The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1918. GERMANY AND THE INEVITABLE.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 October 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1918. GERMANY AND THE INEVITABLE.

(With which ib incorporated The Taihape P oßt and Waltsmnao News)..

The Allied situation on the Western front is now but little else than a series of impending disasters for cue enemy, in fact a correspondent at British Headquarters has cabled information, plainly stating that present operations between the Sambre and the Scheldt have greater significance than can be realised without a comprehensive survey of the whole western front; but a casual survey only is quite ample to disclose that everywhere the enemy is in full retreat, and in several places defeat of a most disastrous nature is threatening, and he is desperately trying to avoid the worst; defeat he knows he cannot avoid. The possibility of making a stand on the Meuse, it may safely be said, is gone; to stand east of the Meuse would invite the worst of military misfortunes; German commanders dare not risk an army, on a fighting footing, between the river and their frontier mountainous country. From St Quentin to the southern extremity of the war area several Allied armies are driving back the enemy, ! converging and junctioning. rapidly forming a press-pen from whisch Haig is making escape impossible at the northern end, east of Le Gateau, and the Franco-Americans; north of Verdun, are waiting and ready to slam the j door by cutting railways and closing the only practicable roads of escape. The danger in Belgium, at the other | end of the line, is told more loudly and emphatically by the unseemly military hurry to get towards Germany than any set of -words could tell j it. They have to get away to avoid j capture, destruction or surrender, and i they are not standing on the order of ; their going; their splendid naval guns I are abandoned on the roadsides, and ! munition dumps, acres in extent, have ; had to be loft for their pursuers. They ; see the British cutting in between i Tournai and Valenciennes, with the i apex of the thrust very near tc Mons; 1 they realise that Haig’s men, who are i I passing between Landrecies and Hir- | son .are likely to separate their army, ! but, at least, to head off the huge '.forces who are fleeing from southern | positions, ensuring their defeat. They are holding with a life and death grip to the country through which the Mez-icres-Metz railway runs, but the Americans on this most eastern front- tell eloquently how matters stand, in the twenty thousand prisoners and hundred and fifty guns taken during the month. From Maubeuge to Mons, Haig is putting a stab into the very heart of the German situation; it is this deadly thrust at his solar-plexus that creates such feverish anxiety at the flanks towards Antwerp in the north, and Verdun in the south. The burning question for the enemy is, can he get away in time when he realises his failure to stop Haig from sweepingover the plains of Waterloo and up the valley of the Sambre and the Mouse. With only a - casual glance over the western battlefields it becomes obvious that the enemy is already defeated; Foch has spun such a web of difficulties around him that escape therefrom is humanly impossible.

If further evidence of defeat is needed ,wc have it in plenty, a surfeit of it in the ignominious failure in Russia, in Poland, Roumania; in the thrashing the enemy is receiving from the despised Servians; in the surrender of Turkey, the impotency of Austria, the commencing revolution in Hungary, for it is only a matter of days when the great Allied army, so long caged at Salonika, will be invading Hungarian territory if unconditional surrender does not stop it. Added to military defeat is rapidly extending political chaos in all enemy countries; in Germany a controversy is afoot as to whether the Kaiser shall be sacrificed, but needs must when the Devil drives, and the news will

shortly corue that the Kaiser and his military gott have been shunted on to a side line leading to penitence and remorse. Denmark has the temerity to ask for the return of territory stolen; Ukrainians, Poles, Bohemians, Czechs and Slovaks, are all claiming independence of the Central Powers. The Junker Government in Austria has gone and a peace party has taken its place; Hungary demands separation with the capital of its kingdom or republic at Budapesth. Riots and revolutions are spreading; mutinies, strikes and various political and social upheavals are of daily occurrence, in fact the political, as well as the

military situation, has so changed that only unconditional surrender is left to Germany, however long her leaders may prolong loss of life and .continue to mount up the bill of costs. The “Cologne Gazette” sums up the position in a few words; it says; “Everything now depends on whether the military counsellors of the Allies demand capitulation, as happened with Bulgaria, or think the evacuation of occupied territory will suffice. ’ ’ It may well be asked, with the present military situation, what can happen whichever course the Allies may decide to take; but that is only subterfuge, the Cologne editor knows better than we do that the military counsellors of the Allies will have nothing short of unconditional surrender. He also knows that his words are veilecr advice to the German people that whatever the Allies demand must be granted, and the more speedily the better, even although Cologne is among the cities to be garrisoned by a Franco-British army. That part of France occupied by Germans is very nearly free of the enemy; he is being pushed over the Belgian frontier from Hirson, east of St. Quentin, to the North Sea; and the Germans between Hirson and Verdun are undergoing « rounding-up process from converging Allied armies until their situation »s fraught with the worst of disasters. With every day’s news peace *a brought appreciably nearer, and it Is quite safe to venture the opinion that Germany will not face a winter of war.