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THE FALL OF KAISERISM.

What will it cost to defeat the Hohenzollerns? An agent of the French Government in the United States said recently that the Allies could drive the Germans from France whenever they wished, but that to do so would cost a million French, British, and American lives. But that price is too high if all that is necessary is ito hold Germany as she is until the German people realise that it is their rulers who have brought all the miseries of a losing war upon them. In a- word, the world is paying a thousand lives for every day that the Hohenzollerns endnre. How long it must continue to pay that price depends upon internal conditions in Germany, and, in the general lack of authentic information, the comments mads by A. Curtis Koth have an unusual value. Mr Roth was American Vice-Consul at Plauen, in Saxony, and had an almost perfect opportunity to observe the trend of events. He writes in the' Slay issue of the 'World's Work/j. '"

But little concerning actual conditions among the German masses has been allowed to reach the outside world. Foreign correspondents are not encouraged to make independent observations off the beaten highways of military and naval effort and ..high politics, but are guarded from a true knowledge of the temper of the people with all the ingenuity of which German officialdom is capable. The German Press is held tightly in rein by the censors, and so its columns glow with inspired confidence. The smoldering, crowing, tortured discontent of the Empire has remained almost inarticulate. Thus, it is not ■ known outside of' Germany that: Liebknecht, one of the most f st | lte leaders that German Socialists ever had, basing. his judgment upon reports from lieutenants from all over the country held that the people were ripe for revolution early . last spring. The Liebknecht affair was reported as a local episode in lierlm. It was explained as an isolated effort at treason by a witless agitator. In reality it was a carefully considered attempt to give the war-weary people a chance to assert themselves. It failed because of Prussian discipline, ingrained within the very soul of the people. The sentiment for revolt was broadcast: the spirit was turgid, without initiative and without plan. Liebknecht based his decision for action upon a multitude of facts ' All through the Empire the people had expressed a spirit of revolt in bitter food riots. An unwonted seditious talk could be heard on every hand among the waeeearuers m the congested districts. The Socialist organisations were prepared to give fillet aid to any movement which should otter a' fair promise of success. JJissatisfaction was rife in the ranks of fcaxon armies. The wives of the small farmers, of ; the mechanics, of the laborers wanted peace on any conditions that would bring their husbands and sons back to them again. These conditions obtained last spring. A mass of pamphlets and loose leaves of the peace propaganda were cumulated from hand to hand among the people. Some of these were drawn tip m very daring, terms. A number of them came to my hand through a voune German Socialist who had besought thf Consulate to issue him a passport at the begmmng of the war upon his first Ameri caii papers I shall quote, from memory, horn one of these pamphlets. It was circulated in August and September, and I was able to inform myself, it made a- deen impression among the working people of my district. The paragraph, 44 I give below, m my judgment, conceals the fuse itotti^L ulfcimately &e the ""'™

in rfJS ™ g wctories *nd bleeding to death. We are devastating eve? more of cm- neighbors' lands and dyiiie of slow starvation. We are defvin- tnf angerof a world in arms and" fering rum m the face. Th e ph y sical of our people Js exhausting; the financial sm^l° f ? Ur natioU is ; ou r supplies of raw material are exhawtna • our. great organisations for the work "of peace are slowly disintegrating. We «nnot ™ PeaCe - If °" cannot procure us peace, what must we ine people by word of mouth. I have S' -witfc en ir es will »enr make peace with our Government." "What have the French and English against us? n R ht S in°^ K^t r a £ d . his Mend? the? are «P, S g u * The Kaiser and J"'s officers stand between us and peace» "LMfc S ° r °,T Kal ' Ser «" d J«»k-s tie "fc . W °?J d - make Peace -with us*

My wife is ill with hunger. Mr busied people are srmply dirt-Wir S£d°Kch It^L S ? rt -' o *, tal^' i6 - new in Germany, who T n m K th - e ° f a fl ' i€nd of mine 7or%nr *? was fire and'flame tor war.. Nor'is this man one of the laboring class Although bat a private in the--I.UIU, before, the war he was. a prosperous ace manufacturer, owning a number of Um"great automatic embroiderv machines and selling his product to England, the t-mtod JsUues, and Itussia. 4a°tb.er map .in the ranks ip\<k me thai

