SURVEY OF CONFLICT.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

SURVEY OF CONFLICT.

NO REASON FOR PESSIMISM. HUNS SEEK RELIEF FROM STRESS. London, Sept. 10. The colossal European conflict has reached, so far as its military aspect is concerned, a sort of doldrums. Though the calm is more apparent than real, great or decisive events hang fire. But never since the war began has its politics been so agitated and strenuous. The world has now come to the interlude in ,Armageddon, and, behind the subdued roar of the cannon, the world'B chancellories faii\tly catch the dulcet or rasping voices of the diplomats, who may be called the stage managers of this dreadful show'. Delicate strings are now being subtly pulled in many ways all over the world. Though the statement may be officially and categorically denied, the fact remains that Germany is now, or has just been, making a fervent bid for peace. Whether this manoeuvre merely conveys some new trick of frightfulness will appear in good time.

GERMANY WANTS PEACE. The well-informed opinion of those who may fairly claim to be as much "in tlie know" as anybody is that Germany very sincerely desires peace. Her maximum effort has been made. Her armies at this moment have, it is dogmatieally asserted, attained their full potential supremacy. She will never be able to enter the peace conference halls more heavily armed nor with more booty to use as pawns in the grand match of the nations. Those who take this view are convinced that general exhaustion in men, munitions, and money, begins already to haunt the dreams of Potsdam, and that, unless she really believes conclusive and absolute victory may still be hers, now is the moment for Germany to roar as like a sucking dove as the Prussian drill-sergeant habit will allow.

ALLIES ADAMANT. But German diplomacy has never been the equal of Prussian militarism. It may have rivalled it in atrocity and perfidy, but not in her sheer grim efficiency. Diplomacy has never been the strong genius of the Teutonic race. For one thing, diplomacy requires manners, and, for another, subtlety, and neither in any true sense has ever been the distinguishing gift of the German. The Allies have been busily propaganding, too and crusading, in the diplomatic manner. It is reassuring to anyone who thoroughly realises what would be the meaning of an inconclusive peace, to know on sound authority that the Allies have never before been so agreed as now. Many suspicions and some misunderstandings have been cleared away, there is a fixed and common purpose set for each and all, and there will be no peace, except on our own terms, even though Petrograd in 1915 has to follow the example of Moscow in 1812. The truth is that Russia. Italy, France, and England, but especially Russia and Italy, are determined to break for good and all the economic fetters that Germany has been riveting round their necks for half a centurv almost.

HOW GERMANY TRIED TO "QUEER" ITALY. A particularly able and very influential Italian politician, with whom I discussed affairs thig week, afforded me a remarkable revelation of the extent to which German finance had captured Italy. Berlin has been financing Italy commercially, on borrowed capital, by the way ) to an amazing extent. Germany has, in fact,, pursued a policy of peaceful and financial penetration in her quondam ally's territory for years and decades. But the Italian people are not lacking either in subtlety or farsightedness. They have long hated the crippling Alliance, and detested the pushful enterprise that bound them up with the Kaiser's Weltpolitik. They have suffered almost as bitterly as the Ruseians. Like the rest of the Entente Allies, they are adamant in the resolve to apply to Germany and all things German Lord Rosebery's "clean slate" policy NO GERMAN PEACE!. The croakers who go about whispering suggestions of disunion and disaster are either German emissaries or persons of weak perceptions. They are also profoundly ignorant of the true facts and the actual trend of events. Russia, least of all, will seek a German peace. The Kaiser will compel a peace in the East only by conquest, and not even the Most High ever dreams of really conquering Russia, Every mile his legions batter their way towards the far-distant steppes makes peace with Russia more improbable and war with a new Balkan Alliance more certain. When the Russians were breaking the back of Austria | the Balkan States could take a calm and philosophic outlook on the war.

