TEN MONTHS IN GERMANY.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 January 1917, Page 4

TEN MONTHS IN GERMANY.

l Submarine Motives.

(By D. Thomas Curtin.)

Mr D. Thomas Curtin, who has been for tea mouths a “Daily Mail ” eye-witness in Germany, deals in this article with submarines and ruthlessness

Investigation of naval, military, and Zeppelin matters by a ne tral is, beyond question, the most difficult task that can be imposed on anyone who goes into Germany seeking the truth. The situation, however, is slightly helped by the national loquacity of the people both by voice and pen. Almost every German soldier keeps a diary in which he bleats forth an exaggerated account of his sufferings, but that German writing habit is very misleading to Anglo-Saxons. You have been publishing gloomy letters from German soldiers for over two years in your newspapers, and yet you find that the Gormans come up—l will not say smiling, because they are soldiers' who do not do very much smiling nowadays. Certainly they still anprwr in Jnrge and very often qtiiie .-umbers. The people it* general, and the women u» particular, talk even more freely than they write: For the purpose of picking up submarine information I visited Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Stettin, and Danzig, which last was not very useful. Hamburg, Lubeck and Bremen, plus Berlin, and an occasional railway and steamer companion, yielded sufficient to enable me to give a broad outline sketch of the system of building German submarines, the training of submarine officers and men, the beginning of the new mercantile marine, and the objects of the various submarine policies, of which there are several. Some of these projects seem not to be understood here. Tha German submarines are standardised, as, 1 presume, are yours. The draughts and blue prints of the moat important machinery are multiplied aud sent, if necessary, to twenty different factories, while ail the minor stampings are produced at one or other main factory. The ‘‘assembling”

ot the submarines, therefore, is not diffioult. Daring the war submarine parts have been assembled at Trieste, Zeebrugge, Kiel, BremerhaveD, Stettin, and half a dozen other places unnecessary to relate. The improvement, enlargement, and simplification of the submarine have progressed with great rapidity, DOUBLE OR TREBLE CREWS When I was in England after my last visit to Germany l met a number of sea folk who pooh-poohed extensive future submarining by saying that, no matter bow many submarines the Germans might be able to produce, the training of submarine officers and crew was such a difficult task that the “submarine menaoe,” as it was then called in England, need not be taken too seriously. The difficulty is not so great. German submarine officers and men are trained by the simple process of doable or treble banking of the crews of submarines on more or less active service. 1 think that if I were to talk with your Daval authorities I should find in several submarines you have captured exceptionally large crews. These double or treble craws who rarely go far away from German waters and are mostly trained in the safe Baltic are composed of young but experienced seamen. From that which I heard directly from tte members of a family who have a distinguished submarine offioer of their number tbe whole of the art or science of submarining is not so difficult as people think it is. Submarine orews are therefore multiplied probably a great deal faster than war destroyers. Tbe education of submarine offioers and crews begins in thorough German fashion on land or in docks, in dummy or disguised submarines accompanied by much lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not so uncomfortable as we think. With the exception of deprivation of bis beer, which is not allowed in submarines, or indeed any form of alcohol except a small quantity of brandy, which is kept under tbe captain’s lock and key. Hans in hia submarine is quite as comfortable as Johann in his destroyer. He does not get much opportunity of bathing, which does not trouble him much, though during the last few years the Army and N.*vy have paid more attention to personal cleanliness than formerly. NO SHORTAGE IN THE NAVY. I know the kind of extra comforts

that are forwarded to submarine men because I was the witness of tbe pecking of Liebesgaben (love parcels) which consisted of gramophone lecords (moßtly Viennese waltzes), chocolate, sausages* smoked eels, margarine, cigaia, cigarettes and tobacco, a sma'l and treasured quantity of real coffee, jam, marmalade an s sugar. All these, I was proudly told, were extras. There was no shortage in the German Navy. I learned nothing of value about the largest German submarines except that everybody in Germany knew they were being built, and by tbe time the gossip of them reached Berlin the impression there was that they were at least as large at Atlantic liners. Now ft 3to the German submarine policies. I read a report the other day in “ The Times ” by the chairman of the Ericsson Shipping Company, Ltd., of Newcastle-on-Tyne. He apparently understands that part of the German submarine policy which is part and parcel of the future German passenger and freight steamer policy. On this head I picked up very valuable information at Blankene3o, a delightful resort of the Ilamburghers. The boat trip there forms a convenient opportunity for findnig ou about part of the colossal passenger aud freight shipbuilding programme now in progress in Germany, such as is going on at the Vulkan Works at Hamburg and the Schichau and Vulkan Works at Stettin and the various works at Lubeck. The enthusiastic passengers in the boat for Blankenese completely forgot the constantly-printed injunction :

Soldaten ! Vorsioht Bei Gespraechen. Spionengefahr, (Soldiers, caution in conversation, beware of spies.) and as most Hamburg people know something about ships they “ handed out the goods,” as we say in the United States, with loquacious liberality. The German habit of boasting enabled me to gain more information. Lying in the river there ire the Cap Polonio, which has been finished since the war, and which I was told was 20,000 tons, and the Cap Finisterre, also finished since the war, about 16,000 tons. The whole of the extensive yards lining the river are in full activity. The rattle of the pneumatic riveter was as incessant as in any newly-building American city. The two million prisoners, working 12 and 14 hours a day, allow the Germans to retain men in their shipyards who would otherwise be needed for the army or agriculture. I do not know whether English prisoners are engaged in the shipbuilding yards j the Russians certainly are. I saw English prisoners in hats on the banks of the Weser between Bremen and Bremerhaven, near the shipbuilding yards there, though whether they are actually engaged in tbe shipbuilding yards I cannot say.

Throughout the whole of my long visit I made one rale—that was never to ask a question in a dangerous atmosphere. On that particular excursion I had no opportunity of putting questions safely.

The National Liberal Party, of which Tizpitz is the god, are at the head of the vast, gradually solidifying mammoth Trust, which embsaces Krupps, the mines, shipbuilding yards, and the manufactures. Now and then a little of its growth leaks out. The other day there leaked out the linking up of Krupps with the new shipbuilding. The scheme is brutally simple, and is going oa under your eyes every day. These people believe that by building ships themselves and destroying all enemy and neutral shipping they will be the world’s shipping masters at the termination of the war. To their attitude towards Norwegian shipping you will notice that they make tbe flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a member of that party and by no means an unimportant one that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sinking them. That I do not believe, but that a great part of her effort is devoted to the construction of mercantile vessels can be ascertained by eveaa casual traveller in. tbe districts I have named. The suggestion that tha Allies may demand the ships interned in New York Harbor and elsewhere as part of their indemnity fills the average German with genuine alarm. But the National Liberals, who are, of course, the Frightfulaess Party—the party that believes in ruthless ill-treatment of prisoners, Zeppelins, submarines, the scattering of poison germs and poisoned sweets, and all the rest of it—exhibit no fear, for they are confident that they can win tha war if the Kaiser will permit ruthless subarine warfare.