GERMANY’S NEXT WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1698, 14 April 1917, Page 4

GERMANY’S NEXT WAR.

While the Kaiser and his Chancellor have been posing before the world as lovers of peace fiery German patriots are being assured that it does not really matter, as there need be no finality in the settlement, and another war may soon restore to Germany anything which she forfeits in the present one. That is the line taken by Walther Ratlmeau. It is also the line taken, with some minor deft'erences, by the official Socialist, Scheidemann. Kathenau is well known as the ingenious Jew who organised the famous Raw Material Department of the German War Office. He has put forward a proposal to establish, in the time of peace which he expects a complete organisation for breaking that peace successfully whenever a favourable opportunity presents itself. There must be, he maintains, a permanent War Economics Department, because Germany entered into the present war with economic preparations which the event proved to be inadequate. He lays it down as a maxim that “the future years of peace must be exclusively devoted to this preparation, on which our most intense efforts must be lavished.” Then lie goes into elaborate dtails of a scheme of intensive German preparation for war. Schiedemann takes different ground, but he indicates some of the conditions which Germany would only accept under pressure, and with the deliberate intention of plunging Europe into a fresh war in order to redress the balance in her favour. He says: “Do you suppose that the war would be really over if a peace, concluded in thoughtless haste, gave up Alsace and Lorraine? Social Democracy not only opposes annexa-tions on the part of Germany. It also opposes them on the part of the enemies of Germany, because fresh wars would be sure to arise out of every conquest. If on February Ist we signed a treaty giving up those provinces, then on February 2nd we should begin our preparations for another war in order to reconquer them.”