The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, JULY 24, 1916. THE WAR.

Southland Times, Issue 17793, 24 July 1916, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, JULY 24, 1916. THE WAR.

The general tenor of this morning’s news is cheerful and very encouraging. The first messages to be read and carefully noted are of course the official reports. The facts are in the communiques. They offer the only sure ground and any news that conflicts with the official reports may be at once dismissed. But the general news is none the less important and may fairly be considered provided that it is treated with discrimination. Taking one report with another w r e may fairly conclude that though no further advance has been made either by the British or the French the position is satisfactory. The ground won is being held and consolidated despite formidable counter-attacks, and the operations necessary to straighten out the new fronts are being successfully carried out. The fighting is deadly. The enemy's defence ip very solid and obviously he is still able to bring up reinforcements both in men and in guns. A heavy price is being paid for this advance, but if one point has been made clearer than another by the two years of fighting we have now witnessed it is that success in modern warfare is beyond all precedent costly in human life. The Germans, indeed, believe that there is not sufficient iron in the Briton's constitution to bear the murderous, losses of modern w r ar. One official German organ declares that Britain is bleeding now as she has never bled before and that when the losses are known the cries of victory will change to lamentations. That is a relic of the Teutonic illusion that

British and French are alike decadent. But the Germans have learned at Verdun that the Frenchman still fights for his country as resolutely and dies for it as happily aa ever he did, and the British nation, with a full knowledge of what the cost, may be, is resolved that victory shall be won be the cost what it may. With the German newspaper's taunt we may rted Sir Douglas Haig's statement as given to a representative of the Paris Matin. The decision is to be sought in the West and there the Allies will win an enduring peace and pay the price of it. What Germany does not yet. realise is that if the British were not a military nation ‘before the war they are a military nation now and that losses in battle will not appall them. The attack will go on, and the Germans will find that they have to reckon not only with the British Army but with the quality of endurance in the British nation. As to the Eastern front, the Russians appear to have demoralised ,the enemy in eastern Galicia, and by way of increasing the strain Kuropatkin is strongly and successfully attacking Von Hindenhurg on the Dvina front. The object is, doubtless, to prevent the enemy from sending further reinforcements to the Stokhod. The Russians must get Kovel and on the Stokhod the enemy has succeeded in arresting BrussilofFs advance. He threw enormous reinforcements into that sector, ajid Kuropatkin means to find out if they were drawn from the Dvina front and if so to compel Von Hindenhurg to recall them. The broad fact in •which the news of the day is concentrated is that the enemy is under heavy pressure at all points and that in most cases superiority in personnel and material is with the Allies. -