Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, FEB. 25, 1915. BEATING-THE GERMANS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13619, 25 February 1915, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, FEB. 25, 1915. BEATING -THE GERMANS.

If this article. is next quite so optimistic m tone as those which usually find space m this column the reason is that, m considering a problem it is sometimes well to .'.get your opponent's point of vieWj *Jind m a "tough proposition such as is 'now Jb'fefbre England * and " her Allies it is altogether unsafe cincl fallacious to underestimate the strength of the enemy. Lord Kitchener set the keynote by refusing to be drawn into any optim- j isfcic utterance and by setting a limit o| at least three years to the campaign,^ Only by being prepared fof'the severest eventualities and by exerting* herself- to the utmost can England hope to win/ and we m New Zealand, if we want to really help England secure victory, should not be permitted to sit down and gaze and say the result is inevitable and that the war will be over within any given time. Mr Austin Harrison, a writer m the English Review, has performed a service to the nation by giving a lucid and clear-sighted exposition of the facts Great Britain lias to face. The German spirit, he says, has been accurately described as action..' Everything with the German is action. The; strength of a, nation, according to their military maxim, lies m its youth, i.e., its fighting spirit. It is from strategic law i that the first and last objects upon which their armies must be concentrated must always be the enemy's main body. In a word, <£here must be offensive — offensive m mind, m organised preparation, m national attitude, and so m war— as the central reason of German civilisation. From the first day of war the Germans threw away the great psychological advantage of morality. Moral force, tho watchword of Germanic militarism, the German armies m Belgium fiung away as lightly as the German politicians trampled upon their "scraps of paper"—that moral force which, according -to Sclia-rnhorst, "decides everything m war, for r moral forces are never at rest; as soon as they cease to inoimt upwards, and become thus an inspiration, they decline." On the Germans' own showing, this inspiration they have lost — irrevocably.' Without Lope, says Mr Harrison, an army is a beaten army, Stagnation, damp, cold, exposure, djit, privations, sickness, exertions, these things affect the Allied armies equally, of course, yet spiritually m precisely the contrary sense. The Allies bear them and will bear them because they are fighting for their countries, their homes, their rights, for every idea and ideal vested m nationality or citizenship, but the Germans are facing them for no such reasons. There is no poetry m their arms. They are- fighting for no cause, for no wrong, for no hnman truth of idea or conscience, they arc fighting sololy for tho uniform. Thait uniform they have sullied. Politically — and the political side of war is the real factor m the situation — Germany already has been thrown on the defensive. But militarily she is still on the offensive, and this is a truth wo must, face. Ajs the war stands six months after its c-eclara-tion the Germans are still militarily on the offensive. We have beaven them back here, we are holdingfthem generally all along the line, but still their attitude is offensive. . They aro almost iirfull possession of Belgium and a part of France. They have administered several severe repulses to the Russians m East Prussia, and are making a stubborn stand m Poland and Galicia. On neither side 'have they been pushed back beyond their frontiers. As the German authorities "anticipated, war has become no longer a question of manoeuvre and strategy, but of long-drawn-out events, a matter of endurance, terminable as like-, ly as not oijly with the inevitable exhaustion of one or other of the combatants. There can be no speedy results, and so no immediate rewards. The duties of the supremo command have become almost intolerable onerous. The genius of war has gone. Crushing victories have become well-nigh .unattainable m view of the masses tfoneerned/ the tactical impossibility of rounding-up a . retreating army, and the modern power of guns. As tho difficulties of the offensive have increased, because the offensive seeks salvation m movement which is pi>ecisely th© condition so hard to -carry> out, so progress has become Tinduly slow; and, without all prededent, dangerous to; the attacking side. The elements of stalemate are constant, inevitable.' It is today easier, and infinitely less N costly, to act on the tactical defensive^ — which isthe negation of -war. Th© modern rifle, again, has been found too delicate, n.n instrument, save; m higlily trained Hands —as certain.^military authorities wrote, before the war, ordinary conscript rifle fire has proved' disappointing; it is now estimaied at> a hit per thousand shots.'! Tho' individual soldier has becomo once more his own general, These are ' l not conditions ultimately favorable to German arms. None the less, they ar^ tho conditions, and when the time comes for the Allies to change to the offensive they will be faced by the same difficulties, both strategically and tactically. T«t .is m endurance, continues the review writer, that the Allies have to . prove themselves worthy of the nobility of | their cause ; it is here, too, that just, appreciation of the German war spirit is indispensable to the Allied success. ?sn greater mistake could be made than to imagine that the goal is m sight j that the Germans are approaching the end of their tether m men, material, or determination : . that their philosophy of war will fail them;' Nono of these things ig tuie. iSohurnhorst -estimated that every' fifteenth men was a good fighting man; indeed, the 1 Germans have frequently fought np to that ratio. It is capable of enormous expansion. If the Germans are <ltiven into their own territory, on the one side or the other, they may ba expected to fight on a ratio of every twelfth or even tenth maje. Sooner than yield their soil, they are as likely as not to mobilise almost the entire male population, from boys of fourteen upwards. War, carried into German soil, would give the Germans the moral faitli they have wantonly thrown away. To every German the Fatherland mettns something sacred. He will fight for rt, to a man. To anticipate anything m

the nature of a collapso of morale is to misinterpret the German spirit. If wo are to beat the Germans — and failure Co secure the conditions necessary to civilisation would amount to a negative victory, leading inevitably to the resumption of the war at no very distant date — the Allies will have to destroy their armies, ! amounting eventually to some ton million men ; will have to crush a spirit of war never before known m history. Only numbers will prevail, backed up by unconquerable endurance. "It will take a long time to beat the Germans; it will demand an enormous effort on our part, and it will only be accomplished through the united concentrated violence of all the Allies. We have but to hold together for a year, for two, for three years, it may be, and we shall win."- The above presents the view entirely from a military sense. As has been shown m these columns from time to time there are other considerations which give us cause for being sanguine. Chief of these is the question of economic exhaustion. Gan Germany stand the strain of a prolonged war? Will her food and armament supplies be adequate ? Even with the most rigid economy now being practised, we doubt it. With all the world against her no nation can stand upon such a basis of military oppression as Germany has chosen. The weight of numbers, must tell m the end.. Viewing <ihe situation m its severest aspect we may still confidently rely on the conviction thai our cause is just 'and must triumph •m the end. But to secure victory we must, as Mr Austin Harrison says, exert our fullest strength, "backed up by unconquerable endurance.'*