POOR GERMANY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4718, 30 June 1924, Page 4

POOR GERMANY.

HOODWINKING THE WORLD. AN UNPRINCIPLED NATION. (Richard Uapell in the Daily Mail.) The Germans this lime have, as the phrase goes, fairly given themselves away. In the eyes of the whole world they have done it. For the whole world is represented, in these springtime weeks, in Italy's matchless scenes of ancient grandeur and timeless natural beauty. And this year, in the world’s eyes, the Germans have come back to Italy more numerous than cvei before the war. In their tens of thousands they are swarming over Italy. And the English and Americans, the French and the Italians, observe with varying degrees of astonishment how they flaunt their comfortable means—how glaringly opulent arc these representatives of an oppressed and ruined nation.

The Americans are the most surprised. They would not—they could not—have believed it without seeing it. The tale of Germany’s woes, which has been more or less discreetly murmured in England's ears, lias obviously been most effectively told in the United States. The American tourist usually lands at Palermo or Naplee, and with many. excursions and much thoroughness travels north. Everywhere he has seen Germans enjoying themselves in quite the most expensive way in this very far from inexpensive land.

He has heard endless .stories oi German privations. He has been assailed by innumerable German charitable organisations. He has subscribed to German cheches, to German university students’ funds, to make good the losses mi German orchestral musicians- undertakings, and so on. Here he finds, not a few, but a huge host of ' Germans —Germans everywhere, and apparently every bit as well-to-do as the Americans themselves. He leels he has been hoaxed. Ami there are a good many of the English who share the feeling. The topic cannot be avoided —in the trains, the steamboats, the hotels, wherevei chance acquaintances talk. In April all hotel rooms in Rome were engaged many weeks in advance. Milan ? The hotels, Weary of turn- ‘ ing the stranger away, hang up “Casa completa” (house full) at their doors, and you have to seek shelter at Varese or Como, an hour’s journey away. Venice'! So much German has not been heard there since the Austrians were turned out in 1866. Venice this spring has overflowed. The Lido summer hotels were hurriedly opened a month or more before their time (otherwise there would have been tourists simply sleeping in the station waiting-rooms). The gondoliers must have made little fortunes —for, whatever is said of him the post-war German tourist is not parcimonious. German manners have not improved since the war. In pushing for places in trains or steamboats he has no equal. The German tourist in Italy is nothing new. What is most strange and new is that so many persons of a nation" that has been loudly appealing to the world’s charity should be thus lightheartedl'y and lavishly expending wealth which we had all been assured did not. «sxist. No, this time the Germans have given themselves away.