THE LAST ROUND.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 May 1917, Page 5

THE LAST ROUND.

■GERMANY liliA'DY AT AIJj PORW& : CLIMAX OF THE WAB. Germany is stripped 'for" tW "h«f tOund," says Mr. Charles; Tower, a well* known Bullish correspondent, writing from Rottcrd(iiii. j She Hays so 'herself, and it seems raw amiable to conclude front nil reports thatf WflM tlw Germans themselves tall thi» the ''last round" tlicy mean that tbeyi can never again make such an effort at they hav<> made and are making for thi» coming spring struggle. An indecisive result'is'lor Germany mi unsuccessful re* suit; a dpfeat is destruction. So Revent*. low and others paint the situation thl# spring.

Nearly everything that she could doi during the winter to he ready for "the! last round" has been done. Since Novenn ber lit, from which date the Governmentt formally tobk over the factories whichl for some weeks previously had actually! been converted intb ammunition worfcij the Empire has been ono huge araepalft every available ma,n haH been aent~ta( join the colors anjt there is hardly •) sphere of man's work or labor under tlMf'' sun, except fighting, which is not being done to some extent 'by Germpn women* Women are riveters in the. netf Qew man ships; they are running railway) . trains, doing transport work, farmings making munitions, running half a luhm .■ dred different kinds of war organisation!, ' as well as looking after Germany's complicated system of social policy, Therej are parts of Germany, more particularly] it lTOiild appear in the south, where yo# may go far afield without meeting MJf sign of a male unless it happens to bfl| a gang of prisoners. \ ; New divisions have been poured up tho Western front. It ia true that tM ' reports reaching Holland indicate thill many of these troops are in t|ie )nm(|' literal sense cannon-fodder; that is, th»j> ■ are not of a quality to carry out gnMf storming operations; many of them may; be intended ahiefly to replace mien nowi on lines of communication, fend Terjj many are meant simply to "die is it ditch,'' if need be,'clutching a rifle ty) tending a machine-gun to the last,

SHIPS WITH LARGER GON& ■ Wo now know that at the beghmtn# of March or thereabouts the High Seas Fleet will at last have ret) covered from its disastrous drubbing a{" -j the hands of Sir John Jellkoe and Ad« J mirnl Beatty last summer. Lotus h&H) , occn made goo<4 damage repaired, an 4 some new ships, chiefly cruisers, it ajlj« pearn, added to the fleet. Evan tit "i Seydlitz appears from this acocußt to have been repaired or rebuilt, unless-th« ,1 reference in the report is to anotW vesel given the same name. The Tele*' graaf report states that the "OstfriesK ? land class," which the English textbook* call the Heligoland class is armed now with 38-Cfintimetre guns (Ifiin.), like thfl Baden and Bayern, instead of the HSuu guns for which they were built. Bui even if some details of this remarkaWa ; account may appear inaocurate, the g«n- • eral statement that March 1 will see the High Seas Fleet reconstituted andrattup more heavily armed than before „ appear to be true enough. All these statements which ftaVa' reached Holland may doubtless be in* accurate in details, but their general - ' truth, the truth that Germany has man.aged during the winter to bring her preparations for the "last round" to thai highest stage of completion, is not quia* tionable. Neutrals assert that she hw "more men in the field than at any timq during the war"; they believe that ah«i 1 has more guns, especially more machine- ! guns, and heavy artillery, more ammunin * i tion, perhaps more ships, or at any ratq • not fewer, and, finally, a courage which, though it may be that of despair, is nol| therefore the less dangerous. . '*' i f Thero remains only one respect in which she has 'been obliged to leave heij 5 preparations incomplete for want oi man terial—namely, that of food. ' 1< I am afraid there may Ik some ilia* sions regarding the actual effect of Ger* t many's economic privations or her ability, to (iglit ' the last round." If so, theyi ij ought to, be removed at once. From sQ j the reports received it is indicated that the civilian population is suffering in part from privations and even actual want; not everywhere, for the south is <' quite evidently better off than the north, and the west is in some Tespeots less hard presesd than the eaßt. You can, i still buy things in IXisseldorf which yon cannot obtain for love or money in Hamburg; and the peasants of Franconl* seem to have stores, hidden or buried) which are not to be found even among the big feudal estates of 'Mecklenburg and East .Prussia.

ENOUGH MIMY POOD. But even admitting that the "utelew N mouths" are barely filled with enough ' food or food substitutes to keep body and soul together, there Is no evidence at all that Germany, as a flfchting force, is seriously handicapped for this "t&rtl ' round." What has happened and what i is hapepning is what must have been ■' expected; since thero is no longer enough! to fill and over-fill the military store# and also to supply to the full the needs of the civilian the Gorman Government deliberately insists that tha latter shall take the consequences. A Bohemian paper pointed out recently; \ that in parts of Lower Austria buttetf 1 " was being used at ono time at axle* grease, because nothing else was avail* utile for the purpose. At another time, when petroleum ran short, butter wag run down and burned for light. Theaa arc merely illustrations of the general (act that whatever might be the need* of the general population they would! nob 'be allowed to handicap the smooth; running of tho German military Machine. If there is nothing else available, them butter must be used to enable military! trains to run, even if that butter 1 is real* ly needed to save somo woman or chili from death by .tuberculosis. _ , In all the reports furnished insistence is laid upon the fact that there is no lack of food or food variety at the front. "Let's get sent to the front to get a square meal"; "thero was any quantity of food at Vilna and Warsaw"; "at the beginning people at home Rent, food to tho front, now men at the front send! food home." Such are some of th» phrases in reports. It is, however, quit® possible that the German military authofities may fear that sooner or later there will even be a certain shoriagft at the front; it is against this that they -.'.i have been providing not only hy ration* ing tho civil population, but alio by] • 'promptly removing from the market any; kind of food on which there was * |da< The military authorities have done add are doing everything in their power to. v, force people into taking their food «X-. - clusively from the gr<mt municipal cam teens, which receive, roughly speaking what the argg dow