IF GERMANY WERE UNGAGGED.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 215, 6 October 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

IF GERMANY WERE UNGAGGED.

By FREDERICK M. WILE, in "Daily Mail."

KEEPING COUNTRY QUIET. MAXIMILIAN HARDEN'S REVELATIONS.

Maxmilian Harden seems to be about the one public man in Germany .at present capable of speaking the truth. In his journal, "Zukunft," he periodically reveals the attitude of mind towards the war of a daily increasing number of people in Germany, who are slowly awakening to the truth about the situation. His campaign .at present is directed at the removal of the gag imposed on the Press, so that the general public may be given a chance to voice their opinions on the conduct of a war which, after all, concerns them more than it does those who are bent 0:1 prosecuting it to the bitter end. Frederick William Wile, who was for some time the Berlin correspondent of the "D.aily Mail," makes the following interesting comment on a recent Harden pronouncement. The extracts given herewith are from the "Weekly Dispatch.

Maxmilian Harden, the German whom the Hun war gods bate almost as ferociously as they do "the toitemptiblo English"' themselves, is pouring high explosive home truths in. to the trenches of deception and bluster behind which the desperate Military Party is now taking refuge. On the eve of the great general Allied offensive the editor of the Govern-ment-defying Zukunft magazine, copy of which has just reached London, assailed' the spurred and helmeted bullies of Potsdam and Berlin in the boldest language yet uttered' en Germany sinco the war began. Harden, always the megaphone of the discontented influential classes of the country, cries for peace. He declares that if the nation were to be ungagged, peace would be possible to-day on an incalculably more favourable basis than it can eve* ba had later on. The significance of Harden's article (Those Who Are Underground—viz , the masses who dare not utter their war thoughts) l'es in the fact that to keep the country quiet, in the midst of the army's utter powerlessness to enforce victory, has become the Huns' princ pal military objective. No actual operations on any front compare to that all-governing and all-vital necessity. It has become more imperative than ever during the past thirty days. Three powerful elements of. the nation are not only thinking furiously but insisting on the r:ght to think out loud. They are the Social Democratic working classes, the great captains of industry and finance, and the still sane poli'tici/ins of the country. From all three of these radical-libera.l-raind,ed groups insistent cries lor relief from Gag Law are issuing in a crescendo hitherto unknown during the war. Now comes Maxmilian Harden, unt/Orrified mouthpiece of the pol ticians, men of affairs, and publicists, whose interlocking relations with the Government make it indelicate for them to do their own talking, and in his fettle 'brown-covered weekly spitfire for June 24, bombards the War Party muzzlers with shafts more formidable and daring than any living German has ever had the courage to hurl during the whole course of the war.

disunion are to vanish. With unselfish sacrifice, the intellectual and political loaders of the nation will devote thenall to tho interests of the Fatheriand. A wonder, in otlier words, is to come to pass. All we have to do is meekly to l>elicve that the miracle is in sight. 'Germany's destiny (say the Kapps) to lead humanity into a new and glorious epoch.' Anybody who thinks differently is anti-national, no longer be longs to the best circles. For my pai fc, I want to say that among the many real Germans with whom I have come in contact, in ail classes, during the war, there are only three who think ; s the Kapps think. And until August, 1914, these three never bothered their heads about politics! "The trouble with the Kapps is that they swallow whole everything ted them by the national Press. Hot sublimely gullible they are Kapp proves by repeating the legend that even before the- war England demand, ed the dismissal of von Tirpitz From the Admiralty. Never did any Briton outside of a madhouse ever set up such a demand. On tho contrary, as late as June, 1814, Mr. Churchill was filled with tho longing for a conference ; s K'el with the famous Grand Admiral. In everybody who wanted an honourable understanding with England, or even wants one now. the Kapp sang sees ether a fool or a knave. The kind of good will that inspires their breasts deprives their clamour and scribbling of any single idea that- a serious politician needs to consider.

