A PAN-GERMAN TRIUMPH

Hokitika Guardian, 8 February 1918, Page 3

A PAN-GERMAN TRIUMPH

HINDENBURG’S /TERMS IN

REICHSTAG

LONDON. Jan 26,

The announcement of Hindenburg’s terms in the • Reichstag hv Dr. von Hertling (Imperial Chancellor) is- one of the most dramatic incidents of the

war. Britain ha s immediately, and almost unanimously, repudiated the tone and terms as impossible. All the slumbering bitterness has been reawakened in France, whilst Wilson’s reply is expected to he dogmatic and ruthless. Hertling’s speech had a curious setting. Whilst the little spectacled, featureless Bavarian was mumbling the words put into his mouth by the Crown Council, the Crown Prince and Lnilendorff, turbulent passions were stirring outside, where workmen and halfstarved soldiers, their wives and others were moving restlessly with a baffled desire to get rid of the military domination.

ONE ARMITRAMENT ONLY. There is no expectation that the nobs will be able to shake the military leaders, hut the speech may he accepted as showing how ruthlessly the panGermans intend to exploit' the war, whilst curbing the populate with lies, bayonets, "and machine-guns. ,The world realised to-day that the only arbitrament between such divergent views is that of battle. British commentators scornfully reject Hertling’s statement that the question of annexations in Northern France concerns only Franco and Germany. whilst the absence of assurances of evacuation of Serbia, Montenegro, and* Roumanians regarded, with other passages in the speech, as meaning the collapse of the Reichstag’s no annexntione resolution. PAN-GERMANS WIN HANDS DOWN. The “Westminster Gazette” points out that the pan-Germans have won hands down on all concrete questions. Dr. Hertling give s no assurance about Belgium and a flat negative about Alsace and Lorraine, and the new doctrine. tliat the evacuation of the North .of France can only he discussed between France and Germany. All commentators throw suspicion on Czornin’s standard. He is tho suave and changeable to lead Us to forge! that the Governments in Vienna ann Berlin are “spiritual twins.” The Pall Mall Gazette” says that the “insolent supremacy of Germany’s sword remains unbroken. Hertling rc pudiates reparation, and endorses Tir pitz’s demand that England must stoj policing the seas. With tho policemai gone the submarines would find no oh struction, and Germany’s earthly para dise would arrive.”