THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1917. THE REAL THEATRE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17103, 7 September 1917, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1917. THE REAL THEATRE.

President Wilson's message of farewell to American troops on their departure for service abroad possesses a special interest in the emphasis it seems to place on the view that the final battle of the war will be fought on the western front. We may take it that the President's apparent conviction that it is in that theatre of the war that the military decision Trill ultimately be reached is firmly based on the judgment of his military advisers. The successes of Italy and the reverses of Russia may divert attention temporarily to other theatres, and give rise to interesting speculations, but the essential fact always remains that it is on the western front, where the might of Germany is confronted by the might of France and Great Britain, to be augmented later on

by the might of the United States, that the real test is likely to occur. It is on that front that the Allies have already checked the German enemy, frustrated his schemes, and shown that they can outmatch him at every point of the game. It is on the west front that both sides are represented by their greatest concentration of men and by all the dread machinery of warfare, and it is there that the Allies, always increasing their capacity for effort and never slackening their pressure, have, during many months of arduous endeavour, slowly but surely robbed the great German war machine of its worst terrors and turned apprehension and uncertainty into the sure promise of victory. Those who, long ago as it seems, prophesied that the war would be a test of endurance, spoke most truly. It is the reflection that .endurance will bring victory in its own time that must overcome impatience at the slow approach of the ultimate goal, and inspire the efforts of the Allies at times when the difficulties of the road yet to be traversed may seem again to be accentuated. By. their achievements, mainly on the western front, the Allies have shaped the war situation to a point at which it is apparent that they must win if they hold on long enough and allow the enemy no discourse with their intentions. America is not throwing her great resources into the war on their side without a very definite conception of the result she is confident of assisting them to attain. And the large body of reinforcements which the United States will have thrown into the struggle before' many months have elapsed must assure that it will not be the Allies whose staying power will first

give out. That, formidable though he may yet be, the enemy will defeat himself in the slow effluxion of time, should be the confident belief, based on much unimpeachable and incontestable evidence from the battle front, in which the Allies should continue the struggle. They have fought their way to an advantageous position, which cannot fail to ensure them success if they keep their hands to the plough and look not back. A rather striking passage from a lecture recently delivered in London by Dr Andrew MacPhail, who left his chair in the M'Gill University to serve in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, ran as follows: "My counsel is that you should close your eyes to the end. Look upon war as a normal condition. Forget it, as all normal things are forgotten. Cease praying for a speedy end— a peace, else you will acquire what the French call the psychopathy of the barbed wire. Peace and the end will come when your unhampered armies shall have performed their task." There is sound wisdom in this. Talking cannot put an end to the war for" the Allies. If ib could, the orgy of discussion and speech-making at Petrograd would long ere this have brought the finish. In the very fact, moreover, that Germany is most anxious for a speedy peace consists an unanswerable argument why the Allies tliould press on to the goal, unfaltering, and turning neither to right nor left. The successes which the Germans are eecaxiag at jweseat on the

Russian front are certainly disappointing, but, oven if they should bo followed by even greater German successes in that theatre, there is no occasion to believe that they can now influence the result of the war. No doubt Germany will endeavour to achieve spectacular results against Russia in the hope of influencing the attitude of the Allies towards peace negotiations. Of German peace strategy tho Allies have particular need, indeed, to be wary. It was a Japanese officer in France who affirmed the other day that Germany could only escape defeat if the Allies deliberately threw away the victory. And the reflection that if the pacifists had their way this is precisely what the Allies would do has inspired the writer of a series of articles in the Morning Post to say, very truly: "The German Emperor talks of peace every day and hopes that, by a lucky manoeuvre, his enemies may fall into some of his cunningly-devised traps. That, indeed, is the great danger ahead. The German Emperor is now playing his last cards to save his dynasty. Wo must beware lest the feeble and faints hearted among us may be persuaded, by pity, by parverseness, or sheer crankiness, into playing his game."