HINDENBURG'S BOOK

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10559, 9 April 1920, Page 6

HINDENBURG'S BOOK

CAUSES OF THE WAR “GERMANY'S DAY OF DOOM.” STRIKING TRIBUTE TO COLONIAL TROOPS. By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received April 8, 11.10 p.m.) LONDON, April 7. Hindenburg's book, “Out of My Life,” is. mainly concerned with tho operations on the Lust iront, where he was ■ c-ommancler-in-Chief till R>l6. no taaes me j tinker view that mugland was mainly uiameablo owing lo commercial jealousy, out says the war was also duo to French chauvinism and Russian greed. a Ho regards the German as tne lord of the battlefield, though lie admits a great deterioration in later years. The French were, he says, better fighters than the English, and their artillery was responsible for the worst crisis. Tho elite of the English Ar-ny were the Colonial troops. The Americans were bravo but were unskilfully led. Hindenburg pays an indirect tribute to the Australians in justifying Germany’s assistance to Turkey, because they thus “kept 100,000 of the finest enemy troops away from European fronts.”

Ho mentions tho Villers-Bretonneux reverse as finally destroying tho hopes of decisive victory. Finally, he regards the attack on August Bth, as Ludendorff did, as “Germany’s day of doom.” Hindenburg says: ‘‘This was our first great disaster, from which there was no recovery.” The book concludes with a stirring call to young Germany to prepare for the future.