NEXT FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15237, 26 February 1913, Page 7

NEXT FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

PASSAGE OF GERMAN TROOPS. THROUGH HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. WOULD IT BE OPPOSED 1

London, February 24.

The Pall Mail Gazette, in referring to the statement in General Bernhardi's new book to the effect that in the event of war with France the northern wing of the German Army would advance through Holland and Belgium, says: It was known that the late King Leopold had promised the Kaiser that he would not oppose the passage of the troops through Belgium, but of vhe Dutch attitude we have only the circumstantial evidence of the fortifying of the entrance to the River Scheldt against England."

"FRANCE MUST BE CRUSHED." General Bernhardi, who recently published a sensational work, ''Germany and the Next' War,". —needless to say," with England —is the well-known cavalry leader, the greatest, perhaps, in the Kaiser's army, whose treatise on " Cavalry in Future Wa*s," was warmly lauded by Sir John French in an introduction to the English translation. Bernhardi, as a captain in the Second Hessian Hussars, saw much of. Bismarck during the armistice negotiations at Versailles, and he had the honour of being the first officer to enter Paris with the 30,000 Germans. In reference to France, General Bernhardi writes :— " Oar political position would be considerably consolidated if we could finally get rid "of the standing danger that France will attack us on a favourable occasion, as soon as we find ourselves involved in complications elsewhere. . . . France must be so completely crushed that she can never again come across our path."