OCR Text |
Show GERMAN ADMISSIONS. German newspapers and military critics arc off on a new' tack. They arc explaining their defeat by admitting admit-ting General I'och's ability and the presence of a big 'American army. One of the critics remarks that the enemy's victory was due chiefly to the fact that American aid proved effective. Had tho German experts admitted American Amer-ican efficiency to themselves in January, Janu-ary, 1917, there would have been 110 resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare war-fare and the United States probably would have remained neutral. The thought of what they might have done will always be a poignant regret to the German militarists. One comment is, that General Foch is "an able leader," manifestly a prodigious pro-digious concession from a German accustomed ac-customed to worship the general staff as a sort of assemblage of the gods. The reasons for the change of tactics are fairly clear. When disaster first came upon the army the newspapers and experts began to provide the most fantastic alibis. The people listened sourly and evinced skepticism. The explainers must have felt like a "vaude-villian" "vaude-villian" who springs a joke, expecting a .big laugh, and is greeted with stale groceries flung across the footlights. After consulting together they decided to admit that they were beaten by au "able leader" who had at his command com-mand hundreds of thousands of effective effec-tive fighters from the United States. They were under the necessity of making mak-ing this explanation sooner or later, why not at ouce, they asked themselves? them-selves? General Toch. is probably as able as any of the German generals, if not abler, and he has an advantage over them which he did not possess a few mouths ago. Then he was only one of the foremost allied commanders. Today To-day he is the generalissimo. His command com-mand is unquestioned. On the German side brilliant generals gener-als have been constantly interfered with by the kaiser and the crown prince. A British correspondent declares that Von Hindenburg was terribly pestered by the kaiser, who repeatedly ordered changes in the plans of campaigns or of battles. Von Hindenburg stood it as long as he could. He and Ludendorff, it is said, resorted to all sorts of subterfuges subter-fuges to mitigate or completely nullify the evil consequences of the kaiser's acts. Finally, if reports be true, Hin- denburg, being an irascible old warrior war-rior who had quarreled with the emperor em-peror before the war, quarreled with him once more. It may be mere gossip, gos-sip, but it sounds like the truth. The crown prince has eften been represented as throwing his influence to one side or the other when two alternative al-ternative plans w-ere proposed. He is held responsible for indorsing General von Falkenhayn's proposal to attack Verdun when Hindenburg 's plan to crush Russia utterly was the counterproposal. counter-proposal. 1 For three years and more the allies labored under the handicap of divided counsels and commands, but when they agreed to the selection of a generalissimo generalis-simo th?y provided for a supreme command superior to that possessed by the Germans, for the allied generalissimo generalis-simo is really supreme, whereas the German Ger-man commander is a mere servant when tho kaiser or the crown prince speaks. |