The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1915. AN INDEPENDENT VIEW OF THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 November 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1915. AN INDEPENDENT VIEW OF THE WAR.

Participants in such a fierce struggle as tlmt which is now raging are apt In lie unconsciously Massed in their outlook, and to lo.se sight of many factors that have an important bearing 011 its progress and ultimate issue. Few interested people are capable of divesting their minds of that personal element vhich creates feelings of optimism or pessimism. 1: is the outsider who is best able to bring culm logic lo bear on the vaiying phases of such a war, provided he is fittingly qualified for the tusk. We may or may not accept the views and deductions of such a critic, but at least they are worth considering. and it is quite possible that ihe impressions received from such a source myv have a beneficial effect. Uur hopes and aspirations are rightly centred on victory—complete and durable—but it is well to broaden our conceptions of the relative values of operations with regard to which doubts persist in arising. A notable instance of this may be found in the Dardanelles campaign, regarding which there is much difference of opinion, extending in some quarters even to the length of a demand for its abandonment. On this, and on several other points connected with tin* war. considerable light is thrown by the eminent. Japanese author, Gonnoski Komai, who Kited as correspondent for tile London Times in Manchuria duing the RussoJapanese war, and who lias recently given his views on the present eon Diet in a particularly well written article appearing in the 'Weekly Dispatch, lie compareß the fall of Warsaw with that of Port Arthur, though pointing out that the former was by 110 means decisive, it being merely the end oi' the beginning and not the beginning of the end. ''Everything,'' he says, ''even the battle of .Mukden, was decided, in tiie last five minutes, and so, I expect, -will your great struggle in Europe.'' England, he considers, is practically [resb for, carrying on the struggle. "One might say she has not begun. England alone has the necessary qualities, too, upon which the world can depend in the great struggle. Happily England has the money, the men and the manufacturing centres, and she controls the sea. Hut what is far more important, she has the bull-dog tenacity and doggedness which alone can bring the struggle to a successful issue, and the spirit of liberty which guarantees that, such success will be honorably used. None of these can Germany take or give. The task, bow-

ever, is not going to be an easy one." Words like these, so pregnant with wisdom and common sense, show that, the author has an intelligent grasp ot' his subject, and they receive additional emphasis from the fact that the Japanese know the Germans well, for they owe nearly all their military strength and organisation to Gei-many. Japan is quite alive to German aims, and believes that it was Germany who pushed Russia against Japan, just, as she has tried to set America against her. Referring to tiie capture of Kiao-chau, M. Komai states that this colony was far more important in the scheme of German ambition than Warsaw. It was worth ten Warsaws, being designed to become the '''Gibraltar of the East," Germany having spent two hundred millions upon it so as to make it the base of her Eastern empire. The real kernel of the article is, however, that part which refers to the Dardanelles, and those croakers who have been so blatantly calling for the abandonment of this portion of the campaign will do well to note that this observant and expert Japanese authority says: — "The real centre of gravity in the European conflict, as seen by a Japanese, is the Dardanelles. If Kiao-chau is worth ten Warsaws, the Dardanelles are worth ten Kiao-chaus, for tlie Power that holds them controls the key to the world's commerce. For this reapon we think Germany made lier great mistake when she thrust east and west instead of duo south, for by so doing she has allowed the Balkan States to hesitate on which side they will fight, whereas had they been .solid for Germany, even though compulsorily, the annies of Barbarism would have been able to over-run Asia and Africa, the frontiers being easily defended by the home reserve, and there would have been an end of the 'British commercial empire; in fact, Germany would have been able to strike at the Empire in just the one spot the fleet could not cover. Germany is strong because she acts like a machine; but this means she has all the weakness of the machine, for left alone or mismanaged the whole thing works its own destruction. England, on the othor hand, can never be a machine; if all her officers were killed she could make any of her privates into officers, for every Englishman is an individual, and I should not be at all surprised if this were the ultimate deciding factor in the war—when Germany revolts against the madmen who are thrusting her to her own destruction."