The Rangitikei Advocate TWO EDITIONS DAILY THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1918. VICTORIOUS BUT NOT BOASTFUL

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11631, 5 September 1918, Page 4

The Rangitikei Advocate TWO EDITIONS DAILY THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1918. VICTORIOUS BUT NOT BOASTFUL

IT is pleasing to notice that the cables which come to us every dayexhibit a wise restraint of language and of _anticipation. Bach day brings us news of ”a half dozen victories on the long line of conflict—a s erious [dent in the German iline here and a [town taken there —and such an exhibition of enemy weakness and confusion as earlier in the war would have evoked transports and suggested the most extravagant anticipation of impending enemy defeat. Soberness, however, has been taught by a lesaon of • the uncertainties of war, and nobody now seems to care to prophesy beyond to-morrow*or ridge. An d yet never'since the war began have the prospects of nlimate victory been so promising as at present. An almost infinite military skill and prevision is at work. The enemy, assailed in many unexpected points at,once, seems to be utterly unable either to resist or to co-ordinate his forces so as to make an attempt to regain the initiative. In all previous attacks on a large-scale both the Germans and the Entente troops able to set bounds to a hostile advance in the course of a few days except daring the initial disastrous retreat from Mons and the first no less disastrous retreat of the Germans from the Marne. But to the offensive which Foch is engineering there, is no pause, no near objective with which to be satisfied. The taking of town or one strong post is merely the prelude to an, attack on the next.

The temptation to the most extravagant boasting therefore, would daily assail those who, send ns the news if the lessons of the mutability of human affairs, especially in Iwar, had not been taught us by many bitter disappointments. We have captured great armies of men, many hundreds of guns, thrown’ the enemy into a confusion bordering oo rout and smashed the Hindenburg line where he probably counted on being able to throw off the pressure of the Allies and rest awhile. If we allow our eyes to glance over the whole held of possibilities we can see no chance of succour or help from any other nation, no collapse of one of our Allies to render "his situation more tolerable, as in the case of Russia. His submarine depredations although immensely destruc.

tive, have failed to exert a tithe of the influence war expected of them and it is certain, though we are rarely favoured with details, that the aerial offensive on towns in which the Hun gloried in the first year or two of the war is now being repaid, both in kind and in measure, much more destructive and terrifying. From our standpoint, therefore, the prospect is provocative of the utmost optimism, but wo do well to walk soberly and without boasting.

Across the North Sea, however, it is apparent that the spirits of the Huns have sunk more than those of our own people have risen. The Frankfurter Zeitung shows us the Pan-Germans no longer raging about exacting vast indemnities from the Allies and revelling in a very banquet of Allies’ colonies, hut as sitting still and thinking. The psychology of the Hun is as mercurial as the barometer itself, When the Briton suffers a disastrous defeat he simply and doggedly prepares for another struggle. At the very time that Byng’s army, taken by surprise, was being driven in headloug flight by the Germans, public men were re-stating lluir war aims and abating not one jot of them. The German, at the same time resurrected all his old aims and war cries. But no sooner does he see his'armies one after another reeling from the continuous smashes of the Allies than the Kaiser and Emperor with ridiculous buffoonery talk of going, down together. The Kaiser apparently turns his back on the Gott that refuses to obey his behests and the Jingoes and Pan-Germans rage no more, but feel the first growing pains of a coming humility. There is a suggestion of displacing the militant Hertling with the conciliatory Dr. Solf, and other symptoms of the Devil being sick present themselves. Solf a'sures us that Germany does not want to annex Belgium, and ;it does not just at the moment, and simply because it begins to see that it cannot. Ana if Focb’s offensive continues as successful'for a few weeks longer as at present ‘ there will be other pious surrenders and more enticing invitations to peace. But we believe that throughout the.' Empire there is a [feeling very similar to that voiced bygMr Will Thorne who said that rather than have peace at the expense of Russia ha was prepared to see Britain go under.