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Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16362, 6 November 1918, Page 6

The people of Ctristchurch. and of Canterbury generally, are very naturally alarmed lest the influenza which is having such serious results in the North Island may cause similar ravages here. They will therefore be surprised to learn that the local Chief Health Officer has nothing to say on the subject —no information as to precautions being taken to keep the disease out, nor as to the provision that is being made, or that is contemplated, for preventive measures in the city. All that one of our representatives could obtain from iiim yesterday was a statement that the disease in the North, is the same as that which is prevalent here. This statement is surprising, but we have no means of knowing whether it may not be true. We are at a loss to understand the mechanism of a Health Administration that permits or compels the Health Officer to abstain from giving any advice or reassurance whatever to a public seriously concerned over the possibility of a dangerous epidemic.

There is one point in connexion with Hindenburg's appeal that is likely to be overlooked, so accustomed hare we all grown to hearing his speeches and manifestoes in the past four years. The point is this: how does he come to be talking at all upon a point of unsettled State policy? Up to a few weeks ago, no doubt, nobody had a better right to do so, for the German High Command was the real German Government. But the reconstructed Government has told us that the Army is now entirely under Parliamentary control, and that a new state of things has been established, under which Hindenburg should bo instantly placed on half-pay for daring to open his mouth. Either the Government's control of the Army is a fiction, or else old Hindenburg does not read the papers, and has not heard the news. It may bo, of course, that the explanation is that he cannot get out of the habit of acting as a director of policy. JBut if the Reichstag cannot discipline him now, it will never be able to oontrol the army.

Germany in defeat shows a painful want of dignity and backbone, and hardly atones for this deficiency by a display of brazen effrontery. Nono of her tentative advances in the direction of peace have been more impudent than her announcement that she is not making further a;r attacks except against important military objectives, and her invitation to the Allies to cease aerial attacks on rear zones "on the ground of humanity and for the preservation of the monuments of civilisation.'* This sudden solicitude for humanity and ancient art comes well from a Government whose troops only a few days ago committed vile excesses upon the helpless civilian population of a town that they were evacuating, and that in 6heer savage wantonness have stolon every object of art that they could lift, and have destroyed, to cite only one instance, the majestic cathedrals of Belgium and Northern France. Wherever a German army has gone, it has spared neither 60X, age, nor youth, outrage and murder and bestial cruelty have marked every mile of their advance, and the carefully planned ruin of a countryside attests thoir care for "the monuments of civilisation."

Now, when the air forces of the Allies and America are spreading terror in Gorman cities and destroying German troops and stores, when every week sees, over the German lines, and far behind them, rapidly growing aerial fleets, sometimes so densely massed as to threaten to hide even the sun in heaven—now Germany realises that this is a suitable time to parley and to propose to restrict the growing air-power of her enemies. For a, long time they have beaten her in the air; now they threaten to drive her out of it—and with characteristic stupidity she thinks they will listen to her canting proposals on behalf of humanity 1 We have happily had no indication that the Allies and America will listen to such specious pleading, and relinquish an advantage which may do more to bring the war to a spoedy close than even the advance of our armies or the surrender, one by one, of Germany's allies.

After a period of apparent eclipse, old Hindenburg seems to be reasserting himself. He at least would prefer to see Germany go down fighting to the last rather than making terms with the enemy in order to save her skin, and in spite of his brutality and of the fact that he represents Junkerdom at its worst, one rather prefers the swashbuckling bravado of his latest appeal to the nation to the spectacle of Ludendorff, in a paroxysm of pessimism and violently sick in the hour of defeat, urging the Government to open negotiations for an armistice. One doubts whether even he will like the terms when he sees them. Hindenburg, one may be sure, will be for refusing them, but unless his influence is much greater than seems probable, his heroics will count for nothing with the German people, who, 'if all is true that one hears of them, are eager for peace at literally any price. The German army could no doubt continue to offer a stubborn resistence for a time on a shortened line, though the likelihood of their ever being- able to renew the offensive again is extremely remote. But any resistance would only delay, it could not prevent, the inevitable defeat that awaits Germany. The' Kaiser em-barked on this war with the alternative before him as expressed by Bernhardi, of "worldpower or downfall." Fate and the Allies have decided which it is to be.