WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 February 1916, Page 5

WAR NOTES.

FRANCE'S FAITH IN VICTORY. PLANNING TO REBUILD RUINED CITIES. { New Yo"k, November 10. The most striking testimony to France's firm faith in the victory of tho Allies U furnished by the arrival here of five members of a French Commercial Commission which has come to the United .States to arrange for the purchase, nt the close of the war, of at least £32,000,(J00 worth of structural iron and steel, machinery and industrial supplies, with which to re-build the ruined Northern France industries.

All supplies of this character (said the Commissioners) were formerly imported from Germany. The Commission is headed by 31. 'Maurice Dam our, formerly French Consul-Genera! at New Orleans, now secretary of appropriations of the French Chamber of Deputies.

Although this Commission i a not a Government organisation, it is backed, said the commissioners, by all the large industrial and commercial organisations of France, and a majority of'the bankers. The five spoke of their plans with confidence that the iron ring of the invader would be pushed back when the day comes and the titles of the notth reclaimed, so that the shattered factories could be re-built and filled with the machinery that will bring prosperity. -

"Our war with Germany will not end with the fighting," said M. Damour. "A trade war will follow.- All France is working with but one purpose in view, the defeat of Germany. '■There is not an 'idle hand in the Republic, and every, one is adding a mite to the. common aim. The people can see but one end to the war—victory for France. France will endure to the end."

BRITAIN'S SEA POWER. HUMILIATING CONFESSION'S Addressing the Austrian Geographical Society at. Vienna ■ on. the -subject of "German Navigation from the .Military Standpoint," Br.- Gerhard Sehott, director of the Hamburg Naval Observatory, was forced to make some humiliating confessions of German impotence in face of the British Navy. The whole of Germany's sen, traffic, lie said, had to come out of the small triangle, Ems-Heligolanrt-Siild, and 1)5 per cent, went through the Straits of Dover, which was completely impassable when both shores were hostile. Even the '220-mile northern passage from the Nortti pea had been successfully cloßed by the "police -bureau" at Kirkwall, which brought in all neutral ships. And in the Mediterranean everything was subject to the rulers of Gibraltar, who controlled the whole international traffic to India, Eastern Asia, East Africa and Australia. Only at tho Dardanelles and the Bosphorus did the English power cease. The geographical importance of these straits lay not only in their quality as a "fortified highway; they were also a joint bridge-head '"in the great trans-continental world traffic route of the future, Beiiin-Vienna-Con-stantinople - Bagdad Railway - Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean, a route independent of Great Britain and controlled by the Central Powers. "This," Dr. Schott continued, 'is our future. Here, even in times of war, we shall have a way open to the important oceans; of the world. Its maintenance is a question of life for the Central Powers. To gain tliis is the more important, since in the Indian Ocean England lias only two obstacles in the way—the Persian Gulf and German East Africa, Otherwise the Indian Ocean may be regarded as purely British."

Referring to the tremendous interests Germany had in keeping open lier communications with the United States, Dr. Schott said it was not possible at this time to discuss the question as to how German shipping was to get out of the narrow triangle of waters, hut certain '.'ecent proceeding's of America were partimlarly important from this standpoint.