CENTRAL POWERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16230, 28 March 1917, Page 7

CENTRAL POWERS

PRUSSIAN MINISTER'S EXCUSE. FOR RETREAtIn FRANCE.(United Service.) Received 9.35 p.m., March 27th. LONDON, 'March 26. The Prussian War Minister, General Von Stein, excuses the retreat as owin"to insufficiency of guns. He claims that Germany does not. lack ammunition, and is prepared to meet offensives irriperturbably. America's intervention does not trouble Germany because an American continental army is impossible. SOCIALIST/SUGGESTION. ' PEACE W T ITH" RUSSIA. ' The "Vorwaert's" urges Von Bethmann Holweg to offer peace to Russia, adding, outlook of the war 'has suddenly changed. We no longer fight Czarism, and its. allies, hut an alliance of-the world's democratically governed peoples, which asserts its will to tear down in Germany the last bulwark of reaction." ' DIVISION OF" BELGIUM. BY GERMAN ORDER. MEANT TO BE PERMANENT. ("The Times.") Received 1 a.m., March 28th. \ AMSTERDAM, March 20. - ' Following on the Flemish deputation cabled on the 4th the German Gover-nor-General; of Belgium has issued an order dividing the country into two administrative - sections, separating Flanders from the Walloon, Frenchspeaking part. The new frontier runs south of Ypres to the north of Liege. •The order makes Brussels the capital of the Flemish part,, and Namur the capital' ofv the Walloon. Other dfttnils are withheld. The official newspaper claims that the order realises a long harboured wish of the Flemish people to have a Flemish university at Ghent. Flanders will have its own administration, with Flemish' as the official language. Vacant professorships in the Ghent university axe being filled with pro-German neutrals. ~ 1