Cable news must be skewed

A typical warship of the Australian fleet: H.M.S. battle cruiser Australia (27 knots), in Sydney...
A typical warship of the Australian fleet: H.M.S. battle cruiser Australia (27 knots), in Sydney Harbour. - Otago Witness, 26.8.1914. Copies of picture available from ODT front office, lower Stuart st, or www.otagoimages.co.nz
The war cables would be easier reading if less frankly anti-German.

We are all of us anti-German, but faith is staggered when the Fates and the Destinies seem uniformly of our persuasion.

Here and there, surely, the Germans must have done not so badly, now and then must have had some small streak of luck.

Nevertheless the kind of cable news we get, and like to get, is this:-''As line after line of German infantry advanced we simply mowed them down; The Belgians had losses, but they were slight compared with the carnage among the enemy; Many of the prisoners were ravenously hungry, and begged for food by tearing at their captors' haversacks and crying in German and broken French: 'Bread, bread!' 'Drink, drink!' Others devoured the carrots and turnips in the fields.''

Which is a Belgian officer's account of what happened at Liege and quite the latest, its date London, August 19.

On the French frontier the same thing - everywhere the Germans get the worst of it, are crumpled up by bayonet charges and run away, abandoning ''enormous quantities of provisions, forage, shells, and wagons.''

This is precisely the news we delight to hear, but we could better believe if we heard it with less uniformity.

Undeniably there are points on which, thus early in the war, Fortune has declared against the Germans.

It was never supposed at Berlin that little Belgium would put up a fight. In the end Germany may overwhelm Belgium; already Brussels is threatened, and the Government has flitted to Antwerp.

Not the less, however, has Belgian resistance gained time for the French and wrecked the German plan of campaign.

Neither could it have been supposed at Berlin that the British would fight.

It was just the turn of a card - a chance on which the Kaiser staked Crown and Empire - and the card has turned up wrong. Immediate result, isolation - commerce gone, port closed, fleet in hiding, merchant shipping swept from the seas, Germany left to ''stew in its own juice,'' as Bismarck said brutally of Paris plan of campaign.

Neither could it have been guessed by the junta of Berlin plotters that Japan would lift up her heel against them.

Things are pretty low with Germany when Japan can order her - simply order her - out of the East.

With a last shred of dignity, Germany declines to go, would prefer to be kicked out.

And Japan will duly attend to the kicking.

In short, on the part of those who began it, the war was an outrageous gamble, as we now see.

If there is any truth in omens, the gamble will end as gambles should. - Civis

 •Long before the first express from the north arrived yesterday afternoon a huge crowd had collected about the railway station, and had occupied the bridge, the station balconies, and all points of vantage.

Harry Lauder was coming. The train came in and he was aboard, all right.

A few of the crowd saw his face, and nearly everyone caught a glimpse of his dark brown hat, which was all that was visible to any but the sturdy few who had ''scrimmaged'' their way to the centre of the ring.

He was welcomed by the members of the various Scottish organisations in the city, and was cheered by the crowd, the members of which greeted him was good-natured familiarity, as ''Harry''.

Then he walked out of the station, and, escorted by the pipe band, proceeded to his hotel.

The multitude poured out after him on to Castle street, and it is doubtful whether a crowd of such magnitude had occupied the station for a long time.

They were all on tip-toe, and some of them saw the hero, and forgot the war for a few minutes. - ODT, 22.8.1914.

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