GERMANY’S DELUSION.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 August 1918, Page 5

GERMANY’S DELUSION.

A neutral who was born in Germany in March, states, in a letter which has just been received in this country, that the U-boats were then being ‘'boosted” by skilful propagandists, and the German .people were under the impression that Great Britain would be “out and under” by the autumn. He adds that in spite of the trumpeting of successes on the western front, there was a curious lack of public enthusiasm for the operations. On the occasion of a previous visit to Germany in 1916, he states the' Germans claimed to have, with the Austrians, an army of twenty million men. In March this year these figures had shrunk in official estimates to eight millions. “German prisoners in Holland,’ ’he continues, “are kept supplied with fine new unifoums. Soldiers ’ uniforms at home, however, are very poor and thetraditional smartness of tho Prussian office has given way to dew-, dlness.”