WAR WEARINESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1917, Page 2

WAR WEARINESS.

TIIK HERMAN MILITARY CRITICS. "VOLUNTARY ELASTICITY." 1 !

While the German military critics in quest of material make what caj)W«f they can out of what they call wftf weariness," a complaint which they prpjfess has attacked the Allies, they ar£ fiW parently unaware that the most painiiijl and striking symptoms of this disease can be found no further away fiffn thcmsiiVes than in their own writings (writes W. D. Newton in an article published in London). J For some time past it has been noticed that the pressure of the Allied armies has lia'd almost as pronounced an effect on the military writers at homp in Germany as upon the German armies fighting in the field. Compelled to work strictly to the Hindenburgian "voluntary elasticity" propaganda creed, w' lays it down, that every trench give;) to the Allies is a victory for Germany, these industrious, solemn, and sometimes comically vehement gentlemen have found themselves unable to meet the continuous strain. Their automatic and semi-official shouts of victory on each and every occasion that their line has been driven back have gradually become .hoarse and jaded, and their judgments 'have as naturally become as mechanical as their manifestations of joy. Indeed, so mechanical have tKey grown that their writing is no longer criticism at all, but merely a collection of appropriate military texts to be used to fit every exigency and occasion. i

* These hired and baffled German writers no longer explain the meaning «{' <a battle. They simply say that the Allies captured a craterfield, hut that"''they didn't reach Ostend, or Lille, or Douai, or Metz, or Trieste, and they are therefore heavily defeated. If the Aliieh'-do reach some point which might constitute lan objective (as they did at Bapaflme, ! Pennine, Vimjr, Messines, Lens, etc!)y -tljc. German writer has another appropriate tag to fit the case. 'He Savs: The'enwfqy has made some advance, true, but he'has failed to "break through." This "break, through" idea is one of the happiest,' thoughts that over came to the journalistic henchman of {he German High Command. No doubt the propagandist knows it means exactly nothing. He. knows, if only from his what happened to German attacks at Ypres (both in 1914 and 191o), Verdun, and the Clicmin des Dames (1317), that these offensives are riot in any sense intended to effect a "break through." He is therefore safe. He can appear convincingly optimistic without having to go into explanations which might bo dangerous. Again, if the German line cracks and bends under the strength and power of the Allied attack, the German critic has an argument ready-made to prove that this does not really mean that the Allies are powerful. The "strength of gunfire that staggers the German line signifies merely the last desperate attempt of the Allies to throw all their weight against Germany, in the hope of doing something before the submarines cut off the supplies of ammunition and men. They have been making this point obstinately and dully for just eight months now. Perhaps it is because they ore Germans that they are incapable of seeing that these "last" blows were somewhat constant, or that the dictum "the .supplies of war material are gradually diminishing" (Major Moraht, Deutsche Tages Zeitung, Iflth May, 1917), uttered in May, reads rather curiously beside their stories of unprecedented Allied gunfire uttered in August. Nobody but a German could boast so solemnly and complacantly of Hindenhurg's 'elastic defence" w"hen the only notable thing about it is that it has gone ''elasticJilly" backward on all fronts (except the Eastern), the Somme, Vimy, Messines, Ypres, Lens, Aistie, Champagne, Verdun and the Isonzo, for more than a year. None but Germans, either, could expect the world to accept with anything other than smiles, the solemn, and almost pontifical suggestion that',,s(jr'., dun, which was rated all in all by, j>aiv ser and Crown Prince in February, is now entirely lacking in There is really something rather *waji(kjr. ful in this shell-proof dullness'of the - Germans over Verdun. A whole l |stnngi of critics, the critics of the Lokai Anzeiger, the Frankfurter Zeitung,' ftiid Baron von Arienne of the blatt among them, have set seriously and elaborately to prove,,that what is glorious victory for over identically the same ground, or a matter of no moment whatever;for anybody else. Not one of men has the imagination to see jipw fntirely foolish the whole argument-is,, and that, even on the lowest basis, whait, jwas important for Germany must be equally important for France, and what was giorious for Germany is equally glorious for France —this quite apart from tlw fact that France has recovered in three swift forward bounds and at light cost, practically all that Germany took seven months of continuous fighting and enormous losses to gflin. Yet the German effort was said to hnve "bled France white.''

