The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 1916.

Evening Star, Issue 16051, 1 March 1916, Page 4

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 1916.

The infantry/ engagements northward of Verdun, which were first A Week Of reported on tho night of Carnage. February SJ3,- have de- . ; veloped into* the most persistent, -sanguinary, and desperate battle that the Western Front-has known for many months. Not since the days ,of Loos, Neuve Chapelle, Yprea, and the Maine have similar tales of human agonr and cruel death been flashed through the cable. How "horrible, most horrible" this present crashing together of two/great armies is words cannot ; hope to/convey. Our messages, though, they .contain many vivid sketches by men who 'have Been, the things whereof they speak,/must inevitably kg behind the appalling reality. To make that plain is beyond the power of >pen, but with the help of an/Intelligent imagination tho terms that are employed should serve to 'bring home, even to the dwellers in prosperous and New Zealand, something of the nature of that strife which the 'ill-regulated ambitions and unrestrained passions of .the Prussian military caste and their All/Highest War Lord have let loose upon The disadvantage under which this Dominion has labored has been the utter inability of many thousands of its men and women'to realise either the fact that the greater portion of the civilised world is at war or that their own future is; absolutely dependent on its, issue. Therefore, it is well that thej. should ponder these narratives of fearful / .carnage, of pitiless (slaughter, of the exit from valleys being blocked. by ramparts of mangled corpses, of "whole companies blotted out, of curtains of fire, of limbs and heads scattered far-and near, and of the never broken roar of artillery and bursting shells, which, even when they do not kill, transform the nerve-shaken survivors into mere bundles .of Hysterically laughing and shrieking boclies.

Yes, this/is war—the real thing—war as it is waged after nearly nineteen hundred/years of Christian civilisation. There,- has at all times been war among the,'peoples of the earth, from the hour when man first emerged from Ms primeval slime -until the ruler and master of mighty armies, and threatening navies, less than two years ago, stood proudly forth in •shining armor, drew his sword, and launched his legions for the destruction of those principles and faiths that represented the garnered fruits of the centuries. But this war is not less but more ferocious and savage, and soul as well as body destroying, as a result of the development of man's intellectual faculties. Science, education, and religion, far from ameliorating, refining, and holding in check the animal part of man, have but made him aware how infinitely more devastating and far reaching the products of his hand and brain-can be made when he decides to venture forth to kill his fellows. It is fitting, too, that it should be from highly kultured and boastingly superior Germany that the crowning exposition of the supremacy of its own faith should come. We have long since forgotten or, perhaps, never tried to remember, that this latest spawn of hell—German frightfulness—is nothing new in practice. Wellington knew and experienced it; so have Denmark, France, China, and the natives of Central Africa. It was not born of yesterday, nor sprung suddenly into being in the last days of July, 1914. And it was a great and honored German, a hundred years ago, who predicted, just what would and has happened. "The Prussian," said Goethe, "is cruel by birth;- civilisation will make him ferocious."

We need not enlarge upon the accuracy of the prediction. Civilisation has made of a Prussianised Germany a something before which women instinctively shrink in tsrror and strong men grow pale, even though they do not fear to meet it. Let us be just. The Kaiser and his war lords aro only doing what they said they would do—what they have taught a wholo generation of Germans to make the central part of their lift and thought s war against France, war against England, and war that has not in nor about it the faintest tinge of mercy and pity. As Clausewitz wrote a century ago so his countrymen learned and taught. And this, in brief, is what von Clausewitz wrote:— The whole effort of a commander, then, is to attack the principal army of v.the enemy, impetuously, and with all the-4'orces at his command, in order to annihilate it. The energetic prosecution of a war that is at last conscious of its extreme means of action involves; (1) Inhuman means of maintaining armies ; (2) savage means of attack, even upon the civil population; (3) and savage means of defence. Or rather these epithets are inaccurate, for they belong to the domain of morals. Warfare knows only forces, and an end which justifies everything: the end of con-

quest. . This is the German doctrine in its essence. It was elaborated by Treitschke, made popular by Bernhardt, and acted upon by Bismarck, "There is no question of right," said the maker of modern Germany. "We have the might, and we mean to make the most of it." The mowing down of wave after wave of human beings sent as hopelessly and helplessly to thd slaughter as were ever sheep to the shambles is not only part of Germany's methods of war, but a part of the German creed. That we should continue to be surprised and shocked is more creditable to our hearts than our heads. We should have known once the war lords gave their orders that the advancing hosts would he Submerged and lost in "multitudinous, seas incarnadine," and. that as ''all day long the noise of battle roll'd, among the mountains by the winter sea," tio thought would be wasted on the Sacrifice of life involved. Therefore we receive* and will continue to receive similar messages '-to ihose we print to-day. In the days when the Allies fought and drove the German hosts from the Marno to the Aisne, and when for many days in succession the British beat back the German attacks at Ypres, an ill-regulated censorship denied the publio almost all knowledge of the tremendous conflicts then waged on bo-, half of civilisation against barbarism. That policy has been changed for the better. We are now able to follow in detail the progress of the onrushing Teutonio hordes, to marvel at their-; endurance, to note its practical failure and the uselessness of their sacrifice, and t6 rejoida with, the men and women of France that 'their armies have not failed them.