Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-07-22
No Wonder Germany Quit
NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Poor old Germany! Self-sats-
fed, arrogant, absurdly confident in
their own might, they too frequent
ly placed their reliance on what to
them, because it was German, was
masterpiece of strength and intelli-
gence and then turned out to be
nothing but a broken reed" said
Major Frank c. Mahin, of the Army
Recruiting Station, 325 Market
street, Harrisburg. First, they
were sure England couldn't build up
an army, but they were wrong. Then
they were going to end the war by
surprising the Allies with gas and
instead they started something they
couldn't stop. Then they thought
that aerial raids would so terrify the
English and French that they would
quit fighting and instead it made
them fight all the harder and start
ed the Allies to raiding German cit
les till the Germans tried to call
off such raids. Then the submarine
was to end the war and it did add
to the Allied troubles, but it didn't
end the war. And at the very start
on land, Austria was to lick Russia
while Germany licked France, but
Austria proved to be very broken
reed that had to be constantly
propped up with German troops.
German mopey, and German sup
plies, also Austria didn't lick Russia.
Then Germany's ally, Italy, instead
| of helping, went in against them and
, they had to help Austria some more.
The Boche had counted on Austria
as a great power, second only to
Germany, but they failed to consider
Austria's internal troubles and also
! its past history. Never since Wal
| lenstein lead her armies during the
Thirty Years War, 500 years ago,
had Austria produced even a medi-
ocre general and they didn't belle
their past history during the pres
ent war. Furthermore, the Aus
trians soon got very tired of the
war and wanted to quit. An example
of how hard they fought, towards
the end, was the Austrian division
! that was sent in to stop the Ameri-
can advance in the st. Mihiel often
sive. The American division that
encountered the Austrians had men
killed and Al wounded, a total of
| 40, and they took $3.50 Austrians
prisoner. That seems and is utterly
preposterous, but to add to the alb
surdity of the affair the Boche high
command cited this Austrian divi-
I sion for it's valorous and determined
fighting and the great part it play
ed in stopping the American ad-
vance. when actually they hadn't
fought at all but surrendered by
companies as soon as they got a
chance. Another broken reed was
the German population of the
United States who were to keep us
out of the war. Instead of doing
what was expected of them many of
our best fighting men were of Ger
! man birth or German extraction
, Germans who had seen something
besides Germany. Then, too. the
espionage campaign of terrorism and
| Industrial destruction was to prevent
America from producing munitions
but from the amount of stuff we pro-
duced in spite of spies and bombs
| that campaign can hardly be called
a bowling success. OF course the
Boche have always known that their
secret service system was unsur-
passed, in fact the systems of all
other countries were quite laughable,
but strange as it may seem the AL
lies got very accurate information of
| what the Boche were doing which
! was not always true of the wonder
| full Boche system. For instance,
days beforehand we knew the day.
hour and minute of the Boche Of
fensive of July Is, but I happen to
know the Boche knew little about
the st. Mihiel drive. About o'clock
the morning September IL we cap
tured a Boche special intelligence
report dated, Metz. p. M, Sep
tember IL, the evening before,
| which went on to say that the
Americans were preparing for an
attack on the salient; this attack
would take place probably on Sep
tember 26. but could under no cir
cumstances take place before Sep
tember "a, and here we were with
the attack entirely successful and
the worst of it over with on the
morning of September 12
Poor old Germany! In q couple
of years they will be explaining to
the world that they did not fail in
the great war but were betrayed,
and that other countries had been
! false and ungrateful in not doing
what Germany had thought and ex-
pected them to do"