The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 1916. GERMANY'S WANING STRENGTH.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 1916. GERMANY'S WANING STRENGTH.

The graphic. account which Lord Northditto lias contributed to tJie London Times of what he saw at Verdun enables those who are far distant from the terrible scene of carnage to realise, in some measure, the horrors of modern warfare, especially in winter-time. AYe have learned from other sources how wave upon wave of massed Germans rolled up t(. be mown down by the French lire, battalions being decimated and their dead piled up in heaps over which the reinforcements had to scramble, or use as shields from the hurricane of shot and shell which blocked their advance. As tc the dead, their troubles are over; tliey have made the great sacrifice, hnd no man can do more. But the wounded! The picture that Lord Northc-lilVe draws of these is full of horror. One can, in imagination, see them lying between the trenches through the long hours of the night, exposed to the icy winds, suffering inconceivable agony until the frost grip benumbs their faculties and they sleep their last sleep—frozen to death. Lord Northeliffe says lie conversed with numerous prisoners on whose countenance was depicted horror and misery. The nerve-rucking ordeal of the incessant roar of artillery and explosions or shells has been such as to completely daze the men on both sides. Lord Northclill'e says he counted two hundred camion voices, but even if the number really only amounted to twenty the effect would never be forgotten. Only those who have been, present at such a tcrnado of sound can realise its potency, and most of us are only too willing to escape the experience if we can do so honorably, though when the need for service arises there is no hesitation in obeying the call on the part of all who value honor and duty above all other considerations. Modern warfare is full of | horrors, hut the prodigal waste of human life that is inherent to German methods emphasises the fact that primal instincts are stropgly in evidence in the Huns. After all the bombast concerning his "invincible" armies, the description given by Lord Northeliffe of the German prisoners should completely dispel any illusion on that score. "Personal contact,'' he says, "with the miserable creatures forming the bulk of the German prisoners is needed in order to convince us that sueli specimens of humanity really belonged to the German army," and he quotes as a sample an illfavored youth, barely five feet four inches, narrow chested, and better suited for an office stool than for ft place In the firing line. This crude spec to en had itseived ijnly tlx weeks' training wlias

bo was sent to Verdun, and lie was one of many similar companions. No wonder that the French are not only confident of holding their own, but feel they have the measure of the enemy, and that nothing justifies the belief that the Germans' spirit and stamina are equal to the task of dislodging the French from their formidable positions.