GERMAN BATTLE PLAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 June 1918, Page 8

GERMAN BATTLE PLAN.

EFFORTS TO SOW DISSENSION. THIRD ATTACK TO COME. London, April 20. Some time before the German offensive started several of us were told by one of the authorities that a German attack was expected about the date when it actually started, and that it would consist of at least three drives, a heavy one at Cambrai, a lesser one at Armentieres, and a third great attack at a certain other point. The object of the Germans was then definitely stated to be to pin down the British Army by heavy blows in order to render it unable to help the French, and thus split the British and French peoples and liovernments. It was also plainly stated that the Germans hoped for more from a moral split than from a physical one. The Germans, of course, are trying every means they can think of to create such a split at the present moment. After casting two-thirds of their whole strength against the British they are proclaiming to the French through wireless messages that the British are unable to fight, and are losing French territory, and so forth. Mean-, while a deliberate part of this plan consists in bombarding Parisians with tho long-range gun, and the creation of all possible disturbance and anxiety among the French inhabitants along the whole front. This policy does not leave a stone unturned in order to create dissension, with the simple view of defeating us as they defeated the Russians; and as part of it the Germans are now again trying to sow dissension between Britain and the Dominions. German war correspondents have been instructed to prov claim that Britain is placing colonial troops in the hardest and most difficult positions. Of course this ponderous sympathy 13 handed out to us with the sole object of delivering a crashing blow on the head if we were to fall into the trap, but it is worth while statingfrankly the truth as to the employment of Dominion troops during the present battle, So iu from placing Domiaioa,

* ■' . troopa in the most dangerous parts of the line, Sir Douglas Haig, though he knew where the attacks "were coining, had only English, Scottish and Irish troops there. One is inclined to believe that this was done deliberately from a sort of pride, for the same reason which caused only troops from the British Isles to be employed in the opening stages of the battle of the Somme and Ypres. INO Australian, Canadian, or New Zealand troops were involved in that first tremendous bombardment and massed assault. The history of that great battle, as of all great battles, was that at certain points in every stage of it there were found units ready to- fight beyond all human endurance, ready to fight on without hope of assistance, without even a chance that any living being except the enemy would ever hear or know of their grand sacrifice, and the i deeds of these men in every great war [have altered the course of history.