GERMANY'S CHOICE

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 125, 29 May 1919, Page 6

GERMANY'S CHOICE

Germany's week of mourning has failed to soften the hard hearts of the non-Gorman world, and its nerves havo proved equally impervious to the display of her.determination to die in the.last ditch rather than stand any nonsense from the Powers which have the audacity to-presume ;that she is beaten. Tho indignation has certainly been much better staged than the mourning. She does the fury with a better grace than the repentance, and she also does it "more natural." Germany, is, of course, sick at heart, but her heart is .not otherwise changed. Insofar as she has responded at all to the happy official' idea of a week of mourning, it has been by a change of garment and not by a change of heart. The sackcloth . which Germany has donned, pursuant to the orders of the Government, has.not displaced or concealed the garment of cursing' which is obviously a truer expression of popular feeling. And the cursing, unlike that of Job, has no element of contrition about it; its not-e is that of almost unalloyed defla-nce-4a defiance which is fully aware that it is unable to make its brave words good,- but attempts no disguise of what it will do if and when it gets the chance. Of the. mourning which makes for mending, of the penitent spirit which recognises that an essential part of repentance is the resolve not to do it again, there is hardly a trace. That appeal of injured innocence which was to have 'tempered with mercy the stem degree of justice has (Only sufficed to reveal an impenitent criminal who cannot even for a week sustain the intended role. There are limits even to the German genius for organisation and camouflage.

Tho week of mourning and the three weeks of indignation have fortunately served to reveal the impotence of. Germany as clearly as her impenitence,' and not merely her impotence but.her consciousness of it. ' An absolutely united nation would, we were at first told, reject the proposed terms with scorn, and dare the enemies of Germany to do their worst. Before we had been given time to be duly scared by this terrible prospect, the announcement was made by. those who knew all about it that acceptance of the Treaty would result in the overthrow of the . Scheidemann Government by the Pan-Germans, while its rejection would expose them to a similar fate at the hands of the Revolutionaries. It is the former of these two dangers which has figured the more conspicuously in our cabled reports. The crowds at Hamburg have been raging as. furiously against President Wilson and the American Mission as .they raged four years ago against the British Navy, and .with equal effect. The Provincial Council of East Prussia-has appealed to President Wilson against " brutal plundering," though it was not moved to make a similar appeal by the colossal rapacity of the Brest Litovsk Treaty, in comparison with whicli the most drastic of the terms now proposed may be said to carry magnanimity to the verge of weakness. But the Eastern Prussian Council is as powerless as the Hamburg mob to affect the position, and is equally barren of any practicable alternative to the terms proposed or any possible scheme of resist-

After her transports of woe and of indignation it now looks as though Germany is preparing to face the inevitable without taking the desperate course of making things far worse for herself 'in the hope that the Allies may be scared by the increased responsibilities and clangors which they would have to face themselves. After official and unofficial clamour has done its . worst, moderate opinion is beginning, to assert itself. Manufacturers are said to be anxious to get to work again, and the masses have no desire for a tightening of the blockade. Herr Befnjtoin, who is one of the most reasonable, of the advanced Socialists, and was a genuinely good friend of Britain before the war, admits that "the majority of the Allied demands are reasonable," and that Germany must pay for the plunders and the ravages whicli she has committed. With a sense of humour which .is rare in Germany at the best of times, and is particularly creditable under existing conditions, Baron Richthoven ridicules " the relapse into aggressive patriotism aud flag-wav-ing," and justifies the amuaomont of

Paris over "the pathetic and indignant protests emanating from men who previously wtnted to annex territories without consulting the inhabitants." SI. Clemsnceau's reply to Count Bantzau is ruthless in its logic and uncompromising in its tone, and the tone may be, expected to have more effect upon the enemy than the logic. Power is^rhe argument to which the German Govern* mont and people agreed to assign an unqualified supremacy before the war. Tho bearing of that argument now is too clear for the proudest or the dullest of them to ignore.