GERMAN LINES OF DEFENCE

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 412, 24 September 1918, Page 1

GERMAN LINES OF DEFENCE

How They Got Their Names

(Written specially for the "Times") For the last two years we have heard a good deal about the so-called-impregnable lines of defence that Germany has fortified behind the Hindenburg line which the Allied troops are now threatening. The Wotan line is the one that has been most spoken about, but from time to time others have been mentioned, notably the Seigmund, the Seigfried, and the Parsifal lines, and recently the Hunding line his been mentioned in the cables.

It inay interest the readers of "The Times "to hear a little about the personages who have given their names to the defensive positions which Germany vainly hopes may hold back the invasion of the gallant English, French and American armies so alby led by the wise, prudent, patient and persistent Marshall Foch, whose genius for conducting gigantic operations is at length becoming patent to friends and foes alike. With the exception ofParsival, they are all characters in the most wonderful romance in the world's literature, the Volsunga Saga, a Scandinavian epic dating from about the time of the Norman conquest of England. In its original form purely a Norse story, it was later stolen by a German poet, and an altered but not improved version made, known as 'the Nibilungenlied,' or " The Bong of the Niblungs." In its new garb it appealed strongly to the imagination of the German nation, which adopted it as a national romance in the way that we have adopted our own Arthurian romances, though with this difference that they have no just claim to kinship with its heroes.

Briefly, the story is one common to the primitive literature of many lands, the belief of a saviour of more or less divine attributes to be born on earth of a human mother; and to regenerate mankind. Wotan (Odin) the supreme god, finding the universe drifting to destruction owing to the sinfulness of gods and men, comes on earth under the name of Volsung in the belief that from his union with a human woman the destined regenerator shall spring. To him are born a son and daughter, Sugimund and Seiglinde, the former of whom he fondly hopes will turn out the promised saviour. But he has reckoned without his furiously jealous wife, the goddess Fricka, who interfers with fatal effect. Seiglinde is stolen by Fricka's protege, Hunding who is later killed in fight by Seigmund. Fricka, who has bound Wotan by a solemn oath to avenge his death, insists upon Seigmund paying for it with his life, and Wotan sees with a heavy heart his dream of a reorganised universe vanish.

But there is yet a gleam of hope. Dead Seigmund's son, Sigurd in the elder saga, Seigfried in the later German version, grows into a hero without a peer. Untaught and unaided he performs most marvellous deeds, and Wotan's hope rise once more, for it seems as if his grandson, by the unfettered impulse of his own untutored inspiration, was destined to redeem the world. But fate decrees otherwise. Seigfreid fails, but it is a glorious failure, brought about by German treachery. He weds the sister of the Hunnish king, Gunther, and her other brother, Hagen, jealous of his fame and popularity, kills him by stabbing him in the back while he is stooping t» drink from a spring while out hunting.

Germany loves to pretend to believe that Wotan, Seigmund and Sigurd, or Seigfried, are her national heroes, but they are purely Norse in name as in characteristics, while Hunding and Hagen are as purely German. Popular as they have been for centuries they became infinitely more so when Richard Wagner wove their story into his wonderful trilogy of music-dramas, in which dramatic mubic has reached its highest and most intense form of expression.

Parsival alone now remains to be mentioned, but as he is wholly distinct from the Volsung* and their contemporaries he must be left for a future article.