THE GERMAN FUTURE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 156, 17 March 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE GERMAN FUTURE.

A TRAGIC PROSPECT. (By TWELLS BREX, in the " Daily Mail.") "The twentieth century belongs to Germans." —Pre-war German Proven-. When the German Emperor takes ™ few days' respite from the w 1 ■ councils on his battle fronts, when *he im perial train rumbles over a Gcmany that lias become a haunted 1 inct of silent factories, shuttered waro'iou maimed men, broken women, and fatherless children, does he ever lift a mental periscope and look into Germany's future? Whether he wins the war or loses the war, or whether the war ends in a stalemate, the Kaiser knows now that the pro- perity of his Empire has r. cited lik»» snow on the face of the desert. He knws now that the Germany that was built by his grandfather and his father has (rumbled as fortress walls have crumbled before his mortars. He knows that half the l'fe-blood of German virility has ebbed already on battlefield';. Ho knows that all the mighty commerce of Germany is a yesteryear's dieam. He knows that tho once boasted culture of Germany is so fouled that tl.e very word "culture" has changed its meaning and become a synonym for bestiality. He known, ruost of all, that the word "German" is a hissing and reproach throughout the world, and that Time will hr-ve to ply her sponge for a century beforo the German will again be unabhorred among other peoples.

These are black days for us peoples of the Allied nations, but it is no mean tonic to borrow the Kaiser's periscope and h)ok into this twentieth century that belongs so terribly to the Germans.

Tlu' Kaiser is not always surrounded by generals drunken with transient victory; he is not always surrounded by thai, camarilla of feverish decadents who a few years ago staggered Europe by their scandals of nameless vice; he is not always upborne by foaming PanGerman.-* who play on his megalomaniac ambition of the empery of Europe. There are other men in Germany who still have access to the Kaiser; the remnant of Germany's divines who have not yet abjured Christianity; the remnant of Germany's professors and philosophers who have not yet abjured reason; the remnant of Germany's business men who still cling to her foundering trade. Do none of these ever dare to hint to the "All-Highest" of the black dog that rjdes their minds? Don* Kaiser-.Jekyll himself never whisper in the night to KaiserHyde?

LOOKING FOR ONE GERMAN FUNXEI-. "The twentieth century Iteiongr; to the Germans." There is one Herr Ball:n who can come to his master with ligures at his linger-ends to show how well lounded was that proverb until August 1914. Ho can show him that in that fateful summer Germany ranked second among maritimo countries, with upwards of 2,000 large ocean-going steamers manned by 80,000 German saloni. He, can show him that (in 1012) the exports of German merchandise were 484 millions, her imports 07->J millions, and that the normal growth of those exports and imports promised in a few years to outpass the exports and imports oi her rival Great Britain. He can show t'-at, before the war, Germany supplied onequarter of the world's production of raw iron; that her chemical industry, employing a quarter of a million Germans, supplied four-fifths of the total requirements of all other industrial countries; that the furriers' turnover at Leipzig alone was over five million pounds, and that the principal market for that turnover was the United Kingdom. He can point out also that the whole trade of Germany had come to depend large'y on imports of raw mater'als, that the bulk of those imports have l*en entirely stopped, and all that trade is paralysed. And all the history of the world records that commerce like a man when paralysis han on; e stricken him : it can never whollv recover.

Horr Bal'in can hold up the periscope for bis imperial master and urge lrni to look throimli it over nil the seas of the world for one German funnel. He can bid bim look across the Atlantic and behold, vast even against the mammoth walls of New \ork. Germany's rusting sea-glory, the I.'Vathan Vaterland. catinir up a millionaire's income daily in the bare interest 011 her cost. Ha can then turn the periscope upon cobwebbed Hamburg and show his master, rank upon rank, bowsprit to storn, the fleet ot Cer many's commerce, wasting even more surely and ignoniiniously than that other German fleet at Kiel.

Does the German Emperor ever i.old privy converse with that tiphappy sinecurjst h's Colonial Minister Dr. Solf lias a sorry set of maps and statistics for the " All-Highest's" eye. Before lhe war the German colon.es had r» total area of over a million square miles. Hut Togoland has gone, German South-West Africa has gone, Germany in the Pacific hits gone, Kiaocliau lias gone, the Ciuneroons are going; German East Africa alone is lett, marooned until Germany's enemies have time to crush it. The Kaiser's Colonial Min'ster must surely sometimes suggest to him that this tv.ent T eth century that belongs to Germany will he like those maps of the nnc : ents that knew no geography outside Eu rone.

But the truly terrible thing that the Kaiser beiiolds through that periscope that peers over the wall of the future is not political, financial, or material. It is concerned not with dominion, (olonic=. or commerce: ;t will he unaltered hy victory or defeat. It 'f ].-v( hie ai.

WHAT GKRMANY HAS LOST. The twentieth century that helongs" to the Germans is to witness the Ion;; accompt of the Kaiser an<l his people with the Christianity they have spurned, the humanity they have outr a -re i. the coral reef oi civilisation have mined, and the common code of human conduit they have broken into There ere ni'Jit wat-he; already of the New Attila when he must sweat at the,.!: lit oi' the epithets that INtnrv, even a Thousand years alter this i ■ ntu; \ that " belongs to lrm, will barb he pen with when .-he writes his mini" Titer" is a wrii:ng which flame; no the m'dnight upon rv-tV wall or i ~],| (,■•!< n l ' ilie German l''oip"for, and i!:> words of 't are: "As lontr as men hev, and >'oniell have (onirr.es to till children of the throes that you I,i.t upon i he «vorld wdl von'- nam" 1,. 1 1.,. n.ii.t t '.ier-"d of 1 ' human ,i .. even! that of .1 udas " v., <--voh"v of 'he T\i'-er .. C,.-ri" . can "'I 'hat futu'"" V., '., .1 ii- : *'•••' "•*" V " ' j!i,- .(.-nv and s-cken. d yt of Mi,rope. H,i v many years w !1 i! ho

before decent men of this world will' knowingly sit ;it table with a German, before they will shake the spotted Gorman hand, or s,*ek travel lor either business or pleasure in the German land, or hold indeed, any ordinary human county with the Teuton? Will the Belgians with thiir memories ot Yise and Louvain? Will the Fieiic' —even after Rheints has repaiied he.' shattered holiness? W ill the Russians —with that picture ever red liefore their eyes of the massacres ami \ho flights of Poland? Shall we iirit;-:: with tne ghost of the Lusitanii il wailing her spectral siren? Germany may bived again her pep.:lation and outlive her tragedy of a Gorman ■of old men, women, a:i.' children. Ton by ton she may recapture her ol*d trade. Humbled and purged, she may even reset some little of that diadem of learning, philosophy, poetry, and song that she has trod into the kennel. But in the lifetime of no German living to-day will she recapture that only sweetness that makes the lives of nations, like the lives of individuals, endurable to themselves—the respect and friendship of their neighbours. That is the twentieth century that belongs to Germany.