"TAKE PARIS OR DIE."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11216, 23 October 1914, Page 3

"TAKE PARIS OR DIE."

THE KAISER'S ORDER. COUP HAS NOT COME OFF. ENEMY HARASSED NIGHT AND DAY. Failure is how writ lurgo ;icross the vholo plan of campaign devised by' the Germans for tho overthrow of their enemies, says a Glasgow paper a month ago. Tho great coup upon which they counted—namely, the occupation of Paris —has not coma off. " Take. Paris or die," was the Kaiser's exhortation to his forcer,. But they did not take Paris, and it would have been well if, n-fc the outset, tho Germans had not thought so early of attempting to repeat tho success of 1871. For since their failure they have been compelled to retreat, pursued and harassed day and night *by the Allies, whom they had hoped to crush. The story of that great retreat is now knt>wn in full, and its place in history will doubtless bo an important one. It provides a lesson in generalship that will be well studied by generations to come. Its efFect oil the German military powers has already been felt, and they, too, will profit bv tho lesson which they have so painfully her gun to. learn. After their brutally triumphant march through France, it seems almost as if some mysterious hidden forco had suddenly arisen to baulk them, just when they had come within sight of the goat—Paris. Actually, the cause of the German rout—for such it may be called —lay not in a trick of fate so much as in the moral and physical break-up of the troops. Thus, to explain the failure of the German strategy, one has to "look to the officers and men upon whom the strategy depended, and also to consider the individual German soldier and his behaviour in the field. They have been made to fight, these Germans, whether tbey willed it or no, aud the conditions under which they fight are not such as to inspire great deeds or devotion to duly. Pen-pictures of the German soldier in v.-ar reveal him in a much less favourable light than he appears in the piping times of peace, and incidentally these pictures give us the key to the secret of the German rout, as is shown in the dispatch which the special war correspondent of the " Daily Chronicle," Mr Philip Gibbs, has sent home from tho front. IMPRESSION OF GERMAN SOLDIER.

Giving his impression of the German soldier in action, Mr Gibbs writes:— He has come fighting all the way from Liege to the outskirts of Paris. For a month he has,been given no rest from this ceaseless fighting and ceaseless marching, and he has seen the utter illdifference of his officer to the lives of the men. He has seen his comrades sent forward— in close formation to certain, inevitable death, into the sweeping fire of the French guns, and he has heard the brutality of orders to spill blood like water so long as thoso who follow may wade through blood to the destined goal. This policy of driving men to slaughter, with ruthless contempt for the sum of human life which is piled up by that, policy, has recoiled upon the authors of itv At its best it could only be justified by supreme success, wl that has not been attained. The men who ore fighting now in retreat are savage with their olficers, and are in revolt against all the blood-thirsty business which has destroved bo many thousands of their comrades.

This is not written from mv imagination. Among the wretched German prisoners whom I have seen trespassing through French towns, or packed like cattle into troop trains, are many who have been candid in the expression of these things. Even then, in those trains, the amazing intolerance of tho German officers for their men—their entire lack of camaraderie—has teen exhibited, ludicrous if it were not such a shocking revelation of the spirit of the Prussian military caste. The officers protest violently against sitting iu the same waggons with their men, and refuse to eat with them. They stand silent and aloof from those who have fought with them, and endeavour to bully thehi in these days of their common misfortune. For such leaders men do not fight gladly. In many corps also the German soldiers have been glad to be captured, as an escape from intolerable suffering. .The German system of sending forward cavalry outposts at a great distance from the main body has meant that many of the captured patrols in the region through which I have.passed, southwards from Oreil and Compiegne along* the line of the Allies left, have been starving men. Tn one case to my own knowledge their haversacks were filled with grass, as their only means, of nourishment. The men wero haggard and faint when they surrendered themselves to. French cavalry, and begged piteously for food. Again, men do not fight gladly in such conditions. Further, the failure to enter Paris has had—as I have learnt from German prisoners- -a -demoralising effect upon the eneiur. They fought to reach that goal, an J the capture of the French capital would have liad a heartening result far beyond its military significance. To turn away from Paris was a frightful blow to the German troops, and the first sign to them that the plans of their Headquarters Saff had completely miscarried. It was the omen of the great disaster that- is overtaking them Finally, the vigour of the French offensive, the elan of the French attack,_ after the first weeks of unavailing resistance, has completely surprised the German troops and put a panic-fear into their hearts.

They are unable to stand against the bayonet charges of men like the Zouaves, the Turcos aud the best infantry regiments of the line, who during the past week have come to close quarters. The Germans lost their nerve altogether at the sight of the long French bayonets, and. leaping from the trenches, ran with screams of terror. Tho greater part of those who died—and there were not many left — were stabbed in tho back a's they fled.

These facts are not negligible in analysing the present chances of' the enemy hi the most difficult position which it has yet encouutered—a continued rearguard action through hostile territory. But the frigid truth is that the German plan of campaign was made for advance and not for retirement, and that, retreat has not entered into its calculation. They are trying to ii<.r their way back with an army that is broken in spirit, exhausted in body, lacking a full siipply ox food and ammunition, and with 110 genius for rearguard fighting;. Equally vivid is Mr Gibbs's description of the country which has been the stage of this dramatic scene; —It is a great tract of desolation and destruction in a countryside which five weeks ago was exquisite in it-a peaceful beauty. The military purposes have burned many little villages, and their blackened stumps of timber and charred broken walls, with heaps of ashes which were once farmhouses and barns, remain as witness of the horror that has passed. In many of the cottages which wero used by the German officers there are signs of a hasty evacuation. Capes and leather pouches still lie about on chairs and bedsteads. Halffinished letters written to women in the Fatherland, who will never read those words, have beeu trampled under heel by hurrying hosts. It is a little thing like one of thoso unfinished letters from

a soldier to his wife which overwhelm one with pity for all the tragedy of war. The bigger things—the movements of great, mnw, of troops, the wholesale slaughter along a. far-tended front—scorn to stupefy one's senses. The slaugter.is unending beyond th" imagination of those, perhaps, who have not .seen the bloody mess oi True, victory has been with the French, but they ha,re paid a tearful price for it. Some "dea. oi the nuinber may bo gained whnu T sav that sine© the Germans have been m retreat 7000 wounded have j>as.«e<l every d«v through Orleans alone.