"If you want, finally, to wake up," (says Harden, addressing the Ivanp coterie), "then rub your ey?s and read Bismarck and Frederick 111. Their wars had hardly any resemblance to ours. You want the country to believe that we Germans are a holy nation . f heroic, invincible angels, surrounded by murderers, thugs, an J vipers. You prcpagnte the fiction that, with the exception of our own allies, the world consists of tho brood of Hell and of sordid, mercenary vampir.es. Such a state of things has never been! Never was there such a pest' to humanity as your hallucinations have invented! Sever was there a superhuman victory such as you hope for. No nation would tolerate it. To none would it bring blessings on which it cou'd thrive. Only at tiie cost of its own disintegration coulcT one group overthrow another. " We Germans can be satisfied with the success of the war if it simply cleanses the earth of soil long diseased with the swamps of hate and envy, and if it convert once-poisonous terrains into a healthy work-place for fre>o hu - mans existing and creating by the':* own good right and inspired on that account by the determination to re spect the rights of those around them. A nation strugglfiig in perpetual terror for its very life will not find it ca>v to consder calmly what real values are. Woe to him who, 111 reckless :n----toxicntion, makes the struggle still harder! He is burdening himself with a responsibility beneath which, on tho day of reckoning, he will totter and collapse!

ATTACK ON WAR PARTY

Those Who Are Underground is a frontal attack 011 the War Party in the guise of an article purporting t, rebuke Horr Kapp, a Prussian Junket. who has recently been squabbling with Kothmann-Hollweg about Germany'* war aims. Kapp, a typical War Party hot-head, wants the Chancellor to como whole-hoggedly out into the open —declare war on America, send everything flying the Inion Jack to the bottom of the sea with submarine tor pedoes, regardless of International consequences; proclaim boldly that Ger many's war arms con template whole sale annexation of her vanquished en emies' territory; and thunder for all the world to hear that Germany is out to conquer, punish, and win at any price. Kapp admits that ""the foe has not yet been compelled to sue ofr peace but he is beaten." That is the point where Harden takes up the cudgel on behalf of Those Who Are Underground —i.e., the deluded nation whom tha War Party keeps hypnot sod in the belief that the foo 7s beaten, and that Germany has only to hold out to compel the foe to acknowledge his irnpo tence and bend the knee to the Prussian conqueror. ".Beaten?" asks Harden in his staccato style. "Is England beaten? .France? France which, since September, 1914, has maintained her mam position? Russia? May any German who does not care to practise self-d cept'on call even Russia, sifter her great successes '.n Armenia and Galicia. a defeated enemy. By the propagation of such superstitions national strength is lamed —strength which, 'ot both offence nnd resistance, we shall require for a very long time to come. What must still be proved the Kap;is .assume to be an already demonstrated truth. They call the submarine, for example, 'the decsive weapon.' The 111010 possibility that I" boats nught perhaps be of decisive importance is blandly asserted as an absolute certainty. " But nothing 111 all is said about the fact that in reaching the decision to curt-ad submarine warfare the three admirals called into conference as experts are n full agreement with the Chancellor." (This is a striking revelation. As fa ras "I know, it is the first inkling we have baa that the Service leaders of the Gorman Navy offieially confess the ineapae ty of the sub. marine to throttle Britain —F.W.W.) "To l sten to the Kapps. the German nation is headed towards Eden. Conclusion of petace (which is to be dictated to the British, Russians, French, Italians, Belgians, Americans, Australians, and Japanese) is to bo followed. they rant, by a nighty national development. Domestic hatred an!

A "CRAZY PFiANTOM.'* "Bowai'e of lull.'ng the nat'on win the crazy phantom your hungering souls have conjured up! Rather tea* the veil from the nation's eyes and let loose those who are giving their blood, and who will give their treasure, determine their fate in freedom! Don't quarrel about the sort of crook the shepherd ought to carry m order th? -ether to drive Ivs flork before him! Rather wean yourselves, and your wives and children, from the slothful habit of eternally remaining a flock c f dumb-driven cattle! iSethmann-Ho 1 !- weg told the Press the other day that ho would see that the Censor's axo was wielded as mildly as possible. Th 11:5 the shepherd attempts to soothe an J reassure —thus he seeks to satisfy with a barren promise that which he wr!l knows can never lie "beaten into a deed

" If every Censor was superior in intelligence and knowledge to every writer and was responsible, in the full glare of daylight, to the people, then we could believe in tiie reality of a mod'fication of the Censorship. The Kapps want freedom for themselves, but net for others who hold contrary views. They whine that if The latter are ungagged, Gorman prest'ge abroad will suffer. That is anotjjer hobgoblin, good enough to scare children with. "It is not what Schultz and 51 ever say about the conduct and object of the war which does us harm abroad. What hurts us in foreign estimation is only the pitiable figure we fiiave eut now daily for two years of a nation drven like sheep before tTie shepherd s crook. Right and left, the enemy is harking for a whisper of the German nation's will. J'»ut can hear it nowhere. If we could, we would he near to that peace which is to-day possible, and which only a miracle can 1111nrove."