THE CAMPAIGNS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17705, 4 February 1918, Page 4

THE CAMPAIGNS.

According to a cable message a section of the London Press is warning the public against attaching an exaggerated importance to the German : strikes. It is suggested that the Germans are deliberately encouraging the 'f impression that the strikes are serious and widespread, in the hope of promoting similar demonstrations in Allied countries. The idea, however, is too fantastic to be accepted. Probably the correspondents are displaying their customary tendency and arc sending their newspapers every scrap of news hearing on the strikes, so that an exaggerated impression may perhaps have been created. But that is Vary different from crediting the German Government with a cunning intention to deceive the Allies. It happens that labour troubles are threatening in Great Britain at the moment, and the anxiety of the newspapers is obviously that the discontented workers in the Mother Country should not be encouraged by the strikes in Germany to hold up the production of munitions or the construction of ships. Probably the German Government has no objection to the publication—abroad—of German Socialist and pacifist manifestoes, but it 13 assuredly doing everything it -can to restrict th& scope of the strikes, and the reports sho\v that it is adopting strong repressive measures. It is clear that the troubles are widespread, but so far they have affected only a, small proportion of the workers, and there is nothing to suggest that they, are likely to become general. The far more serious Austrian strikes were apparently settled by the promise of a more liberal food supply, and probably the German difficulties will bo met in ,a similar way. But ns far as they go they are symtomatic. To an extent they have a political importance

for they carry a protest against the supremacy of the annexationists in Berlin, but it would be dangerous to regard them as mainly political at tliis stage. We hear a good deal of the activities of the .pacifists, of course, just as the Germans would be told a great deal about the pacifist movement in Great Britain if any considerable section of the workers went on strike, and if the warnings of the London newspapers were directed particularly to this aspect of the' matter they could bo warmly endorsed. Unfortunately, we have no means of knowing just what the position is in Berlin, hut the fact that news of the industrial troubles is still being permitted to cross the frontiers implies that the Government hopes speedily to have the situation in hand. However, we shall have to wait a little before we can judge the real importance of the labour movements in Germany. Britain, meanwhile, is faced with the prospect of an acute difficulty in the engineering trade, arising out of the dispute over the combing-out proposals of the Government, so that wo cannot afford to lay too much stress on the significance of the Gorman troubles.

There is little movement in France. Raids are reported from the British front, but the communiques are still concerned chiefly with the activities of the aviators. This year will see an enormous concentration of aircraft of all classes in the west, for prodigious numbers of machines have been built, and all the training grounds have been turning out aviators at the maximum speed without satisfying the demand for pilots and observers. A few weeks now will give the guns and the infantry tlieir opportunities again, "i .:e Italians report another small ad v ice in the mountain region west of the Brenta.