THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1914. LORD KITCHENER'S SECOND ARMY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16191, 29 September 1914, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1914. LORD KITCHENER'S SECOND ARMY.

The determination to "see the war through," which has been expressed in tlie most influential quarters in the Mother Country, may be Said to lie at the bottom of the activity that is being shown in the recruiting for the army. It implies a recognition of what is certainly a fact that a heavy expenditure upon the present war will in the end spell economy if it has the effect of crushing the aggressive militarism of Germany and of putting another European war on a large scale out of the category of probabilities for a long period of years. It is interesting to observe that the military correspondent of The Times undertook, in its issue of August 17, the task of interpreting to the British ■public Earl Kitchener's plans for furnishing the Empire with an army of sufficient strength to carry the war through to a satisfactory finish. Politicians in the past, we are reminded, for all their experience of war, have never seriously faced such a situation as that now demanding attention, nor has Lord Kitchener found under his hand the means for waging war on a great scale. " Whether it is organisation, numbers, arms, equipments, or anything else that goes to make an armed force formidable, we aTe," we read, " dreadfully in arrears, and the present generation, by its efforts and its steady patriotism, is called upon to make good the neglect, the selfishness, and the callous indifference to defence which has characterised our peace-loving nation in the past." The reproach seems severe, but is no doubt in part merited, and, in any case it is intended to sting

the nation the more energetically to action. In discussing the probabilities that the war may be a long one, the correspondent observes that Great Britain has stout allies and many other advantages for which to be thankful, but her two foremost allies have certain characteristics which must be borne in mind. France has already thrown the whole of her manhood into the war and can do 110 more : except for her new contingent of recruits, she cannot even increase by a mail her power in the field. Russia is described as a mighty Power with immense capacity for defence, but with untried and unproved offensive powers. Some weeks later, perhaps, this view would have been expressed more cautiously. "We may beat back the German attack," continues the writer, "hut behind the first German line immense reserves, and we must take it 1 that Germany will fight the fight through, as the well-known saying has it, 'to the last breath of man and horse.'" At the base of Lord Kitchener's plans lies, therefore, it is explained, the need for preparing for the eventuality of a long war, with the need, experienced in olden times by Chatham and Pitt, of steadily increasing the British military power day in day out and year by year until at last—since the race of war is not onjy to the swift but to the pertinacious—Great Britain may figure in arms in a manner befitting tha wealth and spirit of her Empire and the legacy of a great and honourable past. It is suggested that Lord Kitchener may quite conceivably have to employ an additional 500,000 men, and that it is possible that when other Powers have exhausted themselves Great Britain may be found, as she has been in the past, most capable of continuing the war. In a ■passage which particularly invites attention, the correspondent adds : " There must be no question of peace except on our terms. Even if all our allies were struck down we should continue to war until the enemy had relaxed his grip, and, as Russia at least is equally well prepared for a long war, any misfortunes—which are not, in-' deed, to be foreseen, but may befall anyone in war—must not turn either Russia or ourselves by one hair'sbreadth from out resolution. No disasters must affright us. We are fighting for the liberties and even the existence of Europe, and we must make the world learn what it means to turn tile thoughts of our people and their stupendous energies to war." It is in the spirit breathed in these lines that the Empire must adhere to its resolution that this war is to be "a war to a finish.''