The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1917.

Evening Star, Issue 16550, 9 October 1917, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1917.

The number of statesmen who have " made good" in the fiery furThe Greatest nace of war may perMiStake haps bo numbered on in History. the fingers of the two hands; the number of failures in statecraft and generalship makes a much longer list. We shall not attempt to recapitulate them. It is sufficient for our present purpose to repeat that among the former no namo stands higher than that of General.Smuts.- He is emphatically one of the few whom the Empire does well to trust, and whose words strengthen and cheer the hearts of its people in this the supreme crisis of its fate. The fact that General Smuts 17 years ago was in arms against the Mother Land, that he is an able and successful soldier, a scholar as well as an experienced South African statesman, enhances the universal satisfaction that the talents of a man of so unique and varied a reputation are now ceaselessly and entirely devoted to the service and the cause of the Empire. His presence in London as a member of the War Cabinet is among the most complete of the many answers that from the first have been given to tho unashamed mendacity of German assertions and claims. General Smuts would not be where he is to-day, helping to plan the last mighty blows that are to be launched against the enemy, were England what the German War Lords and their dwindling hosts of supporters in Press, pulpit, and politics assert her to be, even more blatantly and hysterically than ever. "I fought for freedom then (1889-1902)," said the famous general on a recent occasion, "and I am fighting for freedom now." What more effective answer could be made to the pretences and falsehoods of the German Kaiser? The utterances of such a man are of interest at all times, but how much more so when he speaks as one of the chosen representatives of the Empire? Therefore, the men and women of the Old and New World alike turn eagerly to what he has to say. During the past few months General Smuts has heartened his hearers with hia calm assurances and timely wisdom. He has spoken seldom, and only of what he knows, but at all times with that tone of certainty which is born of long experience and carries conviction to the hearts of his fellows. What he had to say to the presidents of the Chambers of Commerce last Friday was perhaps of even greater importance than anything he has hitherto said, for he then made clear his own, and presumably the War Cabinet's, view of the German U boat and Gotha campaigns. Of these he affirmed that the former has already failed, and that the other is doomed to failure. General Smuts gave this forth as a " bed-rock fact." ' The Hun submarine piracy abomination had ceased to he « decisive factor. The Central Powers are exhausted and demoralised internally, faced with the spectre of bankruptcy, and beaten as a military Power. He added that the rulers of Germany knew these things, and that the Empire's enemies had made the greatest mistake in history. One has to turn to the more famous indictments by President Wilson of the same malignant Power to find a parallel for so formidable a catalogue. Yet, how far removed from the largely rhetorical or the merely passionate outburst of righteous wrath the indictment is. What General Smuts has said in his own way is what others before him have said or implied. He, however, speaks not only with greater authority than they, but in words that carry with them their own guarantee. Had they not been words of truth, they -would never have been spoken. British statesmen have been compelled more than once by tlie exigencies of the situation to adopt German methods of warfare, but they have never yet degraded • themselves nor the cause they represent by imitating German statesman in systematically falsifying to their own people the news of the progress of their armies and navies. General Smuts expressed not alone his own views, but those of the Empire as a whole, when he spoke of the reluctance with which Britain followed Germany in her satanic warfare. The enemy, he said, liad not got beyond the rudiments of the Mosaic law—an eye for an eya and a tooth for a tooth; and we, therefore, having no choice in the matter, must retaliate in kind. It is, to a humane and civilised people, a cruel alternative; but it is none of our choosing. ' German rulers have long since abandoned both decency and humanity, and, in their blindness and folly—believing that our abstention from- ruthless air raiding was born of inability and fear—they have continued the indiscriminate use of their damnable weapons. This has been Germany's deliberately chosen policy from the very commencement of the war. Her failure was that she failed to estimate the strength and character of the forces that would be brought against her, and as a consequence foredoomed herself to the most overwhelming defeat in history. The cost of her mistake- will bo her own downfall. This, and nothing less. Britain has had to stoop, to put aside her ideals, in order to rise victorious from tho fray. " There must be a descent from Heaven before there could be an ascent from Hell—a humiliation of the Divine for the sake of human salvation. The Prussian has so j polluted tho earth that the rest and. the I best of mankind Itad to descend into the mire to clear the defilement away." Yes, this is part of the awful price that has to be paid for the salvation of th© race. "The righteousness of the cause," says General Sir William Robertson, "cannot alone decide this titanic conflict." The enemy have to be met on their own. ground and beaten with their own weapons. As they assuredly will be. " You are confident of the end?" asked an interviewer. "Who could doubt it and live?" answered the Chief of the Imperial War Staff.