GERMANS WANT LEADER TO ORDER THEM ABOUT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 96, 17 September 1948, Page 5

GERMANS WANT LEADER TO ORDER THEM ABOUT

Need Own Form Of Democratic Rule (By Reece Smith, Uew Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) Frankfort, July 30. Once again the Germans are looking around for a leader. The specifications do not necessarily include long sessions of screaming about the,iniquities of Vervailles, and encirclement, and all the old routine. Something much less pretentious will do, just as long as he orders them about. Till I arrived on the spot, I had not credited everything I had read about the German yearning to be led from above. Now, by conversation with Germans, and with the British authorities trying to hand to the Germans authority to run their own country, I am convinced that the bulk of the story is true. This leader need not be a dictator. It would be quite satisfactory to the Germans if he arrived and acted with the forms of democracy, just so long as he issued orders, and let them know what had to be done. Then they would get right along and do it as well as they know how. This national characteristic renders fruitless any effort to graft the British or American conception of democracy on to the Germans. Every truly democratic country has evolved a form most suited to its own characteristics, and the Germans need just that. It can hardly be said that our endeavours to persuade them of the overwhelming advantages of democracy have been everywhere successful. . Its figureheads we have unearthed are in the main creatures of monumental mediocrity, hangovers from the Weimar republic, who are about 20 years out of administrative practice', and 40 shears behind in their thinking. A democracy such as the Kaiser ran would be just what they have in mind. After Hitler, who was a good showman if not so successful a general, these unknowns are something too much in tune with the rest of the desolation for the Germans to relish. There. is also a faint whiff clinging to them not unlike that associated with the men of Vichy. Where the capable politicians are is anybody’s guess. Some of them climbed on the Nazi bandwagon, and are now paying their fare.