THE MAN AND THE SPIRIT WE ARE FIGHTING.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 August 1918, Page 2

THE MAN AND THE SPIRIT WE ARE FIGHTING.

The London Weekly Dispatch, says: j The sooner eve remove the idea from | oar heads that anything counts which 1 t’- ■ “bL or the domi-scrai-Snow- | ■, d'-iiß of Germany might say the better for ourselves. Two years ago HindonVorg said that Germany would not I be aolo to win a good peace, which means a bad peace from our opposite j point of view, until the British had j been—a horrible word —“ pulped.’ ’ ; While the Hun statesmen have been i talking one thing, Ludcndorff and j ilindcnburg have been working the I ether. Ludcndorff frankly stands no I nonsense from politicians. The Czernin 1 report of "no annexations'’ made him j furious. He is running Germany. If j this Hortling, or any other Hurtling, gets in the way, then that particular Hortling will go, for Ludcndorff’s inj tontion is to win a military KaiserI Ludendorff-Hindenbnrg and not a diplomat’s victory. Ludcndorff “looks at the map” and not at the resolutions of the 'Reichstag. He docs not wait for signs from Chancellors. He does not wait for “leaders” of any | “group” Ho sent for Hortling. Hcrtling was recently commanded to : Headquarters, where he received a piece of the Ludcndorff mind and his ' instructions as to the line he was to take. i Before the German offensive there | was a dinner party at which Ludendorff was an honoured and, it must , be said, a revered guest. The dinner- 1 table talk was small; in fact, there I was so much food that the guests had I little time to talk: but after dinner, | when coffee (not the acorn coffee of i the masses) was handed round, war talk began. There were pessimists. They started, Some of them taunted Ludcndorff with the fact, as they put it, that no general had been produced by the war and no winning military decision was possible. iLudondorff brushed aside the suggetion about the general as a thing not north talking jabout and . sharply asserted ;that a first-class military decision could bo won. The talk was on the prospects on the west front. Could anything decisive be achieved there? The cost would be too great, said the pessimists. The people would never stand it. This was too much for iLudendorff, who is a true “cannon-fodder” man. He thumppod the table. “They will stand the loss of a million men if I ask it. I shall take good care that among that million '•jro those who talk most about peace or who give trouble.” “But the Socialists would never stand it,” exclaimed a bespectacled Hun who had been listening quietly to the conversation. “Socialists be- damned,” rapped out Ludendorff. “By the time you fear a revolution I shall have prevented it. The men will be dead, and women, as Napolean said, cannot make revolutions,” That is the man and the spirit we are fighting. I