GERMAN DEFEAT NOW CERTAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 204, 5 February 1915, Page 7

GERMAN DEFEAT NOW CERTAIN.

SCATHING COMMENT IN AN AMERICAN PAPER. New York, Dceember 22. In one of the most striking leading articles which' has appeared in the American Press since the outbreak of the war the New York Times says: "Germnny is doomed to sure defeat. Bankrupt in statesmanship, overmatched in arms, under the moral condemnation of the civilised world, befriended only by Austria and the Turk_two back-ward-looking, dying nations —desperately battling with the host of the throe Croat Powers, she pours out the blood of her heroic subjects and wastes her diminishing substance in a hopeless struggle that postpones but cannot alter the fatal decree.

"Yet the doom of the German empire may become the deliverance of the German people. A million Germans have been sacrificed and a million German homes are desolate. Must other millions die and other millions die before the people of Germany take the appeal in the Court of Reaso n and Human Liberty from the Imperial military caste that rushes them to ruin? They have full justification in the Incompetence and failure of their rulers. "When the invaders were driven back from the Marne, Germany's ultimate defeat was registered in the book of fate and heralded to the watching world.

"There is within the German view an even more sinister portent. The world cannot and will not let Germany win this war. If she were to dominate Europe, peace and security would vanish from the earth. A few months ago the world only dimly comprehended Germany. It now knows thoroughly that for its own peace and safety the nations must demolish the towering structure of militarism in the centre of Europe that has become the world's dan-ger-spot and greatest menace.

"Why should the German people make a further sacrifice of Mood to save the pride and shoulder straps of German officialdom? Since a more dreadful ending is in view, why not force a better ending now? "Americans of German birth or descent should see and feel the truth of the present situation of Germany. It would be unfr.iternal and most cruel for Ger-man-Americans to keep the truth from Germans at home, and to fail in their plain duty of making known to them how the Imperial militaristic ideal has fallen in the world's esteem, and how the enemies they now confront are but the first line of civilisation's defences."