Taranaki Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1916. BRITAIN'S PART.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 October 1916, Page 4

Taranaki Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1916. BRITAIN'S PART.

Future ages can never say that Britain kept back part of the price. Never in the ages of her history has Britain been called to make such, heavy sacrifices in war. Dull and callous indeed must he tho heart which is untouched oy the lengthening casualty lists. But the nation has not flincned or faltered for a moment in the determination to make an end of German tyranny. The watch-! •word of the hour is ''Carry on!" The French now realise, as they never realised before, this fact. The last mail! brought papers containing excerpts from tho leading French journals regarding the British effoii. M. Pichon, writing in the Petit Journal on the anniversary of the war, bids his countrymen not to deceive themselves as to the decisive factor in the struggle. "It i; not the French Army, brave as it has shown itself, nor the Russian Army, never lacking in courage, but the British Fleet that has made victory possible for the Allies. It is useless to cherish phantasies. The facts are there. Without Great Britain aur ports were practically at the .merey of the enemy, our overseas communications practically cut off. Germany had made no mistake on Mvit point, and if she now hates the British it is because, she now sees in them tho principal cause of her approaching downfall." The Journal, in an article on what Great Britain is doing in the war, also confers the crown upon the British Navy. "Little is known," it says, ''of the prodigious task of patient labor accomplished by the British Fleet. Nevertheless, it is by this silent work that Germany is being done to death. To be the dominant factor in the defeat ol the most abominable conspiracy against civilisation which the world has'ever seen should be honor enough for the British Navy; and that its part in- this unparalleled contest is so recognised by French opinion should be consolation foi the conspicuous and heralded triumphs which have been denied it." ''What would have happened to •«," remarked the brilliant Socialist paper which has changed its title from "La Guerre Soeiale" to "La Vktoire," "even after the battle of the Marne, if the German fleet had cut us off from the sea and blockaded us, if Germany had been free tc draw supplies from America and elsewhere? England goes to war; instantly the German licet takes cover, and it is Germany which is blockaded and cut off from the countries which supply her with munitions, cut off from •>, million of her reservists." The British Fleet, it added, ha 3 been the best piece of luck for France—'better than her own patriotism, the blunders of Germany, the attitude of Italy, the genius of the high command, the devotion of rank and file." "I wonder," writes AT. Pnilippe Millet in the Observer, "if the British public .ealises what an extraordinary impression the recent successes obtained by their new Army nave made on all the. French .provincials. They did not know much about your Army, and had grown to be sceptical. All those of us who devote their efforts to explaining .i'reat Britain's position were listened "to with polite smiles, hut more or less distrusted. The French peasant is not a fool; he quite "understood that the British Fleet mas rendering us a magnificent service by keeping the mastery of tho seas, but, being too narrow-minded to grasp .some of the dillienltie., you have been contending with, he did not, at the bottom of his heart, believe in the British Army. The thunder on the Snmnie has within one week cleared away all these poisonous clouds. . To find an equivalent to the momentous effect ot this sudden revelation one would have to go hack to ~he early days of tho. war, when tiht wo'iuome rumor spread like lire, that England was coming in, nnd.-t-Itat her Expeditionary Force was larfding in tha North. Then, as to-day, Hie. immediate effect was the growth of a feeling ai unlimited confidence. There is not one local paper in France, .iowever secluded from the world, which has not spontaneously expressed during the past .weeks unbounded joy about the performance of the British. All our village's are now convinced, because they have seen, Unit the British have managed to put up a huge army, with plenty of guns and ammunition, and that means business. 'By (nnl, these English! they tight well!' i.s the remark you hear everywhere, in the fields as in the ai'es of our little towns." M. Maurice Barres, the distinguished French writer, who has just visited England, also gives high praise to what England has dome. ''l can give our intrepid soldiers the mo.se absolute assurance that 'England is now capable, as she is proving, of setting and keeping in motion right through to the end a formidable war machine. Above all, I feel that I have carried out the main object of my journey by acquiring the conviction that England, which disgraceful rumoTs of German origin pretended was gaining profit even out of the sufferings of the Allies, is taking her full and very large share without any attempt at bargaining in the sacrifices demanded, and is freely giving her gold, her lat'or and her blood for national defence.'- The French' cx-'Premicr. M. C'aillaux, in an interview with the London Telegraph, says: "The British race has astonished ; friend and foe by the miracle —1 know of no more fitting term to apply to it— . it has accomplished. Nio one, however conversant with the dominant features ; of the British people, their steady, ] pk"id resolution, Jheir firmness of wilL :

the tenacity with which they cling to hallowed traditions, could have expected this transformation. Nothing that one knew foreshadowed it. Their ideals of political I'ife seemed to eliminate it. 1 have read complaints of the, slowness with which it came. They are wholly unjustified. There was something so sublime in this transmutation of the most pacific people of Europe into a nation of gallant soldiers that the fact will be remembered for all time as one of tilie loftiest landmarks of nistory. Future generations will discern the grandeur of the achievement .athwart the modesty of its authors and the gradation of their methods.''