BIG GAPS IN AUSTRIAN ARMY.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1916, Page 10

BIG GAPS IN AUSTRIAN ARMY.

OVER HALF EMPIRE'S MAX(POWER. GONE. Milan, October 23. The Corriere Mia iSera published startling information.obtained from the Rome War Office relative to the critical state of the Austro-Hungarian military reserves. Up to the end of April last, Austria had called under arms 7,400,000 men. Only 3,000,000, including 300,000 in training, are still available. During the war twenty-three "miarsch fornialtionen," each of which averages 215,000 men, making a total of nearly 5,000,000 marching reserve troops, have been drawn upon to fill gaps left in the armies in the field. About (500,000 of them are those who returned to the ranks after a period of convalescence, so that the enormous difl'erenVe of 4,400,000 men represents the Austro-Hun-gaiinn wastage in killed, permanently disabled, prisoners and missing. Austria-Hungary has already incorporated in tlit! fighting army all men able to bear arms between the ages of 18 and 50, and also lias mobilised for auxiliary service all men between 51 and 55. Thus, to-day, the dual monarchy can only use to make good her losses the small leavings of repeated medical revisions, after which recourse will have to be made either to boys of to men over 51.

GERMANY'S HOPELESS CASE. v* i • , t, San Fl- a»cisco, Nov. 20. Frederick Palmer, the only American war correspondent permitted VK£ im to represent the American Press at fn- ",*'>* arrived ba <* i» New York for a short period of rest. Directly he vcrlbl h ° Was surr °™<M by a -avett *Z y of new «P»P«nnen who gave him a most enthusiastic reception and congratulated him on the man o"d dodgmg shot and shell with the Allied .wmie* m various parte of the war™ SuTK? , the .° pini ° n that «* ™ WW * l6aS,t ' if not ™™ than, another year, and that Germany must eventually crack under the strai/of tte said tha * «» ™« wilt Z VS wWeh wiH decid « *ke war will be given on the western front in in Europe, Mr. Palmer said.—"The EurTarTin 1 Play a decisive I?.* «.'» t •* ran away with the bait-They would not listen to the i ■MJee of the Allied commanders. However, once they were in retreat, the ;"*" a,ls ™° rc ' a<ly to take and welcomed the. hundred French staff officers who are in Roumania pitting their skill and an inexperienced army against German staff skill and an eipcrienced army. The rest depends upon biiss.a s ability to arm her numbers and suflicient. guns and munitions. All winter the offensive on the western front will continue. Every time the weather J* tavorablo the French and British, who have the guns and shells for it now, will turn on their murderous curtains of fire -whirlwind curtains creeping curtains, double and treble and quadruple curtains—and the infantry will charg* .inner cover ~f this , M „„,, y of death and I'-ai- oil an'otlier gain „f a mil,, or so of trout ami a thousand prisoners or more At lacks oi a iW l„„ ml . ol i v . lnls of iront- have gone „„t of fashion. In f.Uacks on a big scale losses are relatively less, and tin- bag of prisoners b'ggor. 'lhen, the soldiers all like what they .-all a -big It counts for something. When spring comes the French and British will continue their drives with more men and more anununitton, and the 'ltalians will continue theirs. If the Russians have munitions to continue all the summer with drives of the same kind, something will broa.k somewhere on the long front of the Central Powers; or, if it does not, the Allies mean to go on with the war another year." Mr. Palmer went on to tell how troublesome wove flu- Herman machinegun positions, and how the British went alter them with t,W "tanks," and did not hesitate tr, use two or three batteries of guns to vripe out every irritating position ;vith shells enough to make sure that 'nothing would survive in the neighborhood. He added that, although the German army is still a great army, it plainly is not the army that it was. "It: is poorer than a vear ago," he said, "ai 1 the French army is better." FRANCE NC lie deprecated a ,-W.ion that France is an exhausted ation, declaring that the country is noi stronger in men and better equipped tl: t twelve, months ago. Tb.s American c respondent asserted that there is no < icstion that the German Crown Prim ■ has lost his popularity in Germain* and added that Von Findenbwrg's idevAtion to chief of staff was in answer to public will, and' nartirnlarly the w; : il jf the trenches." He added that the Kaiser, however, still retains his hold on German affections. Mr. Palmer sah! that all German prismcrs agree that in this war "the east, is the east, and the .vest, is the west," saying that "it is a .inch fighting in (lie east compared to Verdun ami the Semitic." This is mainly due to the Iteiritie. gun concentrations on the western front.

The correspondent said the Germans intended to maintain what ho termed an "elastic front" on the west, and make (he British and French pay a heavy pi ice for slight gains: "but." be added, •'the kind of elastic front which yields Thiepval and Douamont and Vaux cannot, endure. Success in war still seems to lie with the offensive, and the initiative on the western front is with the Allies.''