THE FAILURE OF GERMANY

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 128, 30 May 1917, Page 7

THE FAILURE OF GERMANY

COSTLY MISTAKES REPEATED

ALLIES NEED NOT COUNT

THE DAYS

(Contributed by the British War

Office.)

Men of all nations often ask when will the war end? More important than any answer to that question is the fact that the Allies do not need to answer it. After forty years of peace, preparation, and steadily growing strength, Germany faced with confidence a war —for six months. After two years and a-half of war, the. Allies face with confidence the prospect of war—for as many yea-rs as necessary. It is because they are strong, and their strength grows, that they need fix no date for victory.

The war b»gan like that fight in Jack London's "White Fang" between the highly-trained sledge-dog, which, sprang swiftly in with the .confidence of assured victory, and the bulldog who was taken unawares by this sudden trained assault. Not until too late did the wolfhound understand the bulldog. So it is. with the Central Powers. They looked, as everyone knows,, for a short campaign and a quick victory. That hope was false, but still many among Germans and among neutral people believed that in a long war, with their their military tradi-> tions, their gigantic preparations, and resources, which they could more quickly mobilise and more effectively employ, the Central Powers, and Germany in particular, would find a • new and greater army and equipment to meet the rising strength of the Allies. Their hope seemed justified when they ' saw Germany recover from the shock of her first failure, and with courage, thoroughness, and resource face the trench warfare on which her plans had never counted. But even those-»who believed this must now have read the writing on the wall, of which the first words were inscribed at Verdun. Those who have retained a belief in Germany's ultimate recovery have failed to appreciate that she has learnt nothing from her worst mistakes. Each mistake she has more fatally repeated, With France, with Russia, with England (most of all with England), with each in turn she has twice blundered. THE FAILURE OF GERMANY I

Before the war she thought that she could crush France at a blow. She failed, but learnt nothing from her failure. At Verdun she struck again fn the same belief. Again she failed. Six precious months, and her best reserves were sacrificed, with the result that Prance rose uncrushed, and with a new strength, in Picardy, and in three months took 40,000 German prisoners. She thought in 1915 that she could break the Russian armies. She failed, but the failure taught her nothing. She still despised Russia, underestimating her spirit and her resources, believed her to be ex hausted beyond recovery. That second mistake broke the Austrians in the East. She thought in 1914 that nothing would tempt or goad England into war:.. Again she was wrong, and again she learnt nothing from her mistake. She still believed that England was contemptible, unable or unwilling to face the war with a whole heart, or if her democracy would ever rise to the full meaning of the struggle, that it would ,not rise until too late.\ Then; came the Somme. History has no record of a nation that with such fatal precision has repeated its worst mistakes. It ia with this experience, bitterly bought, that Germany begins a third summer of war, watching her own inevitable decline and the steady growth of her enemies. Let her consider only what England has done. She has held the seas secure. She has helped to clothe, to arm, to finance, to supply with guns and shells thousands of the troops of her Allies, and she has done this while at the same time she raised, trained, and equipped an army of over four millions of her own men. Behind these are more and yet more men, matured, and of good fighting age, not boys, or men beyond their prime. These are the troops whom she prepares, while Germany calls up. her boys of seventeen and her men.up to fifty. Such are England's reserves, second only to those of Kussia, who, compared with any of the other Powers, has sources inexhaustible. She is stronger already, and will, be stronger in the middle of the third year, than at any other time. These, things Germany might have known before th» summer of this year. But then she could still have taken comfort in the thought that the numbers of England and the numbers of Russia, were as yet untried; and that in technical resource she might hope to retain the mastery. If sho hoped that, then that hope, too, has gone. She has lost, the superiority of numbers; she has lost the belief which once..she had in the superiority of her individual trained soldier; she has lost now on the battlefield of Picardy what once she did possess, her superiority in technical resource. The French Army has come through its ordeal with increased confidence, equipped with the experience based on the. mistakes, the efforts, and the successes of two years and a-half, perfected for modern war. The new British armies have shown themselves completely fitted for defensive and offensive alike.

The Somme has proved the quality of the men and the technical resource in offence of both armies. Let no one doubt of the significance of their victory, even though it is not yet completed. It has been a less resounding victory than the German invasion of France, but no less significant* Germany sprang on the world in those first weeks of war the surprise of her great guns. She knew, what no one else knew, that she had the weapon to destroy the impregna-ble. She proved it at Liege, at Namur, at Antwerp, and she hoped to prove it at Paris. That was her victory. The occupation of territory followed upon it inevitably. On the Somme the Allies proved in their turn that they had their weapon—the men, the tactics, the guns, the inventions, all the .morals,and technical resource, to breach arM break defences that were thought impregnable. That was their victory. Upon it (since the weapon will not wear out) the rest must follow, even though it may follow slowly.

Bismarck once said, "All is forgotten in the glories of victoi-y." In that unscrupulous belief Germany has done everything. She threw aside all restraint. She broke all law, believing that in "the glories of her victory" those who could not forget would yet not dare to remember. Bismarck's words are turned against her now. She cannot ask the Allies to forget. They must be beaten beyond recovery, or they must be victors on their own terms. That, and nothing less, is what Bismarck's words now mean.

But if we do not yet count the weeks or the months to the end, we know some of the results which will follow when the end comes. With the fall of Prussian militarism many other things will fall; all those illusions which Germany tried (sometimes with success) to impose on Europe, all the elaborate vanity of her Kultur j until men will wonder that such

a people could ever have aspired'to j'ule the world. They will see her letters, her art, her philosophy, her ideas of government, sink to their true level. They will see that they were all inspired- by that account of his methods which Frederick the Great gave to his army, and which the German Headquarters Staff has faithfully followea. '1 exercised my troops, and used my best endeavours to draw the eyes of all Europe on my manoeuvres; and at length I obtainedmyvyish of. procuring a general attention. I turned the head of all the Powers, and • all the - world gave themselves up for lost if their military did not move, head,,'.'legs, .and arms a la mode of-the Prussian exercise. All my soldiers and my. officers took ifc into their heads" that they were twice the men they were before."

The world will begin. to doubt all her intellectual claims when it sees.tlie failure of that military system into which her best intellect was put. Since Germany hoped to make rule only by the power, of her .war, machine, she'will be judged before Europe by its failure. It is in this spirit that,the Allies continue the war, thinking more of what is to be done than of when it will be finished, knowing full well that they have many efforts and many sacrifices to make before the end is reached.