MASTER FACT OF THE WAR.

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13488, 19 May 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

MASTER FACT OF THE WAR.

THE FINAL PHASE, (\iy Kdniund Dane.) Between military hustle and unsound finance there exists a very intimate relationship. Just before the war. and in order to hasten the final preparations, the German Government imposed the tax on fortunes. Since then it has been admitted by Dr Helffench that the taxable capacity of the Empire had been exhausted. The new war taxes imposed have been trilling, and their yield doubtful. In addition to this the effect of the blockade on Germany's public revenue must have been serious.

A large part of the imperial, as distinguished from the individual States, taxation was derived from Custom* duties. With the suspension of trade that source of income has almost dried up. Other heads of revenue must have shrunk correspondingly, for, of course, with the suspension of trade those engaged in trade suffer a loss of income, and an effect of that kind always reacts widely.

Again, u is sometimes forgotten by people disposed to admire the minute and elaborate regulation of everything which was the ouutanding feature of German administration and the real meaning or the term "Kultur," that the multitude of imperial, State, and local officials in the German Empire outnumbered even the total of the German standing army. Between the army on the one hand and the bureaucracy on the other, the system, whatever its other merks, was immensely expensive. Its burden was reflected in the long hours and low wages of the industrial population, and in the poor living made by the mass of the small peasant cultivators.

Every piece of paper currency is a Government promissorv note." and naturally this value of" the note depends on the confidence felt in the Government's abilitv to make good the promise. If the* confidence falls, the value of the note falls. In other vords, prices soar. This has been met in Germany by the device of official maximum prices.

A war carried on by such means cannot be a prolonged war. If the outcome of borrowings in such circumstances is to send up prices, if the .'ttort to keep down prices artificially leads to concealment and evasion, and (f that finds its ultimate expression in popular discontent and disturbance, it is evident that a point must be reached at which the machinery of administration will give under the strain Hence in the mditarv operations two necessities: first, hum; second, the keeping up of confidence. In other words, there has been primarily the urgency of seeking some quick" decision, and next the importance of setting up an official legend of victory. Hie first is the real plan, dictated by political and economic exigencies- the second, is a variation of the age-old confidence trick.

The master fact of the war is that ' the real plan lias not been brought off i,!,. 03 he b , rought off - *<> decision m the field such as was looked for has been reached. So long ago as the end Of 1914 the German expedition into h ranee and the German-Austrian expedition into Poland had been worsted the one on the Marno. the other on the* Vistula. That left the possibility even of any decision as hoped for doubtful After the military failure of the push into Russia in 1915 the negative became a certainty. The possibility it. self disappeared. There was no choice but to fall hack on the confidence trick and to represent the occupation of territory as being the decision sought for. To show that, though widelv accepted, the legend of occupation beine victory is. after all, no more than a confidence trick, it is only necessarv to reflect on what would have happened if, in accordance with the real plan, Germany had crushed France and imposed her own terms on Russia. On the one side she would have had control of all the French coasts and ports, on the other Iter eastern frontier and the Black Sea would have been re-opened. She would have had the resources of France and Russia at her disposal. A naval blockade would have become next to impracticable. Instead of all that, , we fiiui Central Europe living under siege conditions and the carrying on of the war on borrowings having no sound basis producing week by week its inevitably more accentuated economic effects.

Of course this vast difference is due to the failnre of the real plan. The difference is so vast—all the difference, in fact, between victory and defeat—thaJT the wonder of wonders is that anybody outside Germany could ever have been taken in by the assertion that "expansion" has effaced it. Rut it happens that we can go further. The endeavor to bring on the real plan by hustling tactics has led to a disregard of losses and to a lavish expenditure of material and using up of equipment. \or has this been on the side of the enemt an incident of the war "here and there. It has formed from the very outset, from the rush on Liege to the present battle on the Sereth, the predominant feature. The point at which the machinery must give under the "■ver-increasing strain imposed draws nearer with every succeeding day. In the attempt to carry out the real plan Germany lias incurred unexampled losses. The plan is not only now dead; it is damned. The costs of trying to -any it out, however, remain. The •osts in life mean weakness now ar*4 poverty in time to come. The costs in money mean insolvency.

Roumania was to have provided the way. Roumania has been the bitterest and blackest of the German Government's disappointments. The real plan being dead and damned, they have saddled themselves, in seeking to escape that confession, with the upkeep of the confidence trick, and committed themselves in consequence to a defensive war on a gigantic scale while squandering the resources it calls for. Leading the public in Germany to imagine that they were going forward to victory, they have been moving round all the time in a vicious "circle. The strange siege of Central Europe is entering on its final phase: and it is -ntering on that final phase under conditions which ensure that, with a manly confidence and determination on our part, and a public-spirited response to nnblio calls, we shall within a reasonable time be rid of the Prussian menrice for ever.