ONE YEAR MORE.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1918, Page 5

ONE YEAR MORE.

WAR CORRESPONDENT'S" PROPHECI© f WHEN-: PEACE W-ILL - COMSL . " i One of the latest : foieeasta<*egatdni( the close of the war has come from Mr} , W. Beach Thomas, the well-known BiU ; tish war correspondent Mr. Beach 33m* mas has seen the war from the begry 1 ning. He is a careful and sober observerjj l ■ and he has not made many For that reason, perhaps, he is aW» tfl>.state that he has not made many takes. His forecast, made when the Ger* , man offensive of this year was at its), height, is that the war will end TriQrinJ the next twelve months. "I believe," he soys, "that American!, influence on the war will be irresistible;] her ships, her men, her wealth, her wilL The cardinal reason of. the new German offensive, up to and over the- old battles field of the Somme, is the conviction in Germany that 1919 is America/a year, and that if Germany is to force any sort ( of a victory, she must force it in WIS, • before America is ready. And not late >. in 1818." "If this summer ia bridged, as it -wHlj , be, thenceforward the scales should awing quickly in the Allies' favor. American ',, -ships, guns, aeroplanes, and, above all, ~ men, will prove first an immovable but* * tress, and, later, an irresistible ram. lij this inference is true, we come very DBKg *• to finding a date for the end of the wBCj : As soon as the weight is preponderating-* * ly against them, the Cental Powers \plt strain every nerve to make peace, at snyj rate before the winter of 1919, which I have called America's year. I will not venture to be too precise. I will awid the extreme of temerity, and leave tha date of Germany's defeat or withdrawal . to the wide period between the autumn of 1918 and 1919." "Where will Germany be defeated! Almost the first German prisoner I spoke with in 1915 said, 'I cannot tell you when, the war will end, but I can tell you where —very much along the spot where the armies are entrenched to-day.' And , this German's prophecy is not yet dis- . proved. There will be defeats and -victories about this spot and.along this - line, but one day there will be a'defeat and victory from which any observer w'ill ;. be able to see with some certainty the , progressive decline of one side or the other. This decline can never come to the side which has America with her hundred million of people and illimitable , resources heart and soul in- the cause. J • "When the first of these progressive | defeats come," says Mr. Beach Thomas, \ "peace will be in sight; Germany will & not wait—neither her population nor her f' array authorities will permit it—till she tumbles back in successive failures iijjon | her own frontiers, and the targets for the | growing hordes of airmen come nearer 4 a|d nearer, and the boom of the Liberty .engine at last plays foreign music ovev ;'«'■; German cities. So German defeat will v come while the armies still lie in a wav- ; ing line not far from the line of trenches , that join the floods by Nieuport to the neighborhood of the Swiss mountains, '« where the French have clung steadily to rj

one-small reach of German territory." '