NOSKE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 254, 22 July 1919, Page 6

NOSKE

LATEST GERMAN "STRONG MAN" (By Wythe Williams in the "Daily Mail.") The most difficult person to interview in Germany to-day is Gustav Noske, the surprising Socialist Minister of Defence, and the only strong man produced by the revolution. It is only Noske who has held the Government together, so that it -could at least go through tho form of sending the Brocjcdorff-Rantzau delegation to Versailles. Noske is -willing to talk. The trouble is getting into the street in which he lives. It is necessary to have a. porniit or an official escort to pass tho guards. This was finally arranged for me bv the ever-obliging Bemstorff, late of Washington. At tho time of my request Noske was at Libau, and upon his return he was occupied in getting troops off 'to the relief of Munich, b'|it even so an aide-de-camp called for me one afternoon, and we '.started for Bendlestrasse, a short sheet off the I'iergarten Park, where the destinies of the new German Army are now controlled. Barbed wire barricades were at both ends of the street, formerly a fashionable West End thoroughfare. All tho way along to the Ministerial mansion, arnied. helmeted guards were stationed every few yards. Hand grenades dangled at their belts. There also were ma-chine-guns at strategic points. The office of Nosko was on the third floor of the house, to which I ascended through a cordon of soldiery—the last of the lino, armed to the teeth, stationed iust outside the Minister's door. Noske kept us waiting ten minutes— the only time I was ever kept waiting in Germany. Then he swung open the door himself, and bade us enter and be seated, in tones that wero eo abrupt as to sound rude. t He is a tall man of about forty-five years. His'figure is "rangy," and loose-' lv knit. There is a decided stoop to his shoulders. If lie 6tood erect, he would be over six feet. His head is small, with closely cropped, bristly, black hair, only slightly grey. His eyes ! are small and very bright. His moustache is long and drooping, which adds to the general loose impression of his figure. His voice, as I nave intimated, is curt, clear, and snappy. He ia the one person they all talk about in Germany.- 1 had formed the opinion that he was decidedly a personality. with an imperious will—a man who knew what he wanted, and how to get it. There wero some doubts as' to both his honesty and his intelligence. After the interview I decided that he had lived up to all of my impressions, except that I had underrated his intelligence. He answered all my questions without hesitation. I didn't believe everything he'told me. Some of it did not, agree with what I had already learned. < When I asked him as to the size of his ontire army, he referred me to Mr. Lloyd George, stating that the British Premier had given only 80,000 men as the figure. He told me how unfair the Allies ivere to expect the German front to hold the Bolsheviki in Courland, whilo they refused aid in transport and otherwise. He prophesied correctly that his men would relievo Munich in a few days. He spoke feelingly about the trouble that he foresees, in the future—after Versailles. Then ho was called away. I . watched him drive off in nil Army motor-car, guarded as though he .were a Tsar. Tie has chosen for his military brain a, former aide-de-camp of Hindenburg, one Captain Pabst. than whom there is no more able soldier in Germany. Pabst is a type from which anything might be expected. A frail body, with a big head, a, mouth like a trap, and a -will that has whipped the new recruits into something like an army—at any rate, an army which makes one think even of the armv of the past, as they march down tho Linden in the morning.