The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1916. THE SITUATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1916. THE SITUATION.

Lord Sydenham, in his interview with the Press in yesterday's cables, cannot be accused of over-cheerfulness, but, viewing the situation as a whole, the wonder is not that we have made so little progress sinoe the outbreak of war, but that the Allies are not all lying prostrate before the conquering Teuton. How well lie laid his plans during the forty years before is only now being realised. He planned all the time for war; Rritfiln, France and Russia planned for peace. Consequently when the Teuton struck he had at his hand a perfect war machine; France and Russia possessed an imperfect machine, Britain had an improvised machine on land, but in the Navy a very effective instrument. The Navy gave both Britain and France an opportunity to improve their machines, which by now must be equal to the Germans'. When it is quite ready, the decision will rest, as always in war, with the human element. As John Bui-han, one of the ablest and most penetrating of critics, has shown, the human element, so far as Germany is concerned, is wearing thin. "Every day the spectre of diminishing man-power draws closer and closer to Germany's side. A machine can do marvels, but it cannot call the dead men from the grave. The Germans have not the number of men necessary to create new positions behind their third position. They need their reserves in the, firing line. The advance might be slow at the moment while we' are accumulating men and munitions, but the movement is going on none the less. Sooner or later the next blow will come, and then the next, till suddenly the steel rod of the enemy's defence, long filed at and often bent, would break. In a war of this magnitude the views of the peroral Staffs must be long." If history suggests one conclusion more forcibly.-than another, it is that ultimate victory does not belong to those war-lords who have deliberately prepared for great conquests, but rather to those industrious and normal oedples

who, so far from putting all their eggs into the 0110 basket of militarism, may even seem at the first onset of the militarists to be comparatively helpless. And another lesson which history teaches—a, lesson which the pessimists have refused to learn —is that the moment of an enemy's greatest triumph often sows the seed of his defeat, while what seems on one's own side the hour of disaster is in many cases tile hour I hat wins the war. Hannibal and Napoleon were great warriors in their day. Tlipy swept everything before them, the world seemed at their 'feet, hut they did not finally triumph. Nor can Emperor Wilhelm and his plotting, murdering band. They appear to have gained all the advantages so far, hut time is on the side of the Allies, for it enables them to perfect the machine, and with their preponderance in numbers and the passionate desire of every unit in their ranks to exact retribution for the terrible wrongs committed by the enemy, the days of the Germans are numbered. The year JftlO will assuredly tell a different story 'from that pi 1915. The advantages arc now passing to the Allies, and the end is asl certain as thai the sun will rise to-morrow.