The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-09

special attachment for the Kaiser's
 partially helpless left hand.
 When I was through and his pain
 was relieved, his spirits seemed to re- vive appreciably, and he explained why it was he was so anxious to have his i tooth trouble removed as quickly as possible.
 "I must go down to Italy, Davis," he said, Ito see what my noble troops have accomplished. My gracious, what we have done to them down there! Our of- fensive at Riga was just feint.t We had advertised our intended offensive in Italy so thoroughly that the Italians thought we couldn't possibly intend to | carry it through. For three months it was common talk in Germany, you re- member, that the great offensive would
 start in October. and so the Italians be- lieved it was all bluff, and when we , advanced on Riga they were sure of it.. They thought we were so occupied there l that we could pay no attention to them,
 and so we caught them napping!" i The Kaiser's face fairly beamed as he dwelt on the strategy of his generals and the successful outcome of their Italian campaign.
 For months Italy had been engaged in planting her big guns on the noun tain tops and gathering mountains of ann | intuition aAd supplies and food and hos pital supplies in the valleys below, in preparation for their twelfth Isonzo of fensive.
 WEAKER NEIGHBOR" we let them go ahead and waited pa- tiently for the right moment. They | thought that their contemplated offensive
 must inevitably bring our weaker neigh bor to her knees and force her to make a separate peace!' By "our weaker neigh bor. :" the Kaiser, of course, referred to Austria, and how accurate was his in-
 formation regarding Italys expectations and how easily they might have been ! realized were subsequently, revealed by the publication of that famous letter from Kaiser Karl to Prince Sextus. And then" the Kaiser went on. when their great offensive was within week of being launched, we broke through their lines on slope 5000 feet high, covered with snow, where they couldn't bring up their reserves or new guns, and we sur rounded them.
 'We took practically everything they possessed-food enough to feed our entire 1 army without calling upon our own sup plies at all Never before had our ar mics seen such an accumulation or ann munition. I must certainly go down to see it.
 "We cut off their northern retreat, and as they swung their army to the soutn we captured 6O,000 of them up to their knees in the rice fields. One of the great l mistakes they made was in carrying their civilian refugees with them--clogging their narrow roads and impeding the re- treat of their soldiers We had taken possession of their most productive re- gions, and their retreat was through ter ritory which yielded them nothing. Just think of that retreating army thrown
 upon the already impoverished inhabi- tants of that section. Why, they Il starvs to death.
 .Everywhere we went we found their
 big guns abandoned. In one small vii lage we came upon a gun decorated with flowers and surmoun.ed with g portrait of Emperor Franz Josef It had been put there by the Italian inhabitants or the village to show their happiness al
 being released at last from the yoke or the intolerable Italian lawyer govern ment How terribly the Italians must have treated them! Italy VIII never ge' over this defeat This was real heip i from God. Now, we've got the allies:' and he struck his left hand With ms ms 1 right with great force to emphasise ms apparent conviction that the turning point in the war had been reached wth i italy's collapse.
 1 Then he picked up newspaper rom the tab&e-I couldn't see wnicn one ' was. but it looked like the Norddeutscne ] -Allgemeine Zeitung-and demarheo :
 Well. Davis, must.go into breakfast. 1 My wife is waiting for mel and ne
 shook hands with me again ana waikeo out of the room to the rear.
 SUPREMELY CONFIDENT | How optimistic, enthusiastic and sa- nremely confident the Kaiser was at tnis conjuncture can be imagined only py those who are familiar with the depres- l sion in Germany just before this Italian l offensive was launched. Evervohe seclhe' l to renI,xa ,Iat \ustria's abandonment I of the cause of the central powers was I imminent; her suppore then nuns un's @ byN the flmsiest kind of thread. naa 1ta,v fallen down OF the. twelfth Italian lsonzo offensive hAen succssstuns launched, a separate peace wou'o a'nos'
 certainly have followed. end no one req.
 ized that better than the kaiser sno n'4