WE MUST LEARN TO WAIT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 238, 17 March 1915, Page 6

WE MUST LEARN TO WAIT.

WHY VICTORY IS NOT -AT lIAXD. PRKMATnH'I 'imororxc! AT "AMKIiK'A'S ftEKfSAL" Frederick William Wile, who was Berlin correspondent of the London j)nil ; Mail before tlio war, writes to tlwi paper as follows: Though Germany is still uniloubtediv far from the end of her Icthe:-, both in economic and military resources, signs multiply that she hei'ins to realise tli.i complete collapse of (lie Grand Plan for short, sharp, and decisive victory. Slu has begun to he rjncKiTous. She wants to know why. Xo franker confession o : hopes gone wrong has vet appeared! 'han a remarkable leading article in the semi-official Cologne Gazette of Oth ■ lannarv. Its title is self-explanatory: "Learn to Wait."

Beginning with the Shakespearian onotation, "The rain it raineth every day," the article is designed to counteract the country's impatience and prove, that victories, though unimportant in themselves, are crowning German arms east and west —victories the culniinative elfect of which-must he great and curtain. Almost every bulletin of the General Staff is declared to be a message of triumph, but the nation must learn to wait. The incessant loss in killed, captured and guns which is inflicted on the enemy is described as sapping him of life-blood he can far less afford to spare than Germany. France, particularly, it is asserted, is being vitally affected by the relentless drain. How badly she is off already, Germans are told, is evident from tile fact that "many French prisoners of war in our hands are manifestly consumptive, and would never be. allowed to enlist in the German army." The argument of gO(ftl cheer goes on:

"PLOW DEVELOPMENT." "Endurance and rock-ribbed determination to win tide over this period of slow development. Bemcmbcr 70-71 and the celebrated telegram of Quartermns-tcr-f!encral von Podbielski — 'Nothing: new in front of Paris.' Our ancestors had to lie content with such news for months ami montha. Tihlhv vri" arc not trying to batter down a single fortress as we were then. We are besieging Franco. Just as the French fortyfour years Agrt tried to find their way through at Le Bourget, Olmmpigny and Mont Valerien, so they are now attempting unsuccessfully to pierce the long Herman line from the Channel to the Swiss frontier. In fortress warfare like the present, we can only progress with the spade, hand grenades, and mortars. But we are going forward all the time. To force a sudden decision by a general storm would lie nonsensical, and would end exactly as the various attempts of the allies to accomplish the great offensive so pompously acclaimed by .TolTre. . "Hindenburg in the East is charged with the same, task as Prince Frederick Karl and Mantimfl'el-fioeben were in '7O-71 —namciy, to repulse the enemy's attempts to relieve the 'pressure. Onlyl Hindenburg and our Austrian ally cannot deal the enemy a, destructive blowby means of swift consecutive attacks, because the weather is against, tliem. . The Kussians oppose our advance with ever-fresh entrenchments.

"As long as, under all these circumstances, our advance, is constant, pri-soners-are taken, booty captured, our hearts must overflow with gratitude towards our gallant warriors in the east and west. They hold their own in tin l water-filled trenches, under fire of the heaviest guns. When once the order comes to storm forward, they will be inflamed with the same battle-jov and eontempt. of death as they exhibited at the storming of Liege and (he, great fighting in August and September. Lot us be grateful, and learn to wait, full of conlidein e in the glorious ending of a struggle with half the world."