RACK TO GERMANY

Hokitika Guardian, 11 January 1921, Page 1

RACK TO GERMANY

THE ISOLATION OF THE GERMAN MIND. By G. Valentine Williams, Formerly Correspondent of Reuter s Agency in Berlin. BERLIN. It is nearly sevmi and a half years since I was last in Berlin. The city which in 1913 I left spick-and-span, prosperous and purse-proud, its poor, like its vices decorously hidden away, is to-day hut a shabby shadow of its former self, and abandoned to an open orgy of iniquity which must surely he unique among the capitals of Europe. But the German mind does not seem to have altered. Neither the holocaust of dead nor the crash of thrones has shaken Gernianv out of her self-conceit.

Albeit sadly puzzl’d to account for the utter breakdown of tho entire German system, in his outlook on life the German of 1920 is to most intents and purposes the German of 1913. In a world which to British eyes is strangely changed by five years of world war, Die mental isolation of the German is absolute. To talk to him makes you feel that, the German of to-day is the loneliest creature on God’s earth. Yet with heavy deliberation he is communing with himself to ascertain the causes of his defeat. But he is not examining liis conscience.

Professor Steinaeh’s rejuvenation experiments, Einstein’s theory of light, Maynard Keynes and Norman Angeil on the Versailles Pence—both hooks in German translations and prominently displayed—treaties on Spiritualism. Atheism free love, and the like- works of this description stand side by side with a mass of frankly pornographic literature. Here with you find reasoned explanations for the past, complicated schemes for the future, hut nothin'.' practical to deal with the problems of the present. And. above all, no contri tion for Germany’s crime against mankind. •& * * * * The German surveyed the world from liis castle of militarism. Now that it has collapsed lie is left floundering in a sea of doubts and fears. The German.' with whom I have spoken expect us to hold them guiltless of the past because, they say, they have rid Geimany of hoi military caste'.

They have, it is tnn>, expelled tin Ijloody-niimlcd blunderers surrounding Unit, eminent nonentity William flu l Sepwid-niter because they tailed to keep I heir promise to establish German world-dominion. Hot the fipiman people is governed liy the herd instinct, find the expulsion of the Old Gang in the eiiTinn.stanee.s of military defeat and home panic in which the HohejizolJerfis were sent away requires weightier evidence of a change of heart than is forthcoming in Germany to-day if it is to he accepted as a proof of the death pf German militarism, Talk to a Frenchman of any class, and yon will, sooner or later, come upon a well-hanked hut fiercely smouldering Republican ardour, 'f’alk to a German about his Government and you will find, at the host, lukewarm interest; at the worst, resentful ridicule towards the German Republic.

. !)tg average attitude is one of blank indifference. The German man in the street never thought lor himself. Lie does not do so to-day. The question ol the future js—What party will emerge from the present chaps to do his thinking for him ? The Germans are perfectly willing to forgive us for the war. They talk glibly about “this unhappy war’’ with the ait of a man making perfunctory excuses for some social lapse. Ju some may be detected in addition a little air of condescension in speaking of the late unpleasantness as though to draw attention to their magnanimity in accepting the war as an inevitable catastrophe, “an act of God,” as the insurance policies say. And even to-day I tind tb the great majority of Germans have no idea of flip abhorrence in which the very name of German is held in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in France and Belgium,