CANDID GERMAN DOUBTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

CANDID GERMAN DOUBTS.

CAUSE FOR GLOOM IN BERLIN. A correspondent of neutral nationality gave the London Evening News a literal translation of a conversation he had only a few days before in Berlin with a German friend, "an officer and a man of title and some social altitude," on the prospects of the war. The neutral said he had just told him tiiat lie saw a great difference in the spirits of the Berliners since the last time he was there. "It is only natural," the German replied. "Every family in Berlin is mourning some lost one. Some have lost all their sons, and now fathers, 48 years old, are called out. It is a time for sadness." "But your armies arc doing well?" "Certainly. But I should have said you were a poor prophet a year ago if you had told me the Russians would still be holding out. We have invaded them. But think of what our poor devils will have to suffer in their swamps and snows this winter!" "Well, you are still firm in the west." "For how long? What does this day-by-day bombardment of our trenches mean? .... I will tell you. The

French and the British are catching up with 11s in gun and shell power. They are naturally not using it all up. It means that the number of shells they are using in a day is the number they can make in a day. . . When the guns stop the French and the Tommies will hurl themselves at us."

"But you are good defenders." "So; yet the French are a continual surprise. We thought them effeminate, played out. But the British Tommies are the very devils."

"Why do your comic papers always show them running away?" "Why do the comic papers in all countries show the things that people like to believe instead of the things that are? Besides, you can see that we do not think it wise to let our common people know the whole truth about our opponents." "You say so?" "Well, it would not help us telling them that the Tommy Atkins are the best infantry in the war. They are marvellous. Our fellows fight because they have been drilled to it. The Tommies fight because they like it. It is like a game to them. Our men cannot understand it. They hate the English. Perhaps there is a little of tlrti hate that conies with fear!"

"What are the qualities of Tommy Atkins that tlicy report?" '■Diabolically good shooting. Their snipers are positive artists. Then they are natural bayonet fighters. They certainly run weli , . . . but in advanceing. They are all too difficult to make run the other way." I have talked with a dozen privates and non-coms, lately, who said honestly enough that they didn't want to go back to the western front to fight English infantry. The officer confessed, in another talk, that the sequel of the big artillery preparation (which was discussed with foreboding, by the way, in Berlin) might he a vast infantry attack, which as likely as not would pierce the German lines seriously.

I sec it has come true, and I should like to be in Berlin to-day to hear what the people are saying of it. Berlin is hard, grim, gloomy, apprehensive. There is a deep fear and resentment of a second winter campaign, and the Germans hate you all the more bitterly for believing that only England's participation had made it necessary.