FICKLE BALKAN STATES. Now the Austro-Germans have pushed the Russians back, we are beginning to look towards the minarets of Constantine's City, the Balkan States are in a turmoil of apprehension. As Aeneas, that old friend of our school days, said to Dido, "Jam ardet Ucalegon." There is no need to labor the reasons that compel us and our French allies to fight on to a finish. We are not to be bought off now by any offer to swop outraged Belgium for the captured German colonies and French Africa. Neither we nor the French can find life tolerable hereafter, or enjoy any prospect of a place in the sun, so long as we dwell under the freezing shadow of German steel. We arc pledged to our future existence to fight this war right out to its logical conclusion. And what folly to think of peace now, when the German conspiracy against the world's peace is just passing the meridian of its strength, and when the hour of our growing advantage is close at hand.

THE TOLL OF EXHAUSTION. The flower of the Austro-German armies has been half destroyed. Between them they have lost fully, five millions of trained men. Russia has lost about four millions. France about a million and a-half. Italy has lost already 150,000. We have lost 300,000. Serbia and Belgium have probably sacrificed about the same number as ourselves between them. If the Allies have lost, as they have, about six million men in total casualties, of whom probably five million are permanent, does anyone doubt that the Austro-German losses, permanent and irreplaceable, are at least five million? Russia can more than make good her enormous losses in men. France has noj called up such "out" classes to the colors as Germany has, and our new armies will more than make good her lost cadres.

WHERE ALLIES HAVE BIG LEAD, The balance of profit and loss in fighting men is overwhelmingly and con"oeingly on the side of the Allies. It is

still more so in material. On that head oar supplies are as inexhaustible as they are world-wide. And the most formidable factor of all, perhaps, against Germany to-day is the economic one. The dream that inspired this great war crime in the Fatherland, beyond the territorial and hegemonial ambitions, was a dream of huge war indemnities. Germany was to hold the greater portion of the Western world under a conqueror's tribute. We and our Allies were to go on for years paying the German Overlord for his costs in this international brigandage. It was a stupendous scheme. But it has failed. The bottom has been blown right out of it already. Ask any great financier what the present and future economic condition of Germany is, and hear what the answer is. ANOTHER GREAT "HEAVE." The blunt fact is that Germany is today hopelessly bankrupt. Beggary on an Imperial scale stares her gaunt in the face. How she will continue to wear through another year of strenuous war is an unsolved mystery. The most feasible supposition is that she is now endeavoring to get Belgium and Poland as hostages, wherewith to try to purchase the end of the war. But that never be. It would be madness, daylight madness, for the Allies to think of anything of the sort. But there will be another winter of campaigning certainly, though everyone hopes the tide of the war on land will have set rather definitely the other way before the winter frosts pome. There is ardent talk of another great heave in the West almost at once, and this time it will have ample backing, in men and munitions, as well as a very definite objective. Great plans have been laid. SURPRISE FOR GERMANS. The Germans are apparently quite in the dark for once as to what those plans are. But one hears authoritative assurances of good augury, and some fine morning we shall-get stirring news. Jt is all-important, however, that nothing should he left to chance or fortune, and nothing attempted that would risk the superiority of General JofTre's forces. If the Allies allow their men to be exhausted in the same ratio as the Germans have wasted theirs, our good outlook would be dissipated. Those eager fighters who chafe in their armchairs over the "inaction in the West" had best remember this. Lord Kitchener told us as plainly as he could in words that this would be a war of exhaustion. But, if we are to win it, the exhaustion must be on the German side, not ours. It would be a Pyrrhic victory if we broke through at a cost which left us nij stronger than the enemy. We must economise our strength. We must not spectacularly throw it away.

IN THE EAST. And this, by the way, is precisely what the Germans appear to have done in the East. They have, at great cost and immense expenditure, done in the East what our smoke-room Xapoieons would have us do in the West. They have broken through and driven back the opposing lines. Incidentally, they possessed a superiority of equipment we do not yet approach, and never can until Germany becomes exhausted. But what have they gained? It is now. tolerably clear that the Russian retreat has been successfully achieved. And, in the circumstances, it must rank as a very miraculous achievement. No decision has heen attained for all the expenditure of power and energy. Once the new levies are trained and equipped Russia can come again more formidably than before. But nothing can restore to the enemy the huge losses he lias incurred. General Joffrc's strategy in the West, and not von Hindeuburg's in the East, is the true one that must ultimately win this war. We must bide our time to secure a decisive stroke, and we know that we can play the waiting. It is Germany that' ha 3 every good reason to be in a hurry.