IN GERMANY.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 3300, 24 July 1917, Page 1

IN GERMANY.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. DROPPING THFCURTAIN ON HINDENBURG. HOW BRITISH TACTICS REVOLUTIONISED WAP. Id is curious to note the dramatic suddenness with which the German newspaper press has dropped the curtain on that magnificent spectacle of Hindenburg's "strategic genius" on which for several weeks they had lavished such a wealth of gaudy colour and glittering tinsel. We hear no more of those "retreats which had all the character of victorious marches," or of that "ap- ! parent yielding of a step in space ] which was, in reality, a thousand steps on tho road to victory," nor of "Hindenburg's inexorable plans which, like. a grim compelling Destiny, ho forces the unseeing enemy to follow." Forty thousand German prisoners in a few weeks, 300,000 Germans killed or wounded, and our immense booty in gun? have proved too much even for the spurious enthusiasm of a subsidised (and terrorised) press. THE SHAKEN FRONT. j Even the Frankfurter Zeitung admits that the British have "taken tho Germans by surprise" : "The English and French havo not succeeded in securing all their objectives, but we must admit that tho German front i has been shaken to a formidable extent, and that a resistance nothing short of superhuman will be necessary to prevent that front from being smashed. Perhaps the most serious feature on the western front is the English attacks which have taken the Geiman General Staff entirely by surprise. Nay, more, their nature is such as t ©revolutionise the whole conception of modern tactics." PUMPED OUT. Prince Frederick of Lowenstein and Herr Carl Riedt, who have collaborated in a ponderous article in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, of Berlin, go even further than this: "As it is impossible for a man out of breath with rurning to run further, so is it impossible for a pumped-out State to i conduct a new war before it has regained its strength. Nevertheless, tlie < next war perhaps already stands at j our door. Who dares maintain that with the conclusion of peace a sudden state of tranquility will ensue? We may hope that such will be the case, bat we have no assurance of it. Therefore, when we have won we must not leave the question of compensation to our statesmen. We must stretch forth our hands and help ourselves to the good things which the enemy holds, so that, at all events, we may richly compensate ourselves for all we have lost. With the good things thus gain- , ed, we can secure and fortify ourselves against the next war, which assuredly will not be long in coming, as the indirect result of our triumph, for the envy of the enemy is inexhaustible and his greed insatiable."