The Evening Star THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1915.

Evening Star, Issue 15892, 26 August 1915, Page 4

The Evening Star THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1915.

Mbs Beeton, in her once, perhaps still, popular cookery book, “ Signs of the under her recipe “how to Times.” cook a hare,” laid it down as an absolutely indispensable condition precedent that you must first catch your hare. One is reminded of the wisdom of the lady’s advice when reading the resolutions and determinations of Germanleaders to make their enemies bear the colt Of the war. Apart from their humorous aspect, these decisions, repeated as they are in more or less definite terms from more than one source, are of interest, coming as they do at an hour when the echoes of German joybells are yet ringing in our ears, and when the majority of messages emanating from German sources continue to speak with characteristic dogmatism of the certainty of ultimate triumph. There are distinct evidences of douht, anxiety, and even fear of the future. It is permissible to give credence, at least, to the general tenor of these messages, for the reason that, the failure they indicate lies in those phases of the war where it has been anticipated by far-seeing judges that failure was most likely, in the absence of a military decision, to appear and to make itself increasingly felt. Germany, in brief, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to withstand the pressure of the economic and domestic burden that is being put upon her. What Germany internally is struggling against to-day is but one other of the many fruits that she has had to reap as the result of her original failure to defeat France and Russia with a rush. Her failure last year to hack her way through to Paris involved th© failure of her whole compaign. Germany never counted upon a long war; her policy, intentions, and hopes were to make it bloody, swift, and sure. She succeeded only in the first, and the measure of her success in that direction is the measure of thl) unutterable loathing and execration she has brought upon herself from civilised mankind.

Let it be admitted, however, that once the certainty of the failure of her original scheme was borne home to the Kaiser and his puppets, the nation fell back upon its faith in its own sword and destiny to pull itself safely through an'undertaking that would demand all the patriotism, all the men, and all the sacrifice that the nation was ready to give to avoid not alone defeat, but disaster such as never before had overtaken a great people. And judged from its purely military side, Germany has gained the admiration of her opponents for the length, persistence, and tenacity of her attack and defence. But the fates'are against Germany. The pressure of some of those forces she not only defied bub derided is beginning to tell, and , behind the economic, the domestic, and purely material forces there remain those even greater ones, whose pressure in the moral sphere has been as consistent, as silent, and as effective as have the Navy and silver bullet of the Empire and her Allies. It was these other factors, rather than those in which the good old German war god 35 said particularly to delight that may have impelled the Kaiser when addressing his officers and men in Berlin during the last week of June “to “swear there would be no winter camt an< l that the war would be over ‘ m October. ’ ’ When on the 3rd of October last year the same Kaiser in the course of one of many speeches was reported to T : I Wfll, boys ’ ’ Mfor6 leaves tali from the trees here we shall all be “ back in the dear Fatherland,” the war into which he had plunged the world was sufficiently yovng to warrant almost any sort of wild Statement. To-day, and in defiance of those ‘‘fabulous victories” on the eastern frontier, the clouds are gathering thick around the Fatherland. The men who know n-» longer boast and exult themselves, and the Nemesis that sooner or Mer overtakes nations as well as individuals that pawn their future with no hope of redemption already doge the steps of Germany, It 'may amuse the Press and please professors and others, following the lead of the Haeckel of an earlier day to carve Europe and real-range the map and to estimate the t mount of the indemnity their enemies must pay, but the Imperial Chancellor and the Imperial Treasurer know .They may, hoping against hope, cnensh in the secret recesses of their being the possibility of a miracle on behiilf of the Fatherland; and the. Chancellor, fresh from the rejection of his advice by the secret conferehce he had convened may even boldly declaim in the Reichstag against the blood-guilt of Sib Edwatd Grey and so achieve the honor of a “personal success.” But the simple subsequent do. raaiid for a 5 per cent.' loan of £600,000,000 issued at £95 tells its owil tale, the meaning whereof none knows better than Dr Von Bethrtami Holiweg. The Chancellor is hot afree agent. He dare not at this crisis in his .Couiitry’s fate take that course to which he iis said to incline. His resignation, coSeeiVabiy, wbuld bring the whole elaborate edifice that he has been at such painis to solidify with falsehood and perversion tumbling about his bwfi aiid bis imperial master’s ears. So, though he ffiay at one time have learned that.‘‘a wise man feareth and departeth from evil” he has preferred, for the moment, to follori the fool who rageth and is confident. The Allies and the causes for which they wage whr havh also grounds for confidence. The future is with them and theirs. How long it wall taks to defeat Germany, said Colonel Maude, who speaks with the authority of an able and experienced soldier, it was impossible to say, “Bait when the “ collapse came there would be a sudden“neas, completeness, and dramatic reality “about it which no episode in history would yin any way equal,” PfofiM3f 5g idlb, &M pridi£ti3ii tbb often IS v'ailt, but .the sober estimates of, men such as Colonel

Maude, stlpitted as they now ate by th© admissions and perturbations of Germans themselves, need not necessArily be dismissed as unworthy of credence.