Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 3 June 1915, Page 21

Current Topics

■ ■*■.,." The Only Hope - The extremely interesting contributions of 'A , Neutral,' appearing in the columns of the London Times, are being very much quoted, because it is generally recognised that they represent the conclusions of one who has had exceptional opportunities of getting at the facts, and who writes with at least a reasonable amount of disinterestedness and detachment. In a recent communication to that paper he commits himself to one of the few war prophecies that seem to be based on sound calculations, and to have a tolerable prospect of fulfilment. ' When I left Germany/ he writes, ' I carried with me the conviction that when the German masses lose confidence (and much has been lost already) in their military leaders the internal situation will be very difficult to manage. Yet until the Allies are able to cross the German frontier all along the line nothing will induce the population to give in, even though they see the,hopelessness of resistance. But if the Allies" do cross the frontier, and if the German Army receives another blow like thai of the battle of the Marne, there will, in my opinion, be a vapid collapse.' That seems to be the one and only hope of anything like an early termination of the struggle. Bernhardt on Kitchener The exact terms of the Daily Mail's attack on Lord Kitchener have now been.published in our dailies; and alike in substance and in form the diatribe is a shameful and disgraceful performance. Even if every syllable of this tirade were true —and the ungenerous references to Kitchener's past career as a general, at least, are palpably false—it is a scandalous thing that a metropolitan daily with a huge circulation should devote itself at such a time to belittling the man to whom the nation so largely looks to see it through the present crisis. In the matter of organising troops for Europe, and of creating and developing the necessary factory organisation for maintaining a proper supply of rifles, ' Lord Kitchener has done work that no other man in the Empire could have done, and work which at the time it was absolutely vital to have done. Latterly he has had an impossible burden placed upon his shoulders: and if he should in any respect have fallen short of requirements, he has done nothing to deserve that the fact should be proclaimed from the house-tops, and flaunted before the public in the vulgar and abusive method adopted by the Daily Mail. This has been frequently described as a psychological war; and the psychological effect on the men at the frontand on the men who are being asked to go to the front —of undermining their confidence in those who have the direction of affairs, is not likely to be good. * Like everybody else-, Lord Kitchener has, no doubt, the defects of his qualities, and is in danger of carrying to an extreme his passion and undoubted genius for organisation. Such, at least, is General Von Bern- . hardi's idea. In his second and latest war volume, entitled Uow Germany Makes War, the author of Germany and the Next War, in insisting on the necessity of self-reliant action, remarks: The way in which the English conducted the South African war is, in this respect, extremely instructive. Here a system of perfect centralisation of command prevailed. Every strategic and tactical movement was prescribed by the central authority to the minutest detail; personal initiative was confined to the narrowest limits. When it appeared it was at once suppressed, and where initiation proved'necessary it failed nearly always. Especially .when Lord Kitchener became Commander-in-Chief, centralisation of command appeared in its acutest form, giving rise to a series of stereotyped measures. The , result matched the action. As little as they ever succeeded in beating the Boers decisively. in the first part of the campaign, so little did they succeed in suppress-

ing the guerillas in the second part. - The self-reliant initiative of a- De Wet, ,a: De la Rey, and a Botha defied all the thumb-rule of British Headquarters, which || positively precluded all independent action of subordinate commanders. The English must confess, .and they do confess, that their army completely failed "iii';-v» this respect. Complaints on the purely literal obedience, and want of self-reliance and initiative of the ; English generals were heard from all sides. They characterise the opinion the English had of their own army. It had apparently ceased to appreciate that self-reliance is everywhere the necessary corollary to any systematic action.' At least the charge of overcentralisation cannot be laid against the arrangement which has now been adopted, under which Cabinet ministers have been gathered from the four winds of heaven and from all possible points of the compass. If any real good comes from the present miscellaneous and heterogeneous combination, euphemistically described as a National Government, it may be taken as • conclusive evidence that the age of miracles is not past. •Ship's Ears': A Defence Against Submarines The loss of the Triumph and the Majestic is rather a serious matter —not so much in itself as in the possibilities which it opens up. If two or three German submarines get loose at the "Dardanelles we will be very lucky indeed if our newer and bigger battleships escape. their attentions. " There is no doubt that the submarine" has scored heavily in the present war ; and the sooner a reasonably sound defence to this under-water danger is hit upon, the better it will be for the Allies and thencause. Under the circumstances, the new and promising invention of Professor 11. A. Fessenden, of the Submarine Signal Co., of Boston, Mass., deserves, and is doubtless receiving, the careful attention of those interested. Professor Fessenden has high credentials as a physicist and electrician. For years he was associated with Thomas A. Edison. He was one of the pioneers in wireless telegraphy, and his system of wireless transmission is used in the great Arlington towers at Washington, D.C. He achieved another distinction when his system of electric power transmission was used by the Canadian Government in distributing the energy of Niagara Falls through the Province of Ontario. For years he was professor of electricity and physics at the University of Pittsburgh. His new invention, which aims, amongst other things, at enabling battleships to keep out of the way of submarines, provides a ship with 'ears,' or steel diaphragms or oscillators, which will hear wireless messages and warnings sent beneath the water— that the screw of a submarine, may be heard while miles away. These ships' ears by means of echoes will also give warning under the water when icebergs arc approaching. Such an apparatus, it is pointed-out, might- have saved the Titanic —just three years ago. , Echoes from icebergs six or eight miles away have been recorded. ' These echoes were not only heard through the receivers of the oscillator in the wireless room, but were plainly heard by "officers in the wardroom and engine storeroom below the water line./ * In an interview with Mr. Cleveland Moffett, of the American Magazine, Professor Fessenden explains that each ship needs two of these oscillators, like two ears, one on either side, which allows it to .fix the direction from which a signal comes. ' 'This is done by " a delicate instrument that takes account of differences m the intensity of a given signal as heard by the two electrical ears, one "of which, on the more favorable side, hears the signal more distinctly than the other. A ship's officer has only to adjust this instrument and then read off on a dial the exact point of the compass from which the signal comes.' Asked as to whether a battleship could tell by this means the distance of a submerged submarine, the Professor answered: Yes, approximately, by the intensity of the sound received, for, of course, the oscillator's loudness grows less as the distance increases. There will be a distance indicator

