Evening Post THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1942. "INVINCIBLES" ROUTED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1942, Page 6

Evening Post THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1942. "INVINCIBLES" ROUTED

The invincible German army has | received another hard knock on the Russian front. Possibly it may turn out to be the hardest knock yet. Among the increasing evidences of German military invincibility the news mentions "185 captured guns, 29 tanks, 340 machine-guns, 355 parachutes, more than a million rounds of ammunition, and more than a thousand railway trucks." That is the gist of one report; another report, without going into details of booty, states that the German 16th Army was routed, and that this Russian victory "'has given the Russians the control of the centre in the Leningrad area, vital for ihe spring offensive battles. ' In less than a century the German army has started at least four Avars. It has made itself the terror not only of Europe, but of civilisation. It has carefully "propaganded" tlie legend of its own invincibility, and that legend has been the mainspring of much of its success. The false prestige of the goose-step has created defeatists in many countries, and in few places has Germany failed lo find "fifth columnists" and quislings. But now there is a hope that • the legend of German invincibility will be settled for ever. Four or five wars in a century is a great record, but it is just possible that the Germans will never again start a warJ That depends, of course, on such knocks as the invincible army is now receiving on Russian territory, and which, let it be hoped, will be repeated on German territory from the Vistula to the Rhine.

The blows inflicted by Russia are far the most serious land blows that the enemy has sustained in this war. If Hitler were defeated in the third (present) year of the war, the primary cause of his defeat would be Russia. But if Hitler is defeated in the fifth year (the Kaiser's unlucky year), it may be that AngloAmerican land forces will claim a very important share in his overthrow. The political results arising from an overthrow of Hitler in. 1942 by the combined action of the Russian army and the internal forces of German Communism would possibly be distinctly different from the political results arising from a crushing of Hitler in 1944 by purely external forces applied in equal degree by Russia, Britain, and America. In a general way, everybody hopes for a short war, which is altogether natural; but important political post-war factors: will pivot not only On Germany's defeat, but on the extent of it, the manner of it, what armies inflicted it, and what kind of armistice is imposed. The war of 1914-18 and the armistice and the peace did not dispose of the invincible army. To banish the Prussian war terror some other way must be found, whether the war be shorjt or long. *