The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1918 “DEE TAG” IS VERY NEAR.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 November 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1918 “DEE TAG” IS VERY NEAR.

(With which is Incorporate The Tal* hape Post and Walnmri-ao News).

The war situation is again in process of undergoing a remarkable change, a process that has utmost appearance of being something that is going to determine the very 'existence of the German army in France and Belgium. The beaten, fleeing enemy, just when it seemed a little respite from direst punishment was to favour him getting farther toward is overtaken by a new Allied offensive on the whole front, and! ,so powerful is the Foch enterprise that the British in one sector took ten thousand prisoners and captured a kuge quantity of guns and war material. The Allies are now in all verity -smashing /a wr&y through) to victory. The Americans are forbidding retirement of the demoralised Germans over the frontier into Lorraine. From Verdun they have driven northward along the Meuse until they have reached the Belgian frontier, at Montmedy •and Longuyon; they are now , near Stcnay and are at the gates of Moziexes and Sedan, and what a Sedan there looms up for the German army. How the enemy between Montmedy and Rethel is going to free himself from the tremendous grip that Foch has taken no man can tell, so desperate is the German situation. The road homo through Lorraine is denied to these 'German 'forces; while .to th» northward they are within an ace of being completely headed off from taking a course towards Liege. With the Americans to the eastward of them and Haig’s armies taking possession pf country to the north the Germans have little hope of escape ! left; there seems absolutely nothing I for them but surrender or .annihilation. 1 They are daily losing the wherewithal to continue the .fight; they are becoming, gunless, munitionless and foodless. Many thousands, in their flight and desperation, have thrown away all impediment to rapid and they have become a semi-helpless, congested mass, a target for Allied .aeroplane machine-gunners, who are mowing them down from a distance of less than one hundred feet. This mass of driven Germans is on the point of becoming a and when the right moment arrives, that is when rearguards see what is before them and become similarly affected, Foch’s battalions will close up on them i&nd precipitate the collapse of half the enemy forces on the western front. While disaster is mocking the Germans in the south, those in the north are in an equally parlous plight. While Germans are cut off from food and supplies by their only available railway at Hirson and Mezieres to Longuyon and Metz being under Foch’s domination; those in Belgium must bo in no less terrifying straits, Haig is racing for the only exit to Germany, and a Belgic-Franco-B’ritish force is playing the pincer game on an irregular line from Antwerp to Ghent and on to eastward of Lille. If the Allied and German situations here were reversed we should see nothing but the destruction of our armies ahead. Wo are fully justified by the war situation ias it was with yesterday’s cables to estimate upon, in saying that Foch’s super-blow is being and the armies that would destroy are already in the vortex of destruction. There is ample evidence of the truth of the prediction that only a routed, dishevelled, demoralised mob will ever leave the west front to take up a position on the boasted fortifications of the Rhine. It is little short of murder to which a’large part of the German army is now being subjected, a destruction of ;a quasi-massacre description, that no human nature can endure for very long. The turning point is at hand and the manipulators of the military machine are consumed with fear. They dare not accept defeat and unconditional surrender until they have failed in their efforts to ward off internal revolution. With the chains loosed from the necks of the army in France and Belgium from the men that have been urged to fight for terms that could be twisted into some semblance of there will come the only to be expected aftermath. The militarily ' driven and deceived men will turn upon their erstwhile drivers and deceivers, and the military bullies, from fear and arrant cowardice, dare not stop the murder of Germany. Like all lackers of courage and honour they will go on drifting into tho increasing whirl of death until overwhelmed and submerged in the blood of the machine they spent half a century and thou-

sands of -millions of the German people’s money to Imild up. The end’ of German militarism will be ignominious because its leaders lack the courage and the instincts of honour that could make it anything else, and "Der Tag” is at hand. German military voluptuousness is now receiving its death blow at the hands of Foch, and the eve of the day-of the world’s salvation from military tyranny is very near indeed. The great, military seance of the west front is no longer war; it is not a fight; it is merely an infliction of punishment, and armies that are incapable of doing anything better havd unconditional surrender alone between-them and death. Very soon the world will be once more at peace; Foch’s thoroughness contributes to the hope and belief that it will be a lasting peace. Very shortly cables will be flashing news of peace; the deliberations of the peace conference, a conference in which German voice wall be of the wee sma’ kind, instead of the sickening narratives of death and destruction they have for over four yeiars been employed upon. If New Zealand desires to be represented at the opening of this supremely great historic its representatives should be nearer London to-day than they are to the talking house in Wellington. The murderprs of Nurse Cavill and Captain Fryiatt are on the eve of their trial; the ruthless sinkers of hospital ships, and the culprits ~ in the soulless acts of the Lusitania character are shortly to be arraigned. There is no occasion to institute a vengeful bench of judges, justice, and nothing but justice from every point of view no revengeful act can surpass in such cases. The end is near and the military cowards dare not face the situation; they are slinking out like whipped curs ? leaving politicals to stem the revolution that is rising and rolling as a result of their criminal acts over Germany, a huge wave of disorganisation and death. The w T ar situation as outlined in yesterday’s cables confirm the belief that thetime for celebrating final victory is near: and Taihape people should profit by the signs and push on their celebration preparations.- •