GERMANY UNDECEIVED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16968, 30 September 1918, Page 5

GERMANY UNDECEIVED.

SIGNIFICANT ADMISSION.

MISLED BY RULERS.

The military and political authorities of Germany obviously consider it is useless this time to apply their stereotyped method namely, to explain to the public that apparent defeat is in reality victory, and that retreat is part of a previously conceived plan, says the Zurich correspondent of the Morning Post. The German public perceives that it has been misled by its rulers, that there is no truth in the oftrepeated statement that the French reserves are eaten up, and that the annexationists have deceived it by circulatirg throughout the country the false statements that France is in a state of disintegration, that the British Army is weakened beyond the possibility of recovery, and that the so-called American Army is composed of a collection of youths out for a sporting enterprise. The question with which the rulers were facod when the public realised the significance of the second retreat over the Marne was, of course, how the baneful impression should be removed. What plans are being adopted is not vet clear, but unusual and significant articles are appearing in the newspapers. Major Endres, the military correspondent of a Munich paper, for example, writes The more clearly the people at home realise that France is still very strong, that America has more than half a million soldiers in France and cannot be prevented by the submarine wax alone from sending a constant supply of trodps and war material to France, and that, finally, the English Army is in good condition and stands with gaps filled up ready for fight, the better wdl they appreciate what our troops have accomplished. Major Endres informs the German public for its consolation that " the German leaders will regain the initiative seized by Foch," but adds that weeks may elapse before the necessary preparations can be made, and conjures the public not to bo anxious. Efforts are also made to divert the attention of the public into other channels. One Munich journal asserts that Mr. Balfour has to admit that Germany has no intention of annexing Belgium, and declares that as the British Foreign Secretary now advances other pretexts for continuing the war of exter-j initiation against the Central Powers, it is | clear that the fight for Belgium's free-1 dom, in whose name England pretended to take up arms four years ago, was noth- 1 ing but a signboard hung out for the benefit of credulous people in and out of England."