We have been talking for a con si d-" erable while past of Germany's dwindling man-power, writes Reuter's correspondent with the British, Army in France. I think we may soon begin to speak of her dwindling boypower. A captured letter, dated June 17 says:—''To-morrow four more boys, aged 171, are being taken from our village." A lad of the 1920 class, writing from Mannheim 1 on May 29, says: "If the war does not end soon, I s&all be a soldier about Christmas time. We have already been mustered, and the 1919 class is being called up this week. It is really terribe when boys like us are being turned into soldiers. I was 17 in April." A letter written from Hamburg on May 23 says:, "The youths aged 17 were called up this morning. They were mere children. Kluth expects to go any day; he will be 18 in October." A youthful prisoner taken during the week stated that his brother who is not 18 until September, has been called up, and that his cousin, who is ir next January, is about to be mustered. Instances of this character could be multiplied ad infinitum, and the knowledge of the condition to which Germany is reduced in order to maintain her cadres cannot but have a most depressing effect upon the" troops in the trenches from whom it is impossible to hide it.