The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1914. PREPAREDNESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 124, 19 October 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1914. PREPAREDNESS.

An oft-quoted authority said that that nation was most at peace which was best prepared for war. No doubt the authority was right from one point of view —if peace wereMie objoct of the nation's preparedness (writes the Christchurc't Star). If a nation is well prepared for war, and her desire is peace, and all her neighbors know that she is so prepared and so desires, it stands to reason that she will be let alone. The authorities have been tellmg Great Britain for a long tune past that she was not prepared, and Lord Roberts, one of her ablest and bravest warriors, only rscently said: "When we see at present every other civilised nation increasing its armies and navies with every intention, so far as we can judge, of using them, how can we hope to protect our country and maintain our scattered possessions without having a national army sufficient in numbers and efficient in quality?" The Cabinet of Great Britain, whatever its private feelings may have ,heen when these words of one nf it.4 greatest military men reached its ears, took but little public notice of the warning, and only a few weeks before the present great war broke out it was announced that the recruiting for the British Army had fallen off in one month by 25,000 men. The war has changed all thi.s, for when Lord Kitchener announced that he wanted to form a new army of 100,000, the men flocked to him in a rush unparalleled in the history of British recruiting. But if Britain were as unprepared as she appearci to the trained eyes of Lord Roberts, so far as her army was concerned her Sea Lords had a better tale to tell, for the naval mobilisation shortly "before the war proclamation showed a most satisfactory preparedness. Of the Navy and \U readinesß Britain has every reason to be proud. But no nation in Europe has ever been ready for war, at any rate by land, as Germany has been for many years past. And now in the light of recent events, tho Germans cannot complain if her neighbors say that that readiness of hers was not to preserve peace, hut to make war with the objsot of territorial aggrandisement. But while Germany's great preparations were going on the other nations were not idle, and Britain, though with that proverbial slowness of hers, had to follow, and the new and extra naval base at Tiosyth was one of the results. It is difficult to understand why Germany should have rushed headlong into this unprovoked war. She was building up a great position in tho trade and commerce of the world and her manufactures and produce were to be found in every part of it, and in no places more abundantly than in the British colonies, where "made in Germany," once looked upon a brand of inferiority and compelled by British law to he stamped upon all German goods offered for sale in British colonia.l mar-

keta, iad come to bo looked upon rather as a recommendation than otherwise. Yet one cannot get away from the fact that all her war preparations point to a pronounced intention to engage, in a groat war and at no distant date. While she was saying, "Peace, peace," she was running her military railways along the borders of Luxemburg and Belgium. There are those who unhesitatingly assert that the great German firm oi Krupps in supplying Belgium with gum fulfilled tlie order with second-class instead of first-class ordnance. We rca\, tbo, that cement platforms for gun emplacements were sent to France under pretext of peaceful trade, a trade thaV had gone on for months and years, ami that now they are being put to pr.> cisely the use they were all along ii* tended. "On the roads to Paris," say* one writer, "they have, been waiting fot years for the heavy and powerful cannon which arc now to hammer France to pieces if it can anyhow be managed." In other directions' the story is being told of wireless and telephone plants carefully secreted, but certainly prepared before the war and now part of the material provided for a great campaign. Vessels are said to have left Germany when the Allies were supposed to lie lulled in stupid sleep, or rent by internal quarrels, filled with guns for the arming of merchantmen, so that at a moment's notice ready-made cruisers could play havoc with British steamers in the trade routes. Handy centres and outlying islands in the oeeans have been made use. of as coal depots to supply Germany's want of naval depots and to hold stocks of coal for the supply of these cruisers, and probably of the German navy had the plans contained a naval attack on Britain's Pacific Dominions. At one time everything pointed tban excellent opportunity chosen by Germany to declare war. France had an internal trouble and sicr army was reported to be terribly out of joint, with her natal structure not much better. Russia, too, had internal trouble likely enough to keep her army busy at home; while Britain with a threatening Indian "Mutiny, and a possible trouble over the Home Rule Bill bitter enough to call Ulster to arms and the Nationalists to follow suit, had her hands full. All this, no doubt, the German Military Party noted, and war was declared. Put Britain was not so unready as she looked. With a marvellous unanimity the Irishmen laid aside their own grievances to unite to face the common foe. Inlia forgot all or any trouble sue might

have had, and tho native prineea offered assistance both in mines of wealth and armies of men. Canada formed her battalions ready for the onset, so did Australia and New Zealand, and from every corner of the globe the manhood of Britain came rolling in to its country's help in her hour of trouble. Little Japan, too, remembered her treaty with Britain, and Germany is finding it difli- j cult to hold her own in China. In South Africa tho Boers have made up their minds to change the flags in German South-West .Africa and to substitute the Union Jack for the Eagle. And altogether the Kaisor finds a most awkward unity amongst those allied against 'him. He did not expect Belgium to fight him on his way to France, and he hardly expected Britain to be so pronounced an ally of France, or to have the great armies of Kussia fighting on 'his eastern frontier. So that, now "his hank of thread" is so sadly ravelled that it will take him all he knows to wind it. He cannot wind it. And in the end all hia preparedness will go for nought, and the Napoleon of the twentieth century may thank his lucky stars to come out of this embroglio alive. But the war will be a lesson on preparedness not only to the British Cabinet but to the whole British Empire.