What is Wrong?

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 19, 23 January 1915, Page 5

What is Wrong?

GERMAN PUBLIC OPINION. A STARTLING CHANGE. SEARCHING QUESTIONS FOR THE KAISER. “What is wrong? Something must be wrong. What is it ?” According to a distinguished neutral who has just come from Germany, where he has been travelling for the last three weeks, these are the words on hears from millions of German lips, writes a Daily Express” correspondent in Amsterdam.

My informant, writes this oorrespon. dent, is a Rumanian citizen, and a prominent Bukharest business man. I have known him for years as a man of judgment and moderation, and his revelations as to the state of public opinion in Germany after more than one hundred days of war are therefore of quite exceptional interest and importance. “You must not believe,” he said to me. “that sixty-five million Germans have become mad or simply idiotic on account of this war. A good many of them have retained their intelligence and their clear judgment. And to these people, in spite of all the Wolff “victories,’ a few things are quite obvious. Let us sum them up:— “After one hundred days’ war: 1. Germany has not beaten France nor occupied Paris. ® 2. Germany has not beaten Russia nor occupied Warsaw or Petro. grad. 3. Germany has not beaten England nor occupied London. 4. Germapy has not even occupied the whole of Belgium. “Now, these are facts, and even the Wolff Bureau has had to face them. KAISER’S BOAST. “The German people were told by the Kaiser himself, and then by all their newspapers, even including the Socialist organs, that Germany would have an easy task, and that everything would be settled —war, peace, (and indemnity—before Christmas. On August 5 the Kaiser, opening the session of the Reichstag, said, hi his farewell to. the members of the House

“ ‘Now, Gentlemen, we are going to whip them!’ (‘Jetzt wollen wir sie dreschen’).

“Nothing of that kind has happened ; the German armies have not only been beaten back, stopped, and more than decimated, but they have established a record of barbarity and crime which is probably without an equal in history. What is it that is wrong? TEARS AND MOURNING. “Large cities like Magedeburg, Dresden, and many others are absolutely shrouded in silence and darkness after 8 p.m.;. there are no signs of amusement, not even of life. In fact, there are tears evrywhere. Though the Pan-Germans had boisterously declared it to be ‘improper’ to mourn for relatives and friends who had fallen on the field of honor, the hundreds of thousands of widows this war has already made in Germany cannot help themselves. They must cry and wear crape, even if the Reventlows and the Bernhardis think it contrary to their ethics of patriotism. “People when they are .no longer terrorised by the threat of being shot or crushed under the jackboot will ask questions. SHATTERED PLANS