The Dominion. Friday, MAY 30, 1919. GERMANY'S CROCODILE TEARS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 210, 30 May 1919, Page 4

The Dominion. Friday, MAY 30, 1919. GERMANY'S CROCODILE TEARS

"Ancient travellers have said that the crocodile sheds tears as it devours its victim, and so this monstrous reptile'stands in literaturo as a symbol of heartlessness and hypocrisy. Germany is shedding tears to-day, but her tears are crocodile tears and are fitted rather to move to indignation than to excite to sympathy. The predatory instincts of the crocodile have pos-. sessed Germany for generations, and she made the recent war in order to gorge herself once more with victims. The nations that Germany planned to despoil arc now her masters and her judges. In a Court of Justice the accused in the dock sometimes gives way to hysterics when sentence is pronounced, but the course of justice is not thereby arrested. The wailing of German politicians and the cursing of the old military autocracy must not' in' any way' arrest the enforcement of the peace terms. In the great Peace Congress, as in an ordinary Court of Justice, pleas for mitigation of sentence have a place, but crocodile tears and clamour, on the. part of the guilty arc only aggravations of tihe offence. Germany gloried in the diabolic doctrine ttyat might was right, and she now must learn that right is might. The peace terms imposed on Germany stand for the sacred principles of restitution and reparation, and German ' political and military clamour denounces them as robbery and murder!' This vocabulary of abuse may fitly be applied to the peace terms Germany forced on her victims in her successful aggressive wars, and it would fitly describe the peace terms Germany would have forced on Britain and her Allies had she been victorious in the war. The sentence passed on Germany for her criminality in this war is'merciful compared with the merciless peace terms she imposed on innocent nations she trapped into war. When France was at the feet of Germany in 1870, what peace terms did she have offered her ? The terms were without mercy and without, justice. Germany -resolved to bleed France white. . At every point Germany played_ the part 1 of Shylock, and tried to get the new frontier as far into France as possible. Of magnanimity to a beaten foe—and that beaten foe a victim of German trickery—Germany showed none in 1870 to France, and when she is brought to justice at last she fills 4he world with her wailing. The Germany, of 1870 was the Germany of 1914, but in the latler year more rapacious and possessed with a mad lust for world dominion. This rapacity and lust possessed not only the Kaiser and his Potsdam gang, but also the great, mass of the German people, who were willingly blinded and misled. The war aims of all classes of the German people were declared in Parliament, in the Press, and on the platform, and for rapacity and injustice stand almost alone in the history of predatory nations. The Kaiser on July 17, 1917, decla'red that the Entente must be made to pay all Germany's war costs, including the cost of German armaments, for the next forty years, amounting to . about £20,000,000,000," and the German newspapers endorsed such a claim. The money indemnity Germany is now asked to pay would only pay a small part of the war costs of the Allies. A money indemnity, however, was only a small part of Germany's ambition; She aimed at increased territory and wider dominion. Hekr Scheidemann, who is so fluently denouncing the peace terms of to-day, was a victim of this lust for territory and power. In the Kcichstag on April 0, 1916, this "leader of democracy" favoured the annexation of Belgium, and added: "Only a child in political things can persuade itself that when a whole continent stands in flames, when millions bleed and are destroyed, not a single frontier stone shall be removed because some decayed diplomat has placed it in position." It may be admitted that the Prussian military autocracy were specially guilty, in bringing about this war for predatory purposes; but the German people as a whole looked forward with glee to sharing the plunder of a successful war. There are documents of a most damning character proving this. In Mayj 1915, a petition from

the representatives of the commerce, agriculture, and industry of Germany was presented to the German Chancellor demanding that this war should bring colossal profit to Germany in the shape of..annexation of territory in Belgium' and France, a bigger colonial empire, domination in the East, confiscation of French coal and iron mines, and-an enormous war indemnity. The socalled "German Intellectuals" were even more rapacious in their war aims. University professors, politicians, educationists, clergymen, officials, etc., to the number of many hundreds, also petitioned the Chancellor to make the war a means of colossal profit to Germany. They demanded annexation in East and West and that the population of the concpiercd lands should be expelled. They declared for an indemnity that would pay their war costs, give pensions to war sufferers, make g'ood all losses, and improve armaments. Britain was singled out for special monetary punishment, and stress was laid on the point that- "philanthropic sentiment would he totally out of place" in the peace terms of a triumphant Germany. Such was Germany as a victorious peace maker. Her' peace terms in war were without justice and without mercy. Britain favours no peace vengea'nee, but justice must be meted out to a worldcriminal Power, and a. sea of crocodile, tears should not be allowed to obstruct the enforcement of reparation and restitution.