Tiie writers, however, are v.TlTering from war weariness. They have receive'! their orders to make the beat of Verdun, and, being idenless and driven into a corner bv the steady nnd obvious euceesi, oi tlie Allies, they fall bark weariV on the old tags. Tht French have not broken through, they iiave not attained objectives, the 'elastic defence" lias again stretched accommodatingly. Hermany in losing ground has won aubther great victory. How crushing is this sense of restriction which the iM'cimistauces of the' situation has imposed upon the German writer, can be estimated by the wildness of their language when they get an opportunity, of being really joyous over a victory. The fighting about Langemarck was a point in question. ' The German report that the British had been driven out of Langemarck 011 August lfi, what-" ever elso it was, was a heaveniaeni occasion to ,the German writer to self go. They certainly did let ...themselves go. The papers were fn""the most extravagant nonsense concerning this splendid German victory../.Tjle ' Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitungiplufeed recklessly at this one elmnce in'! ti thousand. It wrote an almost lyrical Recount of what the German report had said had happened, and even of what the German report had not said had happened. Not merely did it recapture Langemarck in ringing phrases, but it drove the English back to the old German trenches, and pushed them "in places 'beyond the old English position." The Oerman report was completely false, but it was not really so romantically fajse as that. But the Norddusche had lieen carried a.vay. It was not in a temper to minee matters. It finished up its paean of victory on a high note of happinnss and prophecy. Langemarck was firmly in German hand 3. ;m, "To-day the gun Is smilinc over the

Insights of Ypres and suimv is the tem-1 per of our ranks. Though England j should employ against ua the resources of the whole enemy world, her attacks will always break against the will to j conquer of our troops, and it is to bo hoped that tjlie day is not far off on \vhich we shall again, as once before in M'ay, 11)15, press down the heights upon Ypres. That is tlio 'burning wish of all the soldiers fighting here." Tile burning wish of tiie writer of this gem must now be that ho had not been so foolish as to write in this way. It is a sad fact that the effusion appeared! on the same day as the German communique which told that, aftef all, the Herman troops were not pressing flown tl» heights upon Ypres, mill were not even in Langemarck, since the British Were there. When, next day, the Norddeutsche came out, it had considerably curtailed its eloquence. It felt that "one niust, however, regret the loss of Langemarck," but that was all. It turned hastily from what must have been a delicate subject, and gave a very touching story of the bravery of the Germa.n troops at Ypres in 1914, The outburst must, be decently obscured. The old appropriate tags of "mobile defence" ai,d the like were trotted out.

"Decisions of life and death are being made out here; our life and our death. Are the people at home fully cognisant of that?' asks Herr Max Oaliorii, the German field correspondent of the Vossiche Zeitung, writing home from the Flanders front. "Noliody here conceals the colossal gravity of this endlev struggle," he declared, "pn its outcome depends whether England is able to wrest, from our hands the strongest weapons (the submarines) we possess to frustrate her calculations." Nobody at the German front conceals the colossal gravity of the fighting. Only the stout, spectacled, press-bur-eaux-fed gentlemen sitting at home in Berlin conceal the facts. "Nothing more or less is involved than the world-his-toric decision as to whether England can ■crush us aud break our backbone or not." That is the crv from the field. To the solemn critic in Berlin the only thing that seems to be involved is whether he ran persuade his readers that the line is that a "break through" has not occurred, that Verdun, and the continuous encroachment of the Allies are .things entirely lacking in importance. To [the man at the front Germany is fighting j for her life. To the man in Berlin, Ger•many js winning official victories, in almost wearisome continuity; winning thorn every single day. In'that difference one can read the whole fatuity of this jaded and officially-stimulated criticism."