VON DER GOLTZ AND TURKEY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 178, 6 January 1915, Page 4

VON DER GOLTZ AND TURKEY.

The German Commander of the Turkish forces, General von der Goltz, who has been praising the Turkish troops, lias had considerable military connection with them. Turkey hired hiin, when he was an officer of engineers, to introduce a New Model, as Cromwell did to the English Army. Cromwell made his compact military force the finest for its size which history has known. But von der Goltz had had less useful material to work upon. He was in Turkey for nine years, attempting to organise the army from one end to the other. On papers the Turkish Army should have been excellent. But dome years later it went into the Balkan war, and was defeated by the better-organised Bulgar-;,-v;is. Sti'jj +be. Turkish lack of Ciency collk! "not lie attributed to Von der Goltz. He expected nothing better from the, army lie had attempted to create, because he ha-'l never had a free hand in its manufacture. The Sultan did not permit tlie system nor the trafning necessary to make tlie army a national striking force. He wanted it chiefly as a police for,his own troublesome provinces. There were no annual manoeuvres for many years, and the infantry and artillery never received adequate opportnuities for musketry and gunnery practic*. .

GERMAN PERFIDY. An interesting article 011 "The Origins of the Present War" is contributed by Bir Valentine Cliirol to the latest number of the Quarterly Review. It traces the consistently warlike tenor of German policy since tin) day when Wil-, helm 11. threw over Bismarck and his restricted Continental outlook and assumed the personal guidance of German foreign policy with the intention of making iiis Empire a "World Power." The author has 110 hesitation in attributing to the Emperor himself the responsibility for the present war, as for the menacing attitude of German during his reign. At the same time, his ambition to secure world dominion by brute force has had the support of "not only the whole military caste, but the vast majority of the intellectual as well as of the commercial and industrial classes." So far from the famous Kruger telegram having been due, as it is sometimes represented, to a momentary personal impulse, the author recalls that on the day after its despatch Baron Marschall, then Foreign Minister, emphasised to him most strongly that it was a deliberate Government manifesto. A most remarkable episode, now for the first time made public, was the attempt in the latter stages of the South African war to entrap England into an offensive and defensive alliance which would virtually have committed Britain to the support of Germany in any attempt to override the Monroe doit.-in'?. This was after the failure of the attempt to form against Britain a combination of the Continental powers—an attempt in which the Kaiser was the prime mover, though 110 claimed the credit for its frustration wTicn it failed. Sir Valentine. Cliirol describes how lie was supplied with falsified documents by the German Foreign Office, and was promised by Prince Bulow that as long as he was Chancellor he would permit no more vituperation of England by the German Press. As soon as the informal conversations about the proposed treaty were dropped by England, the inspired attacks forthwith recommenced, and the promise was repudiated with epigrammatic cynicism.

ITOW BELGIUM SAVED ENGLAND. Writing 111 the Nineteenth Century, Mr. D. C. Lathbury says that if Germany had decided to respect the neutrality of Belgium, subordinating military to political considerations, in. order to avoid giving England any direct cause for offence, the result would have been disastrous to us. Germany would have gone on with her design to defeat or win over France, and Russia as a prelude to humbling England, and France and Franco and Russia, feeling that England has betrayed them, would have been angry enough to join in the project. "To those who take this view of the war and of its origin," he says, "it is scarcely possible to over-rate the obligations we are under to Belgium. The continuous and repeated s;i<-rffle<. s made by this heroic little nation have gone far to save England from a .-imilar fate, and it will I):* for 11s to bear this in mind wfc-ci! the conditions of peace come to be settled."