LUDENDORFFS MEMOIRS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1919, Page 92

LUDENDORFFS MEMOIRS.

THE BATTLE OP ME3SINES. MINES NOT SUSPECTED. London, Aug. 20. A further instalment of Ludendorffs memoirs discloses that Ludendorfl' planned early in 1917 to postpone a decision on the west.front as long as possible to give the submarines the utmost chance. He admits that the withdrawal from the Somine in order to take up the Alberich line was most painful, as it was bound to raise the morale of the Allies. The systematic dissemination of false news nullified the effect of the withdrawal in Germany, and partly misled the Allies, leaving time to save the German stores and to .carry out the programme of destruction. The exigencies regards the destruction of property and of war alone was the decisive guide as the deportation of people, He claims ■that humanity was considered as far as possible.

The -German command attached special importance to the storming of Messines liidge, and the great struggle is sketched at length. Ludeiulorif describes as "simply staggering" the moral effect of the British mines, the existence of which was not suspected. A vivid passage in the memoirs deals with the soul-stirring drama in Flanders in the.autumn of 1917, "Its terrors surpassed even the shellpitted field of Verdun," he says. "This was not life. It was agony unspeakable. The attacking troops wallowed out from a universe of slime, advancing in dense masses. They were .met time and again by a hail of projectiles, collapsed, revived, and irresistibly re-advanced. When the Germans returned in the spring of 1918 they saw a most horrible spectacle, the battlefield being strewn with thousands of unburied corpses, two-thirds of' which were those of the enemy." Ludendorff dates the German decline from the outbreak of the revolution in Russia. The Government, when sending Lenin to Russia, should have taken pre" cautions to prevent Germany sharing'; Russia's downfall.

The Times' correspondent at Berlin states that Ludendorfl's book is the topic of the hour and the press is reviewing it and commenting on it at great length The press of the Right is enthusiastic. The Tages Zeitung says that Ludendorff has revealed his inmost soul. He pictures Germany's force, but he also pictures the division and the disunion and the lack of political insight.