there were many in the Saxon regiments who would desert to the French and British lines were it not for their fear that they would be traded back when once the war is over ! It is true that the Saxons are Earticularly embittered, for their people ack home have borne the brunt of the suffering caused by food shortage. Moreover, both soldiers and officers have told me that the Saxon regiments have had more than their share of forlorn-hope attacks and of covering retreats. A Saxon major told me that the Saxon troops were given the place of honor so often because there were so many Socialists among them.. However this may be, I know that the, Plauen regiment has been wiped out six times, that there is hardly a family in my district not in mourning, and that the same terrible losses have been suffered by all the industrial districts of Saxony. Germany, within, is in ferment. The wonderful unity, of which I have read so much here, is apparent rather than real! Old dislikes between the Bavarian and the Prussian, between the Saxon and the Prussian, have been revived. The chasm between the rulers, tbe bureaucracyj the well-to-do, and the mass of the people has been widened and deepened. And a popular realisation of this chasm, synthesized in a menacing phrase that is rapidly spreading'among the'people : " Our rulers stand between us and peace," bodes ill for the monarchy and its favored servants; The mass of the people are 'beginning to feel themselves' a nation apart, "whose interests are not the interests of their leaders, but interests diametrically opposed to these. They only lack a leader and the courage of organisation. The second of these lacks is being remedied. Organisation is being striven for quietly by the use of the machinery of the Social Democratic party.

It is not universal suffrage that the people are yearning for, praying for, brooding over. It is .peace. It is sufficient food, it is the release of dear ones from', the trench-maws and' the ending of the crushing load of the agonies of war. And" they, will have this peace, whether a universal suffrage and a responsible Cabinet are given them or no, or their suffering will break its bends and break in a blind fury over the people that tho " enemy will not make a peace with." According to my observations, intimate-observations covering various parts of Germany, German officialdom is riding the whirlwind,- and its last desperate cards are the submarine 1 and a final mighty oifensive. ' According to Mr Both, President Wilson's distinction between the German Government and the German people is true in fact, and will have an enormous influence on public opinion within the Central Empires. For, in-spite of -the fact that no assertion of the Allies has been, so bitterly denied in the German Press as this one, yet he observed that it was a distinction that the German people- had: themselves been making in spite of the efforts of officials and censors in Berlin to make the people believe that the. Allies were seeking to destroy Germany. German officials would agree with Louis XIVThe Kaiser is Germany. The people are beginning to doubt it, says' Mr Both, and although the grey armies are as strong as ever tins growing resentment is weakening the Central Empires day by day. The unrest is wide-spread. Mr Roth continues :

The spirit of resentment among the people is not confined to any particular part of Germany. - It ramifies throughout the entire country, smouldering -wherever the poor are. It is held in check only by the best organised iron, regime of all history. It faces the same difficulties in the organisation and expression of its sentiment that were faced by similar hostilities directed against the great despotisms of the ancient world. It has no

Press. It. dare not organise out in the open. It may not discuss plans and grievances in public assemblies or in private gatherings. The censors, the police, the private detective, and an army bred and drilled to instant, unthinking • obedience still form a strangling curb npon the forces of this people's destiny. And while the iron regime holds the people to the task, which has become hateful to them, it cleverly spreads its own reports abroad in the', world. Thus it comes that not even the neutral correspondent has been able to make these sufferers .articulate. I have read wonderful reports to the effect that '"the same amount of bread and the same amount of butter oa the bread" baa been secured

