GERMANY'S PLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 40, 15 August 1918, Page 8

GERMANY'S PLIGHT

GRAVE INTERNAL POSITION,

Tho following message from London appeared in American papers .last month:—

Despite the glittering hopes dangled before them, Germans to-day see a great shadow over their country. That shadow is hunger. They all know, from the Kaiser down to tho Berlin ■washerwoman, that unless they can obtain a. speedy peaco it will "be quite impossible Tor them to hold out for the coming harvest. The situation will in all likelihood be so terrible in July that not a few of the world's soberest 'thinksrs believe that Germany will collapse .'.internally before her army can. be defeated in the field.

It is for this reason that neutrals' who know Germany assert that the Germans with their readiness to sacrifice the world to Moloch will not hesitate to get rid of all overaged; mea and women whose- age and infirmity prevent them from helping to carry on tho war—who cannot work, but who must be fed.

.Such an idea is horrible and revolting to-any one who is not a Hun, but there is every reason to believe that it has been germinating some long time in the Hun mind.

It follows the axiom of a. great German military leader, who laid down as a first principle of warfare that not a single person, with the exception of children, was to be given food unless he or she was of direct service to the military machine.

The Germans are now faced with tho grim fact that 6,000,000 mouths at the very least have to lie filled three times a day without the army being in the least better off for the loss of the valuable food consumed.

The cold-blooded, calculating German, with his grim devotion to the war machine, can never overcome his regret for the loss of these 18,000,000 meals a day.

It is for this reason that observers have hinted that there is nothing more likely than that Hun. males and females over 70 will receive a polite intimation that early suicide will be helpful to all concerned, and. that the hint will be emphasised by the cutting-..off of rations.

The Germans were never noted for gentleness towards neighbours of kindly feelings, but this regularly increasing shortage of food, this incessant sapping away of the vitality of a. nation already exhausted on the battlefields of Europe, if continued, is adding to the acerbity of public manners.

There is a general hardening of the Hun mind against the slightest vestige of sentimentality. For this reason there is little ground to disbelieve that when the Kaiser gives the order for the aged to die for the sake of Germajiy the younger people will see that thei order is carried out, so that the rations of those remaining may bo greater.