Germany Lying By Pictures.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 May 1922, Page 4

Germany Lying By Pictures.

Ilv Ilothay Reynolds. BERLIN.* The advei lisemeiit of tin* exhibition hangs on the wall of my barber’s shop. It is a map of Germany bound round with black chains, whii h are fasi'ciied by a padlock, la! • tied “Plenty of Yersailbs.” IT lew ibis sinister map. which In- , hides all parts of tin* old Germany inhabited by people who do not want to be German, is an exhortation to go to a ball in (!.'.* Willielmstras ,e, riaivoiiieiit l\- near tin Ministries and Embassies, where tin* League for the Protection of German Kultur shows what the Peace Treaty means. I told Victor, a mild man with Dundieaiy Whiskers, who shaves better than anybody else in Berlin,, that f should go to tin; exhibition that very afternoon. lie deplored the idea. The exhibition. be thought, was meant for Germans and was hardly likely to interest foreigners. At flic enlrame a young man sold mo a pamphlet called “The Black Slmme,” which giv’es a terrible aecrmnl of the behaviour of the French

Colonial troops in the occupied distriots.

These stories did not impress me, because I bad already seen them refuted by German writers in one of the more' truthful German'papers.

When 1 entered, a personally conducted party was being taken round liv a melancholy man, who pointed to tin* diagrams arid, "pictures on the, walls which .showed that all the ills of Germany arc due to the Treaty of Versailles. He paused before a map. and pointed out the territory lost by Germany. He enlarged one the enormous benefits of Kultur to the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, and pointed out that judicious German methods had got more potatoes from an acre in Prussian Poland than had' ever been got from an aerf* in Russian Poland. “I believe the poor man really thought that Poles prefer potatoes to liberty. It was another case of failure tc i nder.-tand the psychology of another tuition. 'Tne guide pointed to the picture of a goodstrain, and explained that every ten minutes such a train takes ten tons of coal out of Germany into France. “Anil, not a word did lie say a’.oct ihe French coal-mines deliberately destroyed by the Germans.”

He paused before a picture with the words "Decrease of Meat' Production" at. the. top and below an immense ox and a fat p.igr. laliblled 191*3- and a thin ox and a. half-starved pig, labelled 1920. "The treaty” he said, with an air of resignation, “forces ut» to give the Allies 999,030 oxen, (MOOT) cows, horses, sheep, swine, and 1,750,000 chickens.’’ “Not one word did he say about the thieving of the Germans in France and .Belgium and Poland, and he did not think it worth while to mention that Pel-many wrm* has handed over anything like this number of animals and birds, and never will.” .Just from sheer spite, it would appear, the Allies bad extorted ships and railway engines and trucks from tlu-ir innocent German victims!

The personally conducted paidv looked grave and obviously felt that the Allies were common thieves and under the curse that falls oil those! who remove their neighbours’ landmarks. And as for me 1 felt that Victor had been wrong. “There was far more for a foreigner to learn at the exhibition than for any German.”