A KRUPP'S MAN ON THE RAISES

Hokitika Guardian, 24 October 1918, Page 4

A KRUPP'S MAN ON THE RAISES

Dr .Muhloii before the war and during its early months was a director oi Erwpp’s, with a salary oi £20,000 a year. As such lie was in most of the German secrets, though lie had no sympathy whatever with the German policy. As soon as he possibly could lie got rid of his directorship at great personal sacrifice and retired to Switzerland, where lie has since been foremost in denouncing the war. A letter written by him to the German Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann iloilweg, in 1917, and a memorandum with important facts as to the German secret, council which met at Potsdam on July sth 1914, and decided on war, have already been published in English. This diary, which is now translated tor the first time, was kept by Dr Muhlon, according to bis own statements, during the earlier weeks of the war, atul is reprdneed without alteration, iho Gorman Government lias denounced him as a “neurasthenic,” but it has nol attemped to dispute the truth of his disclosures.

The main now points revealed by bis Ditirv are that the behaviour of the German troops was known in Germany lo lie had and that the Kaiser himself ordered no prisoners to be taken. ■•The German Emperor himself, in a harangue to a party of officers, declared in effect that lie now has prisoners enough, and hopes the officers will see that no more are taken. . . YVliat a sccpiel to the Kaiser’s own command in earlier days to the troops about to start on the Chinese expedition: “No quarter will bo given.’!” An officer told him that in Belgium, in August 1414: “Our soldiers have already taken to looting and pillaging to a very serious extent. . \ The soldiers have become brutalised. As they have incessantly fired upon the population and ravaged ever so many villages, they have pretty well lost all sense of proportion.” The Germans have usually excused their own atrocites by declaring that the Russians behaved just as badly in Hast Prussia in 1914. According to the Diary that is untrue. “The Commission of .Inquiry into the Russian Atrocities has come back without having arrived at any satisfactory results. Tt failed to authenticate a single one of the reported outrages. . . 'Pile Commission lias made known, (not publicly ,of course) that the general behaviour of the Russians lias been even less unscrupulous than was to have been expected from an invader. The people . . . frequently expressed themselves in terms of praise and gratitude when speaking to the Commission about the conduct of the Russians.”