The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1918. REMARKABLE ALLIED CONFIDENCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 April 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1918. REMARKABLE ALLIED CONFIDENCE.

( With which U incorporated The ><u hapo Post and VralmauVi* News).

It was cabled on Tuesday that next twenty-four hours would end tho crisis in France one way or the 0 > and judging from the restatemcn confidence by Mr. Lloyd George, t Army Generals, and Sonera ed Foeh, tho crisis lias passed n favour I’ho enemy .made Ms supreme, his most desperate effort to turn the tide, but he has failed. The enormous strength he amassed succeeded pushing the British out of Ncuve Eglise and Bailleul, and trom the Messines ridge and Wytschaete,.and could he have retained these positrons no one knows how serious the situation would have been, but he could not hold them. After .making kirn pay an awful toil in life to get them, the British braves exacted a further bitter price in driving him out again, and what remains of the German host in that quarter are being chased in the Ncuve Eglise direction, for tho cable says, tho British are now marching on that place as well as on Bailleul. Hindenburg has failed to gratify his lesser ambition; his attempt to cut between Ypres and Hazcbrouck after his great ambitious effort had failed against Amiens, has, we may confidently take it. been definitely squelched; his choice storm troops under the storm-troop, cold-blooded Bcrnhardi, have been driven from the dangerous, tho critical area south-westward of Ypres, and the British are marching after them to Neuve Eglise and Bailleul. The crisis is past, the backs of the British armies went to the wall with their General’s request, and those armies are now marching from the wall back into the places 'captured from them by the greatest strength ofmen and guns that Germany could concentrate. The British-held coast of Belgium, and the whole of tho Channel ports in France arc safe. After the huge, the appalling, the almost unbelievable sacrifice of human life that one man can control and make, it if a pure waste. It has achieved nothing; no matter how near one goes to winning a prize, if he docs hot win it he loses it. That is the Kaiser of Germany’s case; he came v perilously near it, but he missed the winning number and lost. That he will try again no one will doubt, but he can never participate again on such favourable terms. His big guns are already booming against British positions further north, in the Memorable, Passchcndaclo region, and it may be that the failure at Ypres is to be turned into success on the Yser if possible. Germany failed to get all the coast of France by the great primal thrust to Amiens, then a more modest effort was made to win Boulogne and Calais, and now that those places have been denied, a final thrust may be made to get a bit more of the Belgian coast with the possibility of including Calais. This view is supported by a message from Germany which stated that the German Navy is now under the control of the Military, and that it is regarded as the German right wing. This looks as though the British left wing is to bo assailed and that the Germany navy —the new German right wing—is to participate in the effort. We have to bear in mind, however, that since the guns around Passchendaelo started, tho British have recaptured Wytschaete and are marching on Neuve Eglise and Bcilleul, which will be a source of chagrin and disappointment, for unless the enemy can get through between Ypres and Hazebrouck and so suspend the British army to the northward in midair, any thrust on the Yser is not at all likely to be profitable to him. We, at this distance, cannot understand Sir Douglas Haig officially reporting that important French reinforcements had arrived in the Ypres sector, but that tho British had no occasion to make use of them. No reports have come to hand stating that French reinforcements, which all corresponuenrs tell us are on tho spot of greatest menace and danger, have been put into the fighting line. It is reported that Foch and Haig arc in thorough accord; that they and other generals are calmly confident, but all that only goes a very little way towards relieving the anxious mental strain that is being felt in the outlying parts of the Empire. It is something to know that we have reserves to move about to prevent anything of vital importance happening to tho Allies’ disadvantage, and that they are not being used wastcfully, but are being conserved for the time when Germany is winded, tired and dispirited.