Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1918. GERMANY AT BAY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LII, Issue 81, 9 April 1918, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1918. GERMANY AT BAY.

IN his new book, "Germany at Bay," Major Haldane Mac Fall deals copiously with Germany's p£ace strategy and brings out its true significance. President Wilson's clear exposition of German aims, published yesterday, render extracts from the book of great interest and significance. He shows that Germany's supreme aim, to conquer Britain and America and attain to world-do-minion was to be arrived at by two plans of campaign. The first plan was to crush France and Belgium and seize their industrial areas and northern seaports, after which Russia was to be attacked and brought to peace. Britain's turn was to come when her sea power was reduced by Germany being at her gates in the Channel, with the French battleships added to the German eeaetrength, and no ally to intervene. The second plan of campaign co-ordinating with this was to create a Pan-German Empire from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, cutting the world obliquely in two. The author writes in elucidation of these propositions:— As the second plan enormously increased the strength of the first plan, and could be pursued without alarming Britain and America, :t was to be completed first, and thoroughly organised, enormously increasing the Germa,n fighting strength and baulking her enemies. It was astoundingly valuable in isolating the dreaded Russian, and making him of little use as an ally to the West. It only required the overthrow of the little State of Servia to complete this pan-Germanic map. It so happened that, in order to complete it, Germany had to go to war and launch herself into the first plan of campaign as well. The German's strategy failed in his first plan, but succeeded beyond his highest hopes in his second plan. The Pan-German map is in ' Let us make no mistake about this. ■Since this book was sent to the printers the Pan-German map has been vastly extended. It now includes practically the whole of Western Russia adn certain isolated localities in Asiatic Russia. Germany is consequently in a .much stronger position than when this strategist surveyed the map. Even before the complete collapse of Russia this is what the author wrote on the situation : No matter what sacrifice Germany makes in the West, no matter what humiliation she eats or is made to eat, if the Germans hoodwink a world weary of war into a peace which leaves him his PanGerman map he has won his war. The hideous sacrifice of the Allies has been in vain. Britain and America, his ultimate and supreme object of conquest, lie open to his mercy—France is under his eternal threat —Italy is his footstool. Peace will have left the earth. If Germany give back Belgium to the Belgians and Northern France and Al-sace-Lorraine to the French and pay heavy indemnity to Britain, Belgium and France for the war—if the Hohenzollern be driven from his throne, but peace leave the German his Pan-German map, then Germany has won her war. Firmly established in that map, then Germany is strategically mistress of the world. With that map for jumpingoff ground Germany, consolidating her strength and swiftly reorganising her power, can proceed with enormously increased prospects of success to • hep dream of world-do-minion. . . The author harps on this principle all through his book -He declares that no defeats elsewhere, no other strategy, can undo that map. Yet if that map stands Germany has won lier w«ir. Consequently Vie urges tliat it is an essential act of a lasting peace —an act without which peace is a farce —that the peoples of Europe should be made free. When the present situation is viewed m the light of the considerations that this strategist puts forward all the peace talk that is based on the idea. o£, mutual concessions in the West, while Germany j is left in full possession of her war-map in the Near East and Middle East, falls to the ground as hopelessly unpractical. I While Major Mac Fall argues that J Austria and Hungary must be liberated from "the vile tyranny of the German and Hungarian ruling castes," he goes j on to affirm the impossibility of giving j back the former German colonies to j Germany. The "German colonies," he j declares are not colonies at all as civilisation understands the word. He adds : "The German colony is a brutal tyranny carried out with ruthlessness and organised -with consoicuous ability to one end—the creating of vast black armies for the German - war towards -worlddominion. It ia nothing else. All the

j talk about commercial extension and the ' like is sheer throwing of dust into the ! eye of the world. The brutal subjuga- . tion of the natives is the cause of the destruction of the labour necessary to commercial enterprise. The German colonies are a deliberate conspiracy to extend the German war-machine to positions for the destruction of Germany s enemies; and they were in process of an astounding development to this end when the war broke out."' The author furiously assails the "cranks" who assert that Germanv must not be humiliated. He writes :

In God's name are we to be tender to Germany's valour of ruthlessncss lest Germany's feelings be hurt'.' .Do these dullards realise that since this war began hundreds of thousands of us have been training with rifle and bomb and bayonet throughout the length and breadth of this land day and night, not only to humiliate the German but to slay him, whilst they sleep in comfortable beds and pen abstract virtues for oijr doing a.t home ? He drives home the great truth that there can be no compounding with evil, and that to enter into a peace of accommodation with the convinced believer in violence is to court annihilation at the hands of the enemv.