CENTRAL POWERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CV, Issue 16082, 2 October 1916, Page 9

CENTRAL POWERS

* MJ CHANCELLOR'S REICHSTAG SPEECH. A FIRE-EATING PERFORMANCE. (Reuter's Telegrams.) LONDON, Sept. 29. In his address to tho Reichstag Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg referred tothe fighting. He admitted that AngloFrench successes were pressing the German lines back and inflicting heavy losses of men and material, but he asserted that the Allies had failed in their object of rolling up the German front. He was confident they would never get through, even as little as the Russians had done in the East, while the repulse of the Allied attacks in the south-east division had frustrated the great Entente plan of severing the connection of Germany with the Orient by separate conquest of Turkey, Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. Ho declared that the Entente's lust of conquest was responsible for daily heaping up mountains of corpses, as Germany had already declared her readiness to make peace. He asked if anyone in Germany dared now demand peace in the face of M. BHand's declaration.

_He indignantly denied that the Kaisei exercised his influence with the Czar to prevent Russia's development in the direction of freedom, but denounced Britain for wanting more than booty. "After bleeding Trance to death," he said, "making her Allies financially and economically her slaves, and subjecting the European neutrals to her orders, Britain wants to see Germany militarily boycotted and condemned to lasting sickliness in order to realise her dream of British world supremacy.

Biitain is fighting ior world supremux j ith aix expenditure of strength

that is unexampled in history. She is breaking one international law after another. Great Britain is the most fierce and obstinate enemy. German statesmen wlio hesitate to use against this enemy every available instrument to shorten the war should be hanged." The Chancellor expressed disgust and contempt for the allegations that all means of fighting were not employed to tlio fullest possible extent.