GERMANS TO RISK A SECOND VERDUN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 10, 11 January 1918, Page 5

GERMANS TO RISK A SECOND VERDUN.

GOADED BY CRITICAL INTERNAL SITUATION,

AMSTERDAM, January 10.

Speaking at a meeting of the Fatherland party in Berlin, Herr Fuhrmann, a Reichstag deput3% declared:—"if the German flag is not hoisted in Flanders for ever, we shall have lost the war." This caused tumultuous dissent, to which counter-criee of "traitor" were raised. The dissentients, who were mostly incapacitated soldiers, were turned out after a fight. The crippled men were reinforced, and, returning, broke up the meeting.

The German authorities are endeavouring to prevent the circulation of leaflets f-om a suppressed article written for the newspaper "Vorwaerts," declaring that many are dying of sheer hunger and that all are suffering. The article says that the people will not always remain silent, and that Germany is on the verge of losing the war. The Copenhagen newspaper "Social Demokraten" learns that great peace meetings were held in Vienna. Resolutions were carried expressing sympathy ■with the Bolsheviks, and demanding the release of Dr. Adler, the Socialist who shot Count Stuergkh, the Prime Minister of Austria. A new peace party has been formed, and is agitating for peace by understanding. A German officer, who was taken prisoner, declared that the internal situation of Germany compelled the high command to risk a second Verdun, and a disastrous peace by a maximum effort on the West front in 1918.— .(Eeuter.) The Stuttgart "Tageblatt" states that there are grave divergencies between- the Austrian and German delegates to the Brest Litovsk peace Conference. The Vienna "Arbiter Zeitung" says:—"lf the whole world is fighting Uβ, and all nations hate us, the fault lies with Germany, who to-day, wants to dictate a conqueror"s peace. It is downright madness to pretend that a victorious peace is possible. The madness is typified in the statement that if we told out a few months more the whole world will submit." The Vienna censor has prevented the publication in full of a report of a Czech conference at Prague, which was antagonists to Coiyt yon Czernin's interpretation of the rights of nationalities. The Zurich correspondent of the "Petit Journal" states that Admiral yon Tirpitz's influence wJth the Kaiser and the Chancellor in the LudendorffKuhlmann dispute caused it to end in a pan-German victory. Dr. yon Kuklmann narrowly escaped dismissal. — (A. and N.Z. Cable.)