Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1917. GERMANY'S DREAMS OF FREEDOM

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 48, 24 February 1917, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1917. GERMANY'S DREAMS OF FREEDOM

Yon- Hindenburg's.-statement that""the submaxine warfare is the only way to a quick finish" is remarkable both as a definite admission that Germany no longer pretends to beKeve in the possibility of winning a victory by her invincible armies, and as staking all hope of' success upon a single desperate venture. The Kaiser's order to the navy, which was to the effect that the Fatherland looked to its Navy and that the Navy must look to the submarine, followed exactly the same lines. To an outsider it looked as though nothing but the urgent need of rallying the moral resources of the country in support of a last forlorn hope could justify these extraordinary tactics. But to the omniscient German there was really no risk, in the matter at all. "Our calculations are faultless," declared the Imperial Chancellor in one of his flamboyant reviews of the war more than a year ago. Again this happy characteristic of German workmanship has been demonstrated. There was really no element of risk at all. about the submarine campaign. Its success was a matter of faultless calculation from the outset.; The Kaiser and Yon Hindenburg merely prophesied what they knew, and now the Imperial Chancellor hastens to assure us that the prophecies are being fulfilled in a most gratifying fashion. The only thing wrong about the German calculations in. this instance is that they were too modest. The studiously restrained forecast has been shamed by the glorious result. Herr yon Bethmann-Hollweg has informed the Reichstag that "the submarines have exceeded expectations. Germany has not' lost a single submarine since the be-; ginning of unrestricted warfare." It is to be hoped that by this brave and timely speech the German Chancellor has at last removed the cloud of suspicion which has so long darkened ibis path. Who can doubt his soundness on the submarine ' issue after this '! Neither yon Tirpitz, the patentee of this species of warfare, nor you Hindenburg, who frankly confesses that it holds out «, hope whieli U« »uid bus mill.wna of

could have displayed a nobler gallantry of patriotic speech. The man who was once supposed to entertain scruples about the berserker defiance of the neutrals and the ruthless murder of non-combat-ants is now proved to- be as free from the hateful suspicion as the All-Highest Assassin himself. The man who horrified his fellow-countrymen by the reckless honesty of his admissions about tearing up. the scrap, of paper and hacking a way through Belgium has shown that on occasion he can lie as loudly as the best of the swashbucklers. .Not a single German submarine has been lost this month; British shipping is as helpless as ever; and the Chancellor feels "most confident that the shipping of England and neutrals will be completely stopped." The British Admiralty is not accustomed to superlatives of this kind. Its modest statement of satisfaction with the number of the new submarines which will never return to Germany—a number which its policy of secrecy, of course, prevents the German Chancellor from counting'—is more in accordance with its traditions. The escape of 75 per cent, of tha armed merchantmen which have been attacked by submarines as against 24 per cent, of escapes in the case of the unarmed, coupled with the rapid increase in the proportion of armed vessels, would : be a sufficient answer to the German Chancellor, even if we were to suppose that the forty, encounters of the Admiralty's patrols with, enemy submarines had all , ended as satisfactorily far the latter as he professes to believe.

With-the submarine campaign proceeding at the rate alleged by the Chancellor, it must only, be a matter of weeks, or even days, before Britain is brought to her knees, and this is what the German people have been assiduously taught to believe. "If ws only hold on where we axe," wrote the Ehenische-West-falische Zeitung three months ago, "we must wear England out, since England is easier to attack than' Russia, London easier to annihilate than Moscow, ijoscow costs blood, London only torpedoes." With these high hopes all the eloquence at the command of the official and unofficial leaders of Germany continues to buoy the people up The end, they insist, is very near The goal, as the Kaiser says, is set, but that it is not yet readied is proved by the sad story of Count Bernstorff and his pyjamas. The vessel conveying the Count and his party, for whose safety such unprecedented precautions had been taken, is held in dujytnee vile at Halifax, while the base agents of brutal Albion are searching every nook and cranny, and even the most harmless and necessary articles' of their wardrobe, in the hunt for contraband

Even the German taste for music is being made the subject of base suspicion. An immense stock of gramophone records, which might have beguiled the tedium of the voyage and the darker days that await the party in Berlin, is to be confiscated on the pretext, that the liberal supply of rubber which they contain might be converted to nonmusical uses,* and that, as the Italian Government has discovered, secrets of Stale might be enshrined in them. The notorious British greed for gold is asserting itself in the confiscation of an article which is worth so much more than its nominal equivalent in German paper money just now. Hundreds of suits of pyjamas have been seized, because Krupps might have found another use for them than that for which they were designed. It is a sad and humiliating story, which shows that on the west of the Atlantic at any rate the Garman dream of the freedom of the seas is still in the clouds. If the outrage does not rouse the whole Fatherland to a fury of patriotic indignation, to a ruthless determination to die in the last ditch or tho last submarine in defence of that glorious ideal, we shall be much disappointed.