TO SHORTEN THE WAR.

North Otago Times, Volume CVI, Issue 13975, 11 September 1917, Page 1

TO SHORTEN THE WAR.

BURN ALL GERMAN FORESTS. Mr Octavug Charles Beale, pant presidwit and now official, representative in London of tho Aswiatcd Chambers of Manufacturers of Australia, makes a sugestiou for the shortening of the war, Ho wishes the Allies to follow the example of General Sherman in the American civil war, who devastated Georgia because it was the "granary of the rebellion," Following are the salient features ■ of Mr Beale's scheme:— One fourth of the German Empire is under forests of pine and fir. Usually the forests are contiguous, the crops of grain and other food material oceupying all the arable space. The soil in the forests is poor, and only a hard, dry undergrowth strewn with pine needles covers the surface. In summer all is dry and inflamablc, the undergrowth, the bed of twigs and pine needles, the bark and branches of the trees themselves, A series of squadrons of aeroplanes, each carying the largest avaiable quantity of pellets of thermit, of red phosphorus or other effective igniting agents, can be sent at extreme altitudes on systematic lines across Germany, Simple dropping apparatus is required, actuated preferably by spring and clockwork, so that the circumference of the delivering wheel shall drop with any desired rapidity the pellets from a containing hopper, according to the speed of the aeroplane. The, pellets, about the size of fhrapnel bullets, or even less, are to ignite upoa touching the ground. The time chosen should be in the early afternoons of July and August, when tile heat in Germany Li usually great. The woods are then dedicated and highly iiiflamable. Mr Beale is not. only well acquainted with the conditions of Germany ovv thousands of mile;;, but also with those of Australia. Hie United Sink 1 .? and Canada, The effects of great rrra-s and forest fires are well known is the three last-named countries, and the calamity cannot be arrested when it has once attained a long lino of ad-

vancp, Anything to save precious' ti'ne, Genera! Sherman hail no such facilities, and with him it was onlv a question of ending the war by decoying the resources of. the enemy, Tin) result showed that this was the true principle of action, for the Confederacy never recovered from the blow. There is no defence possible' to the enemy other than roofing his country with glass, and there are no such forests in England to be so destroyed, the very word "forester" being as obsolete as "fletcher," the arrow-

maker. In the woods that exist, limited and scattered, neither the trees nor the undergrowth are especially -inflamable. Much tlio same applies to Prance, and, moreover, there is little chance of any nttompt in that country by the Germans, because success could not be expected.