The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. PRIME MINISTER'S REVIEW.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 156, 2 July 1917, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

PRIME MINISTER'S REVIEW.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

MONDAY, JTJLY 2, 1917.

iMr. Lloyd George's gift of visualising «, situation in picturesque, forcible, and simple terms was again displayed in his Dundee speech, reported to-day. The Germans pretend to regard this manner of his with disgust; they have never forgiven him for what they are pleased to consider his brutal and vulgar reference to a knock-out blow. No doubt they will be much annoyed by the imaginary speech he has put into the mouth of the Kaiser, and his description of the new German methjds as "rabbit, tactics." There could hardly be anything more calculated to annoy the Prussian than to liken him to a rabbit. But Mr. Lloyd George's little imaginative effort was justified. The Germans never contemplated resorting to such meitris of defence as they have employed against us for the last year or more. Every fibre of the German military being had been impregnated with the spirit of the offensive, and if they had considered such conditions possible as now obtain on the Western front, the British would have been the. last people to be dreamt of as capable of imposing them. When the retreat began the German people were instructed that it was a retirement preparatory to an offensive in the open; in the words of one critic, ■'all the projects of our enemy are now in disa-rray, and the initiative has passed into the hands of the German generals." Well, it has not. The "liberty of action" ■which the Chancellor himself said was to come from the retirement has not been obtained. The Allies continue to pin the Germans to their strongly fortified systems, pounding them relentlessly. That was an important statement sent out by Reuters representative the other day. that the Germans now being pressed back at Lens are not a rearguard, but the main body. Moreover, in the open warfare that has occurred in the last few months the advantage has been with us. not with the enemy. Yes, it is true that "we have driven Germany's great army underground.'' and we may well believe, that it is the ; beginning of the end, " for it means that we are pounding a sense of inferiority into every pore of the German military mind." Our array is doing to the German army what our Fleet has done to the German Fleet. Just as the High Seas Fleet is unable to challenge our command of the se.as. and Orman naval power is compelled to operate tinder the surface, so German military power has been driven underground. Both methods of defence are being overcome. Mr. Lloyd George had something very satisfactory to say at both Glasgow and Dundee about the submarines. The Government's deliberate conclusion is that the submarines cannot starve Britain or "drive our armies out of the fields, abroad," and Britain now possesses such a reserve of munitions that, no matter what the submarines do, they cannot deprive her of the stocks necessary for victory. The Germans profess that their submarine successes exceed expectations, but we have now had three official English statements that the losses have been below the. figures for which the British Government allowed. Lord Curzon told us so some weeks ago; later the Food Department said the food ships lost had been fewer than the number provided for in its calculations; and now Mr. Lloyd George tells us that the losses in the last two months were 100.000 tons' 'below the Admiralty's forecast. Rut Mr. Lloyd George's confidence pre-supposes the hearty co-operation of the nation in the drastic measures adopted by the Government for conserving the food supplies, and it is to be hoped that the public will not take this expression of confidence to mean that all danger is over. Without being able to starve Britain out, or compel her to withdraw her armies, the enemy might, given a lack of this co-operation, be able to impair our striking strength abroad. What the Prime Minister said about a premature peace, that it would be the greatest disaster that ever befell mankind, has long been plain to all clear-sighted students of the war, but it is a warning that cannot be too often repeated. As Lord Robert Cecil said in his very able reply to the pacifists in May, all out thoughts are on peace, unless we are lunatics, but it must be a just and lasting peace. What Mr. Lloyd George had to say about Armenia, Mesopotamia, and the German colonies will meet with general agreement. Whatever happens to Armenia and Mesopotamia, they can never be returned to the "blasting tyranny " of the Turk. " Were they to return Armenia," asked Lord Bobert Cecil, " which had declared its independence, to Turkey, so as to avoid being guilty of the annexation of Armenia, of whose people, it was calculated by one authority, 1,200,000 out of its 1,800,000 of population had been cither abominably' massacred or deported?" The pacifists shirk these plain issues. Mr.. Lloyd i George stated that as regards peace terms Britain would adopt towards a democratised Germauy an attitude very different to that adopted towards the Prussian-ridden Germany of to-day, but there is as yet no sign that Germany is about to become a real democracy. Lord Robert Cecil cbscribed recent political occurrences in Germany as a repetition oi uhat had. happened repeatedly during

the past 40 years. "The popular demand for some reform or act of justice, The appearance by the German Government of yielding or making terms. A protest couched in offensive terms by junkers, and the immediate surrender of the Government to the junkers." Apparently Germany's punishment must go much further before the people reach a determination to free themselves from the tyranny that has involved themselves and so many other nations in the world's greatest catastrophe.