WE ARE GOING TO WIN.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 May 1916, Page 7

WE ARE GOING TO WIN.

THE HUNS' LAST BOLT SHOT. (Robert Blanchford). We are going to figlit this war to a finish, and we are going to win. When the trumpets sounded we were caught napping. The.confession of the Russian might be duplicated here. We had a very small army; we had a plentiful lack of guns, of shells, or rifles, of officers. We had never had a big army. We had never fought a great war lon land. We had no definite plan of action, and we did not realise the stupendous magnitude of the tragedy before us. Worse than all, we had no capable leader. We had no Danton, no Pitt to rouse, and enlighten our people. But we had the national grit, the national stout heart, the national character, which, slow to start, is dour to finish, and we shall arrive. THE HUNS' BEST CHANCE. For, look at the situation how we 'may, and giving Dismal Jimmy every i| chance, what can we make of it but that we are winning? If the Germans could not drive through to Paris when the French were surprised and shaken and ill-organised; if they could not drive through to Calais when our line was woefully thin and we had no supports behind us; if they could not break the Russian line and shatter the Russian armies when the Russian artillery was out of action and their own was overwhelming; if they could not beat us or our Allies on land when we were all short of guns and shells; if they could not take Ypres or pass the Yse'r when our army was so small; if they could not win with the advantage of numbers, of machinery, and of surprise, how shall they beat us now? \ "ALLIES' STAR RISING." The Allies' star is rising. We are no longer short of guns, shells, or men. I invite the attention of our friend "D. James" to the desperate position of the Russians when, in face of the concentrated and terrific batteries of th,e Huns the Russian shells gave out. I ask our dismal friend to project his mind back to the critical struggle at Ypres, when our weary troops, with hardly a shell to cover them, were attacked by 600,000 Germans. I remind him of the rush to Paris and the sudden nasty jar on the Marne. If the Germans, in full force, confident, and with overwhelming artillery, could not win in the summer of 1914, what is likely to happen to them now? With numbers thinned and an extended line, with increasing enemies armed with increasing weapons, with their trade dead and the seas closed to them, what' shall avert their final and overwhelming defeat? Not even the timidities of our ladylike Government shall avail them! BLUFF WILL NOT GO. But Egypt and the Persian' Gulf, and Albania? What of them? Does anybody believe that the Turks can take Egypt? Could they take all Persia and over-run Albania as they did Serbia, will that lift the blockade or stop the advance of the Russians and the British and the French? I have never attached the least importance to the sensational stories about a starving Germany or a Germany clamoring for peace. No one who knows anything of human nature would build any hope upon the neutral Powers. We and our Allies have to win this war ourselves, and we are winning it. Had we and our Allies been as ready when Von Kltiek was driven across the Marne the war would have been over a year ago. To-day the Huns have the aid of the Bulgarians and the Turks, and they will need all the Turks can do and more than they can do. The bond between the Turks and the Germans is not as the bond,between the French and the British or between those and the Russians. The Bulgarians are as treacherous and nearly as cunning as their masters. If Egypt and Salonika are to be won they must be won by hard fighting and at ruinous cost. They cannot be won by bluff. "BLOW" AFTER VICTORY. And in this connection, it is pleasing to hear that the Bulgars and the Austrians are wrangling as to which of them shall have Salonika, which belongs to the Greeks and will have to be taken at the cost of seas of blood. Perhaps, too, if the Hunnish and Bulgarian savages shout loud enough as to the possession of Salonika, King Constantine may hear and heed them.. Developments in the Balkans in the immediate future may be interesting: When a man hears two scoundrels disputing as to which of them 13 to have his watch, he is apt to become excited. Though it is foolish to be heedlessly optimistic, it is not wise to take the Huns too seriously. They have certain radical military faults. Like most ill-bred people, they cannot help bragging. If they, imagine that a place is open to attack.'they begin to boast of its conquest. TJi,ey : .have boasted so much of the conquest of Egypt' that the British have made that conquest impossible. They have yapped so loudly about the Balkans that they have endangered the successes ■ they gained there largely by bribery and lying and corruption. They are clumsy loufs, after all, these* Germans. , Even an archvillain like Von Papen goes meandering among his enemies with his pockets full of incriminating documents. A clever sharper does not show liis hand.