Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1914-12-05 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THROUGH FRENCH SPECTACLES.  "I tell you, gentlemen," said the bury, black haired Frenchman, " I tell you I am astonished. In England you have naore than an army corps of Germans. They are enemies. I say nothing against them--only that they are enemies. And  you treat them as friends. It is so. They are tit liberty; they carry i thUr business. The heads of firms, who axe Germans, they saok your countrymen, and th-y iceep the Cierntans employed. Your girls and le-dire, go to see the German prisoner and give him chocolates and flowers. Perhaps his hands are red with blood. Peritaps he has a few days ago dishonouNd a French or Belgian woman, or put out the eyes of a wounded soldier. No matter! What of that You En g: ish are so calm, 40 good. Gentlemen, it is devilisn!" Then Frenchman was Wily angry. He waved his arm. Ws eyes flashed. His lips curled in scorn. And the five oz six British passengers in the smoke room sat cool and unmoved and smoked in silence.  " The German," said the .FDenchman, `• is an enemy. llk hates us. We hate him. Can a man be a friend and at enemy at one and the same time', No. In your hospitals you treat the German wounded first. Perhaps your own men have to wait and suffer. No matter. You are so kind." Here the Frenchman's face v.'as crimson with passion as he cried out. "Your King! He goes to see the German wounded and talks with them! Ah! That is damnable."  'The King,' said the grey Seot4tutin in the corner—" the King ie a gentleman He did quite right."  The Frenchman frowned and folded his arms. "It is, then," he said, "a good thing to visit assassins and robbers. I think not. lam a Frenchman, These men have invaded my country. They have committed pillage, rape, and murder. They a.rie eniemies. And, mark .t, the beet of them are spiel. The worst spy is the naturalised German who has grown rich in England. The higher he is, the more pro-British 'he is. the more should he he distrusted. Deport them, sir. depart them. before they do von a worse injury." I don't think," said one of the English passengers. "that it is quite fair to blame r.ll qermans. The Pruseiane are had, I admit."  c2e=tem=--c:2;=:r  in cold blood, if our di,:fghters and sisters had been shot or outraged, if our cities had been sacked, our villages burnt, our poor workers driven penniless out of their own land to live on foreign charity. We do not know, we are eo fortunate, what war means when it comes home. Imagine a blustering, insulting army of savages in our country. Suppose them to hold the eastern half of England from FIuLl to Brighton, suppose them to have sacked York and Cambridge and Ely and Lincoln, suppose they had dome here all they have done in France, and Belgium, should we not hate thorn' Our hate would be cold,z--r than that of our ally on the steamer. But it would be as fierce and more relentless.  The British Tommy is a cheerful, matter-of-fact soul, quite free from affectation. But a friend told me yesterday of a wounded British sergeant whose chum had been killed as he lay wounded on the field a week ago.. The sergeant was not 4 loquent. He just said in his quiet British way, "They stabbed him where he lay. That's thirty of 'em have to settle when I get back to the front." The sergeant meant it. His anger was not violent. But he will count those Germaais as he kills them. Such is our island way.—Robert Blatehford in the " Weekly Dispatch."  -)*( Under these conditions the German army will never win a decisive victory against good troops, and in the Allies the enemy is meeting troops a good deal better, man for man, than his own, and animated by a far more dangerous fighting spirit. Only .a decisive vietkey on the biggest and most complete scale, an in both theatres of war, can save the Germans from ultimate disaster. The pos. sessrion of Belgium avails them .nothing: they must smash the field armies of the Allies.  A glance back over events will show how much chance they have of doing that. They have been niakinxg. furious and constant attempts •Jga ins+, the Allies' left, which threatens and all their efforts have been foiled, and their attacks 'nave broken against an inflexible line of steel.