HINDENBURG.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 239, 5 January 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

HINDENBURG.

AS THE HUNS SEE HIM. (By One of the "Daily Mail" EyeWitnesses.J, SOMEWHERE IX GERMANY. "Hindenburg! Hindenburg!" "N'ow you'll see a change'" It was the day on which Hindenburg was appointed, and Germany had gone mad with joy; or was it relief? With all their faith in the "Hanover Dug-out" and with all their pride in the "Saviour of East Prussia," there was mixed in this new access of Hindenburg worship a kind of childish relief. One could measure the depth of the expression before by the degree of relief afterwards. Yet it would be unwise to attempt to depreciate either Hindenburg's military talent or his personal influence. It is of the latter that I am most convinced, because I met and spoke with people who had como from his immediate entourage; 1 met soldiers who had fought as near him as it is given to German soldiers to fight, and I met also an officer, maimed for life, who had helped to win Hindenburg's victories. These people all carried with them the reflection of that extraordinary confidence and coolness • ; "h Hindenburg seems to inspire. It is personal magnetism of a high quality, and all the more remarkable because the man himself lacks (if I can trust my informants) any of that refinement of feature or cbarac-ter which usually accompanies a leally magnetic individual. He his will no doubt, but that is cftenest a c.uaMty consciously exercised. His influence on the staff ?nd bis men, or. all those who are in his neighbourhood, is, as I gathe-, *:ot consciously exercised. It is an effortless influence, and therefore in a captain all the more valuable Ard yet. because it is a personal magnetism, i lcorsciousy exercised, it appears not to be communicable. He can inspire his officers and his men, but he cannot send his officers to inspire the men in the West.

CONTRAST OF EAST AND WEST.

I would draw a distinction between the men I saw who had come some day*, since from the East and those I saw soon after they had left the Western trenches. But 1 must add that, whereas the men I saw not far from the Swiss frontier and only a few miles from the firing line over against Altkirch, had come hot-foot from those trenches to meet their wives and sweethearts, the Hindenburg men had been, of course, as much as four of five days on leave, and therefore, for aught f can tell, they may have had their ragged nerves soothed by the quiet of civilian Germany.

Yet the men from the West were undeniably exhausted. My first sight of them was at the little German s/tation *o \v|h,icli {passengers from Bale must cross on foot or by carriage, since there is no through connection. To this little place come all the men from the German trenches near the Porrentruy frontier of Switzerland. Some of them come for .a few hot.rs to greet their families here; others pass here on their way home. There were only two civilians at the station when 1 was there, and as I had three hours to wait I went over to the little hotel or Restauration and sat in a corner to watch. It was a stuffy little room, with beer-stained deal tables and an atmosphere of tobacco smoke, the air that is as typical of such places as the scent of stale beer-dregs is of an English wayside public-house. In the course of the three hours there came into the stuffy room some twenty soldiers direct from the front. They had come along the Swiss frontier, and some of them had been in the trenches next to the frontier. Others had been in so r ne recent skirmish near Altkirch, but all of them were utterly exhausted. A few wives came here to meet men on short leave, and one woman brought her child to greet his father. One does not watch too closely then. The rest —well, I will not say they stumbled into the room, bit they dragged themselves to chairs. They hardly resembled human beings any longer. They were more lik<j wild beasts, red-eyed, shapgy-maned, and one hideous deformity of filth They sat or lay on the floor, throwing down their equipment—but thev spoke no word. Their faces were brown with exposure but hagga r ' with long endurance, and in their eyes was no spark of the warrior spirit. And I wondered what such men as these will feel when surely the day comes at last that they must fall back from the trenches they have held so long, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. I have not willingly exaggerated the distinction that I saw and felt between the men from the East, where Hindenburg's spirit is prevalent, and those from the West, where the insane self-glory of the Crown Prince is so notorious.

THOSE WHO FEAR HINDEX BUKG.

And yet not even Hindenburg is without his critics. For if. as I admit, his name works miracles among the troops and among the ordinary population (I can speak at any rate for Saxony and the south), I found that in Berlin and to some extent also in Frankfort men of high standing shook their heads.

You must remember that one reason why Hindenburg is so popular with the "veering crowds" is that they believe him, as he believes himself, entirely independent of any but military considerations. People have suspected that England has been spared for this reason or that, reasons political, commercial, or financial. They have believed that the and submarines could "bring England to her knees," but that the Kaiser has been too much under the influence of Ballin and other financiers and business men and has been swayed by them to admit of some hesitancy in the use of "Germany's deadliest weapons-." I need not tell you that the old aristocracy, who before the war hated as they feared the Kaiser's new "aristocracy of commerce" (you remember how he said "Germany's diplomacy must become commercialise 1"), were the first to hint that the "Rallin crowd" were too much in the counsel of the Sovereign. Now in Saxony it was said to me of "Hndenburg, "He has nothing to do with that lot." And equally he knows nothing and cares nothing for colonial questions. He is a military

leader, possibly even a military genius; but he is neither statesman nor politician; a "gruff old soldier,'' as he calis himself, a man who, if legend tels the truth this once, is only nervous when he is not in the field; a Hotspur grown old and, it may be, a little wise, but yet a Hotspur and not to be pestered by any politician-popinjay. And this it is that in Berlin, as I found, makes sundry shake their heads- For they-iear that the German Government will never again dare to deny Hindenburg anything that he demands, even if the granting is political suicide. He mi_,ht and he may at some moment demand some measure at home or abroad that may shatter German finance, throw yet other enemies into the j scale against her, or (if another measure he is said to favour be really contemplated) let out of the German hand one of Germany's poor last trumps; and still neither Hollveg the Chancellor nor Another would dare refuse him, for if afterwards some scheme of his fell short, of fulfilment the wrath of Germany would turn on those who refused him his request. He is become, so some fear, the Dictator of Germany, greater than Kaiser or Parliament, and the future of the war and of the years after the war depends oi the wisdom of one man. "Hindenbt.ig! Hindenburg!' Thcv shr.uted his name in the streets and the theatres ami the cafes, in tho tjwns, ai: in the eountiy. Th« r.ame rang in n.y ears ui'i! I came to Berlin ami pat where contain who feel the pulse of the world's markets were in council together. But there of Hindenburg it is still.