THE PANIC PRESS

NZ Truth, 6 January 1917, Page 12

THE PANIC PRESS

Puling "Professional Whimperers"

Not the Day of Judgment

But the Day of No Judgment

"There are two ways of seeing' this great business," says "A.G.G." m a London paper. "You may see it m the 'small or the large. You may judge it by its episodes or by its great currents. If you adopt the-' former course, you will live m a daily agitation of fears and panics. • "You may study this panic press by the. week and the month and never find any reflection of the movement of those great forces which are spelling with slow but inexorable fmger the doom of Germany. : , "All that you will get is a daily dram of craven fear, of wild alarms, of shrieking violence, of rancorous demands ■ '. , FOR THE SACRIFICE now of this man, now of that, at one i time of Lord Kitchener, at another of I Lord \Derby, always of Mr. Asquith and the Government, One Idol is put up as another is thrown down.

"Each incident as it arises is torn out of its context and employed to destroy confidence.

"But if you see the war sanely and see it whole, you will take all these momentary truths or falsehoods for what they are worth and judge of our success or our failure by a large scale of measurement," adds "A.G.G." "And by that scale It is the simple truth to say that our achievements have': surpassed anything that could have been conceived*, Wa knew that our navy was great; *but we did not know how great. It has been the one supremely victorious instrument of the struggle, and m all the records of war there is no parallel of a victory so complete, so overwhelming In its consequences, so cheaply earned. ' THE VICTORY IS SLOW ! "But, you say, the victory is so slow! Slow? It took Rome 18 years to .wear Hannibal down; it took Europe 17 years to 'destroy Napoleon.; it took North .America, with all its overwhelming preponderance of men and material, four years to ; : beat:, the South; it took the British Empire -nearly three years to beat a few thousand Boers. And you complain because at the end of thirty months mighty Germany, robbed of its swift victory, besieged and outnumbered, rushing like a mad bull at the bars of a cage, haa not yet confessed itself beaten!

"Now, there is one governing consideration which we ought always to keep m mind m forming an opinion of the, Government. It is this, that whatever its constitution, it x willniake mistakes. The history of every Government m every war that ever was is a history of guesses at the future, some of which were right and'some of which were wrong. FAILURE OF GENIUS. "How could it be otherwise:? War is a convulsion, and you can no more expect its course to proceed with the smoothness of a syllogism than you can expect ah earthquake to be controlled by a resolution of the town council.

"I 'suppose the* two greatest commanders m history were Hannibal and Napoleon. Yet both ended m colossal failures. ■

"And is not the outstanding fact of this struggle the failure of Germany? There' has never m the history of war been a military engine to compare with that of Germany, but at the end of thirty months its bolt Is shot, and its defeat is as assured as anything 'ln moral N affairs can be," concludes "A.G.G."