with a dial graduated in thousands of yards, and an officer will read off these distance indications just as he notes the points of the compass.' The advantage which this affords to a battleship which is provided with the apparatus is obvious. The oscillator makes it possible for a ship s officer to, hear the propeller movements of an enemy's submarine while it is miles away. * With our existing apparatus,' says Professor Fessenden, 'we can detect such propeller sounds at a distance of two miles and we have a sound-amplifying device that will extend this distance to five miles or more.' He holds that the British cruisers which have been sunk by German submarines could unquestionably have escaped if they had carried these listening oscillators. He thus describes the course they would have followed. 'As soon as they heard the propeller noises of the attacking submarines, which would have been some time before the German torpedoes were launched, they would have changed their courses and gone ahead at full speed. That would have baffled the enemy, for submarines are slow-going craft and only dangerous when their presence is not suspected. It is even possible that the British cruisers, knowing by dial indications the approximate distance and also" the direction of the submerged German vessels, could have destined them by launching torpedoes of their own.' The testimony of the Submarine Signal Co. is, perhaps, not altogether unbiassed, but they are quite convinced that the German raid on the east coast of England in December could never have taken place if British Dreadnoughts and super-Dreadnoughts had been equipped with listening oscillators. The oscillator, it may be added, has passed beyond the region of mere theory and academic discussion. 'We have'already,' said Professor Fessenden, ' put oscillators on several American battleships, on the Wyoming, the Deleware, the Utah, the Florida, and on four of the U.S. submarines, the Dl and D2, the Kl and K2 ; and we arc now installing them on battleships of a great foreign power.' Under all the circumstances, it may be hoped, and anticipated, that the ' great foreign power ' is Britain and not Germany. The Pope and the War The information conveyed in last week cables to the effect that the Pope would studiously maintain the Vatican's attitude of strict neutrality, leaving Italian CathoJics free to follow their own sentiments, is" only what was to be expected. The Holy Father has millions of his spiritual children engaged in the struggle, and to a very large extent they are ranged on opposite sides. The Pope is a spiritual sovereign, ruling in the spiritual realm, and receiving the spiritual allegiance of Catholics of all nationalities—of Austrian and German Catholics as well as of Polish, English, French, and Italian Catholics. As a spiritual monarch, lie owes duties to all his subjects, under whatever flag their instincts of duty and patriotism may compel them' to be fighting: and he can freely and effectively discharge these duties only by maintaining an attitude of absolute and visible neutrality. Had Italy entered the arena—as she easily might—on the side of her partners in the Triple Alliance, and not- on the side of the Allies, none of us, we should suppose, would have been so absurd as to expect that lie Pope would also have declared himself against the -Allies. The position having been reversed, it is not making too heavy a. demand upon our intelligence to expect that we should see just as clearly that it is still his duty to refrain from taking the role of a partisan. From the first, the Papacy has made it clear that its attitude would bo one of strict neutrality. When the Catholic Emperor of Austria thrice besought the late Holy Father Pius X. to bless his troops, his Holiness definitely and firmly refused. 'I bless peace,' was his plain and simple and, we may add, characteristic answer. From that position the Papacy has not swerved, and, we may be sure, will not swerve till the end. * Public opinion in all the belligerent countries is naturally in an inflamed and highly sensitive condition ; and it is easy for excited partisans to misunderstand, and easy, also, to misrepresent, the Pope's position.

