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715 Vu Ya Ching Road expressed on the western front that the Allies are superior to the Germans in the air is' thoroughly justified, and that the Reich will hesitate to force the pace, Seeking rather to strike at the naval strength of the Allies, and to maintain their own strength against the time when economics force Herr Hitler to the peace conference table. There is much in the argument said to be preferred the German command that it is better to have full military strength at such a conference than to have it first destroyed by Allied action.
That explains the stories which came from Europe at the end of the week, that a German onslaught through Holland was planned for November 11, and that the German command, realizing that Belgium would enter into the fray if Holland were attacked, understood the perils attending such a venture, and gave the most urgent advice to Herr Hitler, whose knowledge of art is probably superior -to his acquaintance with military precept, causing him at the last moment to abandon his plan. It is an interesting story carrying within itself all the indications of veracity, and it may be expected that as the months pass, further desperate plans will be concocted in the fertile brain of the Der Fuehrer, who finds himself in a situation which is becoming increasingly serious, and which may indeed become tragic even quicker than many people think, Meanwhile Dr. Goebbels' quaint ministry is amusing the world with stories about the Munich explosion. Georg Elser and two British officials have been arrested, the latter two having been kidnapped by a party which crossed the border into Holland, while they were on a mission to receive some alleged peace terms from a section of the Nazis, and whose alleged connection with the alleged bombing attempt on the life of Herr Hitler is just as much fiction as the rest of the story. The German propaganda machine is daily turning out what seems to be almost a serial story as lacking in conviction as it is in ingenuity, and the only conclusion to be drawn from the whole business is that the enemy is laboriously laying the way for an attempt to murder Allied leaders, and seeking to set up a case that if such murders are committed they will be in retaliation for the alleged Munich beer-hall attempt. It will be noted that with the exception of the sinking of the Athenia and the sowing of mines in illegal areas, the German Ministry of Propaganda has the clumsy fault of signalling its punches, and if in this Munich story there is something far more sinister than has at present come to light, there need not be the slightest surprise. To sum up, the sinking of so large an amount of shipping has been somewhat of a blow, but there has been no real deterioration of the satisfactory position in which the Allies found themselves at the beginning of the week.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.