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Show TALK DF PUCE HALTS SUCCESS Warning Issued by Lord Milner; Asserts Serious Risk in Rumors. 'Declares Thought Should Be of Victory and Not of Revenge. By MAJOR GENERAL SIR FREDERICK FREDER-ICK B. MAURICE. (New York Times-Chicago Tribune Cable, Copyright.) LONDON, Oct. 22. The lesson of the week was very clearly put before us by Lord Milner in the interview which he gave on Friday to a representative of the Evening Standard. We need, he said, to think more of victory and less of vengeance. He might have added that we need also to be as suspicious of Dame Rumor as if she were a Hun, which she very often Is. Peace talk in the midst of any war is enervating and in the fifth year of such a terrible struggle as that through which we have passed and are passing tt is highly dangerous, both for us at home and for the men at the front. The most serious risk which confronts us' at the moment is that we may miss part at least of that for which we have been fighting, by relaxing our efforts in the belief that the end is coming at once. By all means let us hope that it is coming at once, but until it has actually come let ua go on with all the energy we possess. So much for Dame Rumor and her ways. Then there is the other risk to which Lord Milner alluded, that we, remembering remember-ing all the horrors and brutalities which the Hun has perpetrated, regard the whole German i nation as an accursed thing to be destroyed root and branch. That is, I believe, the one thing which the Prussian Prus-sian military leader desires more than anything else at this moment. He sees that his one chance of salvation is for us to make the German people desperate, so that in self-defense they will be forced to rally around him. Resistance Great. The powers cf resistance of a people determined to resist to the last are very great. Look at what France did in 1870, after the whole of her armies had been destroyed; how Gambetta rallied the people peo-ple to him and in a people's war not only covered France with undying glory, but gave the Prussian war lords at the height of their success a fright which all but caused them to pack up and abandon the siege of Paris. Look how the Boers fought against us after Bloemfontein and Pretoria were in our hands, how Lee and the southerners fought on when their cause was utterly hopeless. We have thus to beware, not only of slackening our efforts, ef-forts, but of giving the enemy the courage of despair by clamoring for vengeance. Lord Milner mentioned his experiences in Germany at the time of the Zabern incident, when he found widespread indignation in-dignation against the regime of the junker and jackboot. I can confirm his statement that love of militarism is by no means universal In Germany. I was traveling in south Germany a few months before the war, and I there made the acquaintance ac-quaintance of a major in the Wuerttem-berg Wuerttem-berg artillery. He said to me one evening; "You have no idea how we loathe the Prussian. The Prussian is a brute and a" bullv; but alas, we cannot do without him." c nilf -Well, we have to help them to do without with-out him and we are well on the way to that end. Task Is Difficult. The task of the allied governments at his time is more difficult than it has every been during the war. They have, as Lord Milner put it, the enormous responsibility re-sponsibility of deciding how complete victory vic-tory can be reached in the shortest possible pos-sible time and wfth the lowest cost1 of life. The best and the only way In which ve help them is to carry on if possible wtth even greater energy than before, until complete victory has been gained, and to leave all shouting about peace or vengeance until we have got It. have said that we ought to look far beyond the battlefield of Cambral for the effect of the great victory which we won there. Well, we have seen the effect in Germany, and we are now seeing Its effect ef-fect on the western front. I J Me. Courtral, ifiarcoing, Ft- ubalx and Ostend are thjp immediate fruits of the hard fighting of oar men on the Hlndenburg line and of the Americans farther south of the Krlemhilde line. p.v that fighting the enemy has been ho weakened that he has been forced to abandon large stretches of French Flanders Flan-ders and of Belgium. There are more fruits yet to come. Must Shorten Front. Ve have heard that Zeebrugge and Bruges have been recovered by King Albert, while I believe the enemy Is already al-ready in retreat to shelter himself be- hind the Ghent canal and the Scheldt, a retreat which will release the whole of the industrial and coal area of northern France. 8ir Doug-las Halg is pressing him so hard on the Selle ami General Pershing, desperately fighting, is wearing him down so effectively astride the Meuse that I do not expect htm to make more than a temporary halt even behind the Scheldt. He cannot afford a British breakthrough break-through into the valley of the Sambre or an American break-through to the Metz-Valenclennes Metz-Valenclennes railway at Ixmguyon. while his center Is still bowed westward between Le Cateau and Rethel. As he has not the troops to withstand these fierce attacks at-tacks and at the same time to bold the remainder of his line firmly, he must go bncfc and Bhorten his front. One great and Important result of this strategy ff Foeh's la that LIMe and the Sreat towns surrounding It and much of elglurn, have been recovered almost undamaged un-damaged and King Albert is able to lead hi armfea Into a land which, after the i devastation of Ypres, must be like a pa radise. |
