GERMANY'S SURRENDER.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1919, Page 12

GERMANY'S SURRENDER.

SEASONS FOR ARMSTIC&. COMPLETENESS OF VICTORY. i In the course of a speech in London at a welcome tendered to Sir David Beatty and himself, Field-Marshal' Earl Haig paid that they rejoiced with their comrades of tho sister service in the great and unparalleled triumph that but lately was theirs. If any of them felt regret that the end came as it did without a last fight, the army did not share with them that regret, for, while there could be no doubt upon the utter completeness 'of their victory or «upon the supreme credit it reflected upon them, the army was glad that they and the country were spared unnecessary loss. After all, with them in the army, events at the last followed much the same course, and d'iil »o teciuso of their deliberate choice. ft u-> > id'have been possible, after the great culminating defeat inflicted on this- eneiny on the Sambre on November *,"!!) 18,, and the following days, to have refused to grant the armistice the enemy sought for, and, instead, to have pressed forward with what speed the state of their communications woujd have let them. To have done so, however, would have meant further loss of life, the destruction of property, and, expenditure of money, while it could not have rendered Germany more helpless militarily than she was to-day, with her army dissolved, her guns, transport, and aeroplanes surrendered, and the crossings of the Rhine held by the Allies. If they should have to go to Berlin they could do so far more easily now than they could have done last November.

Continuing, the Field-Matshal said he could not pretend to deserve all the too generous reference/) which had been made to him, but he should certainly deserve them lens and should have 111 requited the services of the glorious army that fought go magnificently throughout the great advance had he spent men's lives in pursuit of the shadow when the substance of victory was already achieved. Anyone who to-day thoiight that the 'armistice was granted too. soon failed to appreciate oither the conditions in which war was fougiit in these days of armies- of millions, equipped with many thousands of machineguns, vast artilleries, etc., or the completeness of the surrender Germany made when she took the only terms of armistice the Allies were prepared to grant her. The surrender of the German fleet was not morp abject, more complete, or more irrevocable.