to rich and poor alike by the marvellous German organisation, the inference being that a united people were bearing equally burdens thrust upon .them. The inference is false. It is true that the same amounts of bread and. butter, meat, and potatoes-aie alloted to rich and poor. But it is false utterly false, that the rich and the poor, the powerful and the humble, are enduring an equal suffering on behalf of the fatherland. .Prices have placed accustomed food and clothes beyond the reach of the wage-earners. Those rations if meat, of butter, of milk, and of eg"-, that they cannot find the; money throu■■l2. hours . ?> day of. drudgery wherewith J purchase'do not still the craving's o* th- - hunger nor build up waning strength. The well-to-do are not only able the full amounts of their food, fuel clothing allotments, but they are able to purchase also, in any desired quantitip*. truit,, conserves, venison, rabbits, samebirds, fish, and poultry. There remain to tlie wage-earners as their ration allotment and as; within reach of their scanty earn--'' mgs potatoes, -war bread, tui-riins salt and herring. '■-'.'. But.the inequality of suffering does not end at the table'and the wardrobe The mcontes of the wealthy, of the official, and of the well-to-do classes have increased flu ring the war, while the incomes of th" «reat mass of the people have shrunk sadly. . Many of tie families of the waeeeamers have come to be entirely*dependent upon the pensions, miserable pittances paid by the Government for the scant margin of existence. The women and children of such families undertake any rough work that comes to Baud,'" but are unable, after the most severe endea-vor, to, siistam themselves upon their earnings. I hey have, spent :their 'small savings in staving off the wolf, and now th 4 -■- torced to work early and late a'''""stand m line once a week for t>>e Gn<. : me P t b^ ole in order to escape star vat-: cm It has been said that two things *re required for a revolution-Hunger and an l<lea I here is hunger in Germany. The lot of the workers has become unendurable, and a strong leader might even now sweep them against the system tor their misery. There has been no lack W SP n ra fL 1C u P, risin g s in the past year, Dut all these have been vigorously sunpressed. The latest and also the most was the munitions strike in' Berlin,and Spandau, which is still smouldering. Here the workmen have won some small concessions. These riots, con tinues the article m 'The World's W-k are likely to be more serious than the reports from Germany. make out: lihere were a manner of small outburst- ' ot indignation in Munich last sprina and summer, minor disturbances easily quelle not in the early pai* of last autumn I newspapers, of ooutse,. made bardlv mention of these doubles. : The & u ; newspapere earned stories of a few iij telling that a group of unruly bove > caused considerable excitement by th'nnf missiles through shop windows and a police but that they were soon rwii V apmd placed in gaol. I learned' d.lai °* ft? 0 * Jater from a friend, ah ofiio". of the German secret police, who had b=ei present at the time. . ."'

The trouble started in, one of the ci'v poorer quarters, when a crowd of tho' oughly angry me n and women demcl s t . a dairy. Ihey then proceeded up t -u etreeo screaming for.food, for peace i".' Bavarian independence. The mob crev ' mimbera at every step, and its eWi grew m intensity with each addition to ; numbers. Soldiers on the streets hu.r e ' , got out of the neighborhood. The uo jeered at the uniforms, shrilled den u ri tions against Kaiser and leaders, ah. worked itself up to a raging fury of r sentment. For » time it seemed that th, mob would reach the better sections-of the ■ay, and break over them in a wave of pillage and destruction. Police reserves •were rapidly formed to oppose the r,Whing. The crowd and the reinforced polio--met at the open entrance of a square, there the_people fought one of themo-= determined battles yet attempted again ; internal law and order. After %ev : nil hours of embittered conflict t-i police got the upper hand, the. rioter* w : earned away to gaols and. hospitals a-* the crowds were dispersed. The Mura-i ■not, however served an earnest not coupon the authorities of that which mav well happen if the war should drag on anS a popular leader should appear. Central i/cirope might again experience the horrors of a peasants and mechanics' war, reminiscent of those days when the too *o'--l-opprest poor took to the depths of th% German forests and sallied forth xvhenev ■' occasion offered, on missions of murder and rapine, fighting -with scythes and 6 lun<~

The Idea—the idea that the interests ?£ an y are, not necessarily those of the Mohenzoherns—is becoming articulate. l<or a man acquainted with conaim Germany before the war, writes Mr Roth, the lO ba riot* are not the most »erious signs of disaffection. The neonle are banning to dare to abuse tie-St -And the latter- take no notice of thiWmajeste except to slink out of hearyaSp°SSible ' The. food riots are among the mo 3! striking- signs of the unrest of thv iv^vbut they are not among the m Wi ' " ' signs. I was in a small grocery stcv .. ; Afternoon when a- group of women te^an Mw e r ""Le fa*t that a pohceman in uniform was present Phis servant o* the Government made no arrest, but slunk out of the room «nd How far" must discontent have spread before such an episode w, re possible in Germany ! The women write t th f trench <* about theUtarvaWV t j" an ?f lT <* «* babies. And a, the spirit of suUenness is even seizin. the men in uniform. I have been lu? t judge of itsleffecte by many with common soldiers back on furlough."

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MIC19170720.2.6

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 20 July 1917, Page 1

Word count
Tapeke kupu
2,608

THE FALL OF KAISERISM. Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 20 July 1917, Page 1

THE FALL OF KAISERISM. Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 20 July 1917, Page 1

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