An instance of what may be presumed to nave been innocent but certainly somewhat muddle-headed S understanding was furnished by the French Government some time ago. . At the end of the year the Pope ordered public prayers for peace to be said in Catholk churches. The leaflet on which the prayer was printed was at first confiscated by the French authorities, wlm had got it into tneir heads that the prayer was part of an - anti-national ' stop-the-war ' agitation. The Archbishop of Paris explained in a pastoral that The peace which the Holy Father invites us to implore from God is the sweet and lasting peace which, according to the words-or the Holy Book, is the work of justice—the peace which supposes the triumph and the reign of right ; and the order for confiscation was at once withdrawn. Here the misunderstanding was due merely to hot-headed over-sensitiveness. In some instances the misunderstanding or misrepresentation is due to partisan self-interest. This was notably the case in the socalled interview with the Holy Father published. in April by one Karl von Wiegand, a'pro-German American journalist, and cabled throughout the world In tins alleged interview the Pope was represented as Having said to this German-American journalist ■— 'lf your country avoids everything that might prolong this struggle of nations against nations, in which the blood of hundreds of thousands is being shed, and misery untold is being inflicted, then can America' by its greatness and its influence contribute much towards the rapid ending of this terrible war,' The first sentence was capable of being interpreted- and was interpreted both in England and America—as a suggestion that the American Government should at once prohibit the exportation of arms and munitions to the Allies. Tho Holy Father had said and meant nothing of the kind There had been no 'interview,' only a private audience granted as a courteous acknowledgment of the numerous introductions with which Mr" Karl von Wiecraml was armed; and as that gentleman did not understand a word of what was spoken by the Pope, he had to depend throughout on the services of an interpreter for his comprehension of what was said. Partly as the result of this disability, and partly carried away by his own personal bias, he contrived to convey an entirely misleading impression as to what had passed ; and when the Holy Father became aware of the words that were being attributed to him, he at once officially disclaimed and repudiated them. * In some other cases, the attempt to misrepresent the Pope's attitude is due to pure malevolence and bigotry. Fortunately these cases have been few, and entirely insignificant. Of such a kind is the article entitled ' The Vatican and the War,' contributed some time ago to the Fortnightly Review by Mr. Robert Dell. Mr. Dell is a noisy and assertive individual, but his name is not one that carries any weight in the world either of thought or of letters. " He was, if we remember rightly, a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, and has now abandoned Catholicism; and like most of those who have lost the faith, he writes bitterly and viciously against the religion he once fervently jnofessed. Mr. Dell's article has been completely and deservedly ignored in the only quarters that count, but it has .been taken up by some" of the smaller fry of religious journalism; and one of these, the Banner of the Covenant, introduces Mr. Dell to its confiding readers as 'an authority on Vatican affairs.' He is about as much an authority as Michael McCarthy, or Maria Monk, or the late Pastor Chiniquy. Mr. Dell, in his Fortnightly article, contends that as Austria is a great Catholic Power it is to the interest of the Vatican that Germany should win, and that the sympathies of the Pope are as a matter of fact in that direction. Not an atom of proof is offered—not a single act or utterance of the Pope—and the world is impudently asked to accept Mr. Robert Dell's unsupported assertion on the subject. The entrance of Italy into the arena has completely upset Mr. Dell's argument; and even the most strenuous and stupid bigot can hardly suppose that the Pope wishes to see Rome and the Vatican share the fate

of Reims and Louvain. It is not necessary to take any serious notice of Mr. Dell's article, but we may give just one illustration of his complete disregard of the truth. 'There is not,' he writes, 'a single Catholic country among- the Allies, for, although Belgium has a Catholic Government at present, half the Belgian people are Freethinkers.' The King and Queen are Catholics; there has been a Catholic Government for over thirty years; and according to the last census (taken some years ago), and to the definite statement of the latest volumes of standard publications such as Hazell's Annual (1914), ' almost the entire population is of the Roman Catholic faith. In the face of these facts, the man who can pretend to maintain that Belgium is not a Catholic country, puts himself completely out of court as a hopeless and unscrupulous perverter of the truth. For the rest, the Holy Father's general attitude is sufficiently indicated in the cables appearing in our dailies as we writes these lines. He is concerned for his 'beloved Italy' ; protests against the inhuman methods of warfare introduced by certain of the belligerents; and wishes all his children 'to be persuaded of his participation in their sorrows and troubles.'