THE LAST ROUND.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 43, 5 June 1917, Page 3

THE LAST ROUND.

GERMANY'S FINAL EFFORT.

Germany is stripped for the "last round," says Mr Charles Tower, a well-known English correspondent, writing from Rotterdam. She says so herself, and it seems reasonable to conclude from all reports that when the Germans themselves call this the "last round" they mean that they can never again make such an effort as they have made and are making for this spring struggle. An indecisive result is for Germany an unsuccessful result; a defeat is destruction. So Keventlow and others paint the situation this spring. Nearly everything that she cdUld do during the winter to be ready for "the last round" has been done. Since November 13th, from which date the Government took over the factories which for some weeks previously had actually been converted into ammunition works, the Empire has been one huge arsenal; every available man has been sent to join the colours, and there is hardly a sphere af man's work or labour under the sun, except fighting, which is not being done to some extent by German women.

Women are riveters in the new German ships; they are running railway trains, doing transport work, farming, making munitions, running half a hundred different kinds of war organisations, as well as looking after Germany’s complicated system of social policy. There are parts of Germany, more particularly it would appear in the south, where you may go far afield without meeting any sign of a male unless it happens to be a gang of prisoners. ,

New divisions have been poured up to the western front. It is true that the reports reaching Holland indicate that.many of these troops are in the most literal sense cannon-fodder; that is, they are not of a quality to carry out great storming operations; many of them may be intended chiefly to replace men now on lines of communication, and very many are meant simply to ‘' die in a ditch, ’ ’ if need be, clutching a rifle or tending a machine gun to the last.