"STICKING IT"

Evening Star, Issue 16627, 9 January 1918, Page 7

"STICKING IT"

THE GERMAN CIVILIAN'S PINK FIGHT. . Gormany, according to f Mr Gerard, has 9,000,000 men under arms on land and sea and in the air. Do people in Great Britain realise sufficiently that the German army and navy are still able- to offer prodigious resistance to three-quarters of the world primarily because the German civilian army of 60,000,000 souls is itself putting up a fight without parallel in history ? " I do not suppose' that this is a popular theory to ventilate hereabouts," writes Frederick William Wile, in the London 'Datiy Mail'; "but it is the unescapable truth, nevertheless. The main reason why i wo have not beaten Germany is that at | the back of her soldiers and sailors and ; airmen is a ' home army' which, despite increasing hardships and pitiless privations, reveals a tenacity of determination that' is nothing short of euperhumaji'. It obeys the motto which is now everywhere supreme in Germany—' Stick it' (Duxchalten). My optimistic friends profess to believe that, however good an account 1 of itself German capacity for suffering has I given, it is not inexhaustible. They have persuaded themselves, indeed, that Germany is ' breaking up,' or is about to do so. For three years and two' months I have been restlessly on the look-out for satisfactory evidence of German defoat from within, and I am bound to say that I find it quite as iindiscoverable to-day as ever. I believe that Mr Lloyd George's j long-sighted admonition in the spring of 1915—that the Allies had more to fear Ifrom Germany's ' potato-bfead s'pirit' than from Hindenburg's strategy—never had more ominous significance than at this hour. I have just read Sir Arthur Yapp's appeal to the nation to save food. He tells us that ' there has not been nearly las much economy all round as is necossary.' If I may suggest it, Ido not think that the Prime Minister could lend the authority of his name at present to any more salutary movement than an effort ito make the people of these happy-go-lucky islands understand the secret of Germany's ability eo far to stave off defeat. We are told—and we sincerely believe—that our soldiers can, and do, master the Germans every time they come to grips. We aTe told that the Navy by no means takes U boat warfare lying down. We have been assured by developments of. this very week that London is not quite helpless against-'German air at- | tacks. We have had dinned into our ears time and again—and we know it is true—that in money, munitions, and every conceivable resource of war the sinews at the disposal of the Allies are incomparably greater than those which. Germany commands. But we need a thoroughgoing campaign of education, it seems to me, as to the strategy and'tactics which the German civilian army is employing. The grim fact is that, compared with the struggle which German civilians are making, British civilians do not know the meaning of the word privation. The word they know is deprivation—of superfluities. Life in these islands, measured by the standards which have prevailed in Germany for at least two years, is luxury. It ought to be the ambition of a people which counts common sense one of its dominant virtues to study how a nation of 60,000,000 has solved the art of bearing heartbreaking privations, and to steel it® own heart to emulate it. If we look into the unsung deeds that are being performed, day in and day out, in German homes at the outset of a fourth winter of war, we shall p"oho the mystery of why our savagely efficient foe is still unbeaten."