OMINOUS SIGNS OF DANGER IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5054, 5 June 1877, Page 3

OMINOUS SIGNS OF DANGER IN GERMANY.

(From the Spectator.) Just now a fever fit of zeal is sweeping over the military party : Europe is stirring; the nations are negotiating; Russia is threatening an old enemy; and every staff officer in Germany is suddenly aware of points where there is imperfection, of a necessity for more fortress, more captains, more men, and aboveall, more sub-officers. If certain combinations are made, and especially if there is a coalition against Germany, certain defences will be found wanting, and the contingent possibility of a weak place in military arrangements is to the German-governing mind as hateful as the possibility of a casus omissus is to some .English lawyers. Consequenty, according to the Berlin Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph —who at sill events knows what officials wish to have said—the Government intends to ask for new fortifications in Western Germany, in Eastern Germany, on the coast, and round the arsenals, for a large number of new officers, and for an increase to the effective reserves estimated at no less than 450 battalions, or speaking roughl ,at least 450,000 men. The immediate increase of expenditure, of which much must be permanent, if the increased force is to be kept up, will be £6,500,000, of which at least two-thirds must be supplied by the pro rata contributions from the federated Treasuries, many of which are at their wits' end to meet existing claims, while the strain on the population can only be estimated by the most experienced German experts. Upon the military necessity of this proposal we have, of course, no opinion to offer ; but it is open to any politician to doubt whether any combination rendering such exhaustive precautious necessary is fairly within those chances which alone statesmen are justified in taking into account Germany has noth-

iug to dread save a coalition of the three Empires, and in the absence of course of German aggression, to think out a cause for such a coalition which the Germans of Austria would deem sufficient, perplexes the very imagination. It is a mere political dream, yet it must be to meet some such danger that Prince Bismarck is running the risk first of a great Parliamentary defeat—which he may be able to prevent; secondly, of exciting the suspicions of all Europe—which ' <-■ •»-obably contemns ; and thirdly, of iudnci ■;, -•- -y.t reflective

and obstinate race in the v .11 ; ask whether the result is worth the terrible expenditure of happiness—which is, as we believe, the real danger We believe it more than possible that the German people, incessantly asked for more service in barracks, more drill, and more military irksomeness, more submissiveness, aud more money to be paid, without material return, may contract that invincible horror of a military system which is felt iu England and America, and may, by a spontaneous popular movement such as produced the Prussian army, refuse to endure it longer, and so bring the whole fabric to the ground The Germans are very brave and very obedient, but they are not a " one - legged people," and do not, any more than any other race, like the consequence of great self - sacrifice followed by victory to be increased unpleasantness of life. They will perform any duty ; but if they are ordered to sleep iu their helmets they will either disobey, or, what is much more probable, will be wearied out by want ot truly relieving rest Those who govern in Germany do not like resistance, however slight, to their military demauds, and those who are governed are very apt to conceal their exasperation until it lias risen to a height at which they are scarcely masters of themselves. If they came to the resolution that the military system was unbearable, they woidd not tinker it, but alter it with a thoroughness of which Prince Bismarck and the great staff officers would most certainly not approve It is in resistance to new taxation that popular discontent usually shows itself, and Prince Bismarck may say that resistance to new taxation is impossible, but he would be the first to allow that a Germany, in which he was collecting taxes and men by executive decrees, by arrest--, mid by incessant threats and urgings addre.sed to reluctant minor Governments, is not the Germany he seeks. He desires some willingness iu the people, some heartiness of aequiesence, even if lie is reluctant to trust them with control. 11 is that heartiness which, reasoning as outside observers, we suspect to be in danger under the hailstorm of demands produced by an overweening desire to make the machine more perfect than machine ever was yet, and more perfect than the work to be done absolutely requires. After a'l, a great Empire thoroughly organised is not like a Dutch dyke, in which a rat-hole iH as dangerous to safety as a yawning chasm. France will not attack Germany a week the later, or bo defeated a week the sooner, because another half-million of quiet German citizens, who might otherwise have been growing in strength, are ordered, as a wise precaution, to sleep for two years in armour.

(Berlin correspondent of the Daily Tdeyrapli.) [After summarising an oflicial " Denieschrift," or explanatory paper, attached to the draught of a scheme for very largely augmenting the number of skeleton battalions proposed to be added to the German standing army and to the Landwehr, the correspondent writes :]

Supposing the inferences not unnaturally to be drawn from the statements and figures contained in the Denkschrift to be correct, can and will the German people endure the fresh burden intended to be imposed upon them by the absolute or partial conversion of d 50,000

more Germans into more or less regular soldiers, bound by closer ties to the standing army than those which already connect every native-born German with the military system of the Knipire .' It seems to me that New Germany is on the horns of a dilemma. Sheis apprehensive of ruin and disruption as the results of overwhelming defeats, possibly to be sustained by her at some future time through the simultaneous hurling upon her of enormous forces by a coalition of her natural enemies ; but docs she not run an even greater risk of suffering that ruin and disruption at the hands of her own children, by demanding incessantly from them sacrifices infinitely greater than they can bear for any protracted period, thereby rendering their individual existences so wretched and hopeless that the achievement of German unity, and the preservation intact of the German Umpire, in saatla iKKitloriim, may cease to possess any interest or attraction for them—nay, in time, may even appear to them altogether uudesirable, hateful, and pernicious ? Germany's position is a terrible one ; no one who takes the trouble to look into it seriously can deny that ; but one cannot hell) asking oneself, " Is there no way out of her troubles, present and prospective, save an ever-growing, never-ending increment of war preparations, which must eventually ruin her as effectually as _ any imaginable foreign invasion, aud meanwhile embitters the lives "of her people to an extent of which few Englishmen can even form an approximate i notion '"

(Daily Tele'jmpk, March 12.) The best fortresses which Germany could erect iu Alsace and Lorraine would be the contentment aud gratitude of the French inhabitants there. The most triumphant war which Germany could wage against France would be to rival and outstrip her in the arts and manufactures, aud to prepare iu guarded peace for the social changes which time and events must work upon the body politic of both countries. If the plan of national armaments be found so dangerous, it is not the inventors of it who ought to complain. History will rather look to them to show the nations how to lay aside the cumbrous armour which was forged at Berlin. If the statesmanship of Germany meditates on nothing concealed, uothing dishonorable, nothing to which a moral and educated people cannot be asked openly to consent, then, we say plainly, there are no such acts or words done or spoken in France at this time as can warrant against that rash, but gallant and generous, land the diplomatic conspiracy said to be on foot. Should such a plot exist, there 'is time, we trust, for the German nation to disown any more unbecoming and cruel provocations, and for its leaders to withdraw from schemes fraught, as all immoral combinations are, with uuforseen disaster. Germany would share with llussia the disgrace—nay, it may be, the penalties—of any conjoint action which, under the mask of philanthropy in the East aud national safety iu the West, concealed the features of hungry ambition and of timorous malignity.