The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 29, 1916. THE DESPERATION OF FEAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 May 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 29, 1916. THE DESPERATION OF FEAR.

''The Germans continue hammering at Verdun for no reason except the potent one of fear. They dare not admit having failed morally, if not physically." This is the view put forward by the London Spectator in support oi the theory that while the news from Verdun (and from Italy) is superficially disappointing, it is fundamentally good. The more the German offensive in the West is studied the greater becomes the conviction that it is not so much an exhibition of courage as the mad desperation of fear, The Spectator has' fairly accurately gauged the situation in saying that the Germans dare not admit even a moral failure, nor is the reason far to seek when the searchlight of reason is brought to bear on the terribly callous wastage of life that has marked the Crown Prince's operations. The Bolossal human sacrifices offered up ostensibly on the altar of the Fatherland have really been made to pander to the Hohenzollern vanity as exhibited in the Kaiser's oft-repeated boast that 'his troops were invincible. The mighty heaps of dead German warriors are practically all that the Kaiser and his son have to show as the result of their fi'tile efforts to break through the French and British lines, and they know full well that each of these victims to their insane and empty pride has left behind them in Germany relatives and friends who will count the cost and weigh the royal culprits in the balance. Nothing but success in reaching Paris could possibly turn the scale in favor of the royal house, and that is not even a million to one chance. Every day the fear of the time of reckoning must be sinking deeper into the hearts of the Teutonic military leaders. Nor is it any mere idle fear, for it strikes at the root of tiie whole mischief. All patriotism, no matter how ardent may be its nature, has a point which will succumb to a heavy and prolonged strain, and that point is reached when the people realise that they are being sacrificed in vain, not for a dearly loved principle, but for the mere gratification of senseless vanity. In the case of the Crown Prince, he has more than one signal failure to retrieve, and Verdun was cliosen as the battle-ground whereon he hoped to cover himself with glory by nchioving the impossible. In one way his achievements are certainly a record—a most unenviable one—for he has senselessly sacrificed more men and ammunition than has ever been the case since wars began. His failure cannot be regarded only as a military disaster, for it is more, of a dynastic nature, and it is that aspect to which we must look for an explanation of the desperate exhibition of the madness of fear—the worst and most potent form of dementia that can affect a military leader. Meanwhile the German Chancellor is doing his utmost to counteract the dire results of thte madness (by means of frothy falsehoods uttered in the Reichstag. Although it was Germany that caused f.he wj% Herr Hojlweg has iust

stated in the Reichstag tluit on its outbreak- lie recalled Moltke's saying Hint ''we should have mire more to defend in a. bloody light what wo had won in IS7O. Wc went out to battle lor .the protection of our unity and freedom—the whole nation united like one man. It is this united and tree Germany that our enemies desire to destroy." Heir Hollwog lias reiterated these falsehoods so often that no doubt lie has come to believe them. Admitted that Germany went out to war like one man, how will she return? .Although he did not mean to be prophetic, there is certainly much likely truth in the words that Herr Hollweg added: '-Germany is again to become impotent as in former centuries . . . the whipping of Europe, bound in fetters still after this war ns regards the development of her economic strength." That certainly is what Germany's enemies mean by the destruction of the military power of Prussia, and such madness as that shown by the exponents of that militarism can only be prevented in the future by reducing Germany to the position so strikingly forecasted by the German Chancellor. The mad gamble in whic'h the Germans are staking their all at Verdun is 'bringing nearer each moment the inevitable exhaustion which will in some measure recompense the French for the days of horror throug'h which they havo so bravely struggled.