Africa

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 193, 23 January 1915, Page 5

Africa

TROOPS SENT FROM PORTUGAL, j > Lisbon, January 21. t oiir thousand six hundred troops have been dispatched to Angola, in West Africa. IN GERMAN WEST AFRICA. ENEMY'S ADVANCE CHECKED. Capetown, January 21. As a result of recent operations the Union forces held the line of the Orange Biver. The enemy is in farce in Union territory near the German border, where the enemy's advance was checked.

A CHANGE OF PLAN.

GERMANY PLAYING FOR "A DRAW."

(Wellington Times' Correspondent.) London, December 2. Ihe belief is firmly held in well-in-formed London quarters that Germany has now definitely abandoned every liopt of being able to carry through her original plan of campaign. For the time being her plan of European domination has been put into cold storage. She is now intent solely on playing for a draw. To this end she will strain every effort to hold the Allies in the west where they arc, and to arrest the Bussian advance by strategic developments of serried entrenchments on her eastern frontier. By dragging out tile war thus indecisively, taking cwry opportunity of dealing a smashing blow and stirring up the trouble she can elsewhere to distract, harass, and weary lier •foes, Germany seeks to wrest from exhausted Europe an "as you were" peace. This change of plan is, of course in itself a confession of failure A swift and successful offensive was Germany's cardinal theory of war, and particularly of this war. The change of plan means not only of renouncing that, and doing so because it has been found impossible of achievement, but the substitution of political for purely military considerations.

SPRING TO LOOSE THE DEADLOCK.

Germany's new plan will have no more success than the first one. This is not merely an optimistic impression, but the serious conviction of people entitled to speak with authority. The success of Germany's new plan depends entirely on the ability of her armies to hold on when they are opposed in the east and west alike by conclusive superior forces as will be the case before very long' and on her power of economic resistance' to the creeping paralysis of sea power. But in the light of the latest information, most officers now incline more to General JofTre's original view that we may have to wait until the spring for the real test of both these crucial questions. In the West, the Allies' lines are now impregnable. It is believed that Germany cannot gain another inch of ground in that-theatre. On the other hand, the Allies are already slowly pushing them back at important points, a result attributable to the steady accession of French and British reinforcements, the gradual assertion of a definite superiority in the heavy cannonade, and the necessity Germany has been under of slightly weakening her forces m the west to strengthen those in the east. If ever there was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, here we have it expressed in military strategy. "ALMOST A SEDAN" IN POLAND. In the east, the Russians nearly succeeded in effecting a Polish Sedan, and the issue even yet is in some doubt, but apparently Germany's crack general, von mdenberg, thanks to his immensely superior railway facilities, may contrive to avert absolute disaster. The official German reports of brilliant successes in that region are sheer bluff. Thov are being forced back on their own frontier, and tlieir claim to have captured 80,000 Russian prisoners comes 111 the same category as the 15,000 British troops officially drowned In the } ser a river on which the British army m Flanders has never yet set eyes.

BERLIN DEPRESSED,

HOW THE GERMAN PEOPLE aRE HOODWINKED.

There is no end to the deception "•mcially practised on the German side, f hey attach as much importance! to their official liars as to their organised lilies. Here is one instance. I have been shown a letter received by a London business man from an English friend in Berlin, which throws an interesting bght on the state of affairs in Germany a t this moment. The circumstances of this candid communication are themselves romantic. The letter itself is precisely on the lines of all the others written in similar circumstances. It sets forth the absolutely unchanged conditions in Berlin. "No one would imagine there was a war at all." It states that life in the German capital is quite normal, and that everyone is in high spirits and confident of success. But there is a postscript to the effect that, Knowing what an ardent stamp-collector the addressee is, the writer has stamped the issue with a number of littleknown issues. Now, the recipient never in his life took the least interest in stamps ad hoc. This set him wondering. He carefully steamed off the stamps and found writing underneath. It was a brief message stating that the enclosed was full of nonsense, and that Berlin, was, in fact, utterly depressed and desperately hopeless. "PAERIAL" TALES. Part of the general game of Teutonic bluff is being assiduously carried on through the neutral press. It lias been tried on particularly in the matter of German submarine construction and Zeppelins. The latest thing is a tale of aerial torpedoes for use against our ships from airships out of gun range. A competent authority informs me that this is a physical impossibility for any Zeppelin to ascend beyond gun command. And if they did, their chance of hitting a battleship would be about as good as the prospect of dropping a blacklead. from a four-storey window on a three-penny bit.

"KRUPPMAIL." Recently we have had from Petrograd and Paris some startling official revelation of the sort of thing that is going to be stopped at last for good and all. Germany has been Krujpmailing the European chancellors for more than a generation. Whenever there was trouble anywhere. Berlin stepped in, backed up by her confederate, Vienna, and demanded backsheesh to keep quiet. The policy of "rattling the sabre" was a commercial policy. Russia had virtually to pay a huge war indemnity to Germany, besides buying bad ammunition from her, during the Japanese war. This fact lias now been frankly and officially stated. Everybody knows how France was compelled to share her African possessions with the universal bully. The last Kruppmail levy was Austria's acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After this war is over, Europe will no longer have to go on periodically purchasing peace and neutrality from the Mailed Fist. [ «