THE MIND OF THE GERMAN SOLDIER.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 14, 19 February 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE MIND OF THE GERMAN SOLDIER.

AS REVEALED IN HIS DIARIES

COURAGE MANIFEST EVERYWHERE. The diary habit lies very heavy on tho German soldier. He seems to have an immense desire to chronicle h's doings, not so much in a spirit of egoism as for the sake of the historical sequence of events. The diaries, as a rule, are singularly honest. "The English, "writes an officer in of these confessionals, ''seem to find the range more quickly than we do. Their artillery is terrible, much more certain and efficient than any of us had thought." \on Billow was not more coldly and accurately critical in h:s book on "Imperial Germany" than these officers: He criticised things as they A naive and straightforward document was found recently on a colonel in one of the crack regiments. The explosion of a shell nearby seems to have stunned him. At any rate, he found himself one day quite alone with very little idea of the position of either oi his own forces or th»3 enemies'. Happily be wandered in the right direction and presently came upon another solitaij" German, weeping bitterly. The man was the servant of a prince whose identity is not more precisely indicated. Ihe prince, apparently against the advice or his trustv servant, had gone forward into the fighting and no one knew what had become of him. So the colonel and the servant went off to search. Alt " corroborative detail ' is omitted in the diary; but the two succeeded in finding the princo. who was slightly wounded, and in carrying him back to the trencne" 1 The succession of events is not very clear, but the colonel either now or before wandered off to find his own regiment. He was guided in the right direction, but as he approached he was seized by some members of an intervening company and hauled before the commanding officer as a spy, an English spy. " The Colonel in a crack regiment was seized as a spy!" he writes in a burst of indignation that occupies an nncon scionable space in the diary. He was carried from officer to officer till he reached the general,, who recognised him, and all was forgiven. The readiness to consider every straggler as a spy has, it appears, become chronic in the German army ever since the death of von Bulow, The story ot his death has been published, but not, I think, in full detail. It will be remembered that he cam© alone on to a field of battle of the day before, and as lv raised his field-glasses to survey the countrv he was shot with a Browning pistol 'by a Belgian who had been wounded in the arm and lay half stunned in the ambush of a pit dug for a mitrailleuse. . , Tho Belgian then took von Bulow s horse, out on his cloak and other accoutrements, and rode clean through the German lines, where he was saluted by all whom he passed. The horse was a thoroughbred; and as he cleared the lines he threw off the cloak and galloped hell for leather, to safety, before a scattered fusilade. The Germans are easily cheated once, but not twice. Hence the ind'gnitv to the colonel Most of us (writes W. Beach Thomas, in the "Daily Mail") have a picture of the German—or at any rate, the Prussian—as a man whose master bias is totowards war. Militarism is his gospel. Probablv Bismarck was right-he had a knack of being right—when he said that the German represented the male element among races. The elementally male qualities mark his mind; arid sense of kmc and science are undiluted by the intellectual emotions which may be desr scribed as female. But tho soldier diary shows a. far other mind than the soldier's deeds; a much loss mate mind, if one may say so. In many of these diaries the common refrain is no more complicated than this: ShaU I e\er see my darling any more? and a disgust of war is more frequent than a delight in war. .. , , . ~ Some of these soldiers show a highly instructed taste in many of the arts or peace. One prisoner recently presented his cantor with a charming little collection of old coins which ho earned about with him. One does not expect the sol-di-.u- to be a numismatist; but these coins, wh'eh are before me as I write, ,s 11 "est something even more unexpected" ban a taste for antiquity Ihey imply a peculiar interest in The oldest is a Roman coin with Neroi s superscription ; but most of the rest are British. One is a naval halfpenny of 1812. with the motto, "England expects everv man to do his duty " Another of the date 1795, has on the revense th* phrase, i; The wooden walls of: Old England " Another is a British Coven ry halfpenny" of 179:2. Why did the soldier carry them r And where did they conic from? ~1 i A number of the diaries have been collated and will some day throw no little licrht on the human mind of the soldiers whoso chiefs precipitated them into the Vallev of Johoshaphat. They will show how far the desire of the man who fights in the ranks is removed from the brutal and callous spirit 0 f the man who orders war and delights in the .prospect of its horror. We have had lamentable overwhelming evidence of the cult ot hatred in Germany, the deliberate instruction of the people through official lies in hatred of the Bnt:sh. But what difference docs it all make to the soldiei in the field. I know of a British soldier who was severely wounded simultaneously almost at the side of a German. Thev were left alone for several days, during which time they shared equnHy all that they had; and the German who was both the better supplied with food and the more lightly wounded, fanallj brought tho other to safety.

Two things stand like stone K'ndness in another s trouble, Courage in one's own.

The ground of France and Belgium is littered, indet-d. is fathoms deep in the fruits of courage. th e sacrifice of brave men. Courage is manifest evervwehre. Hut with it and about it go thoughts of kindness too: and from the midst ot war men's minds, even the minds ol tliex.l pure males, fall back from courage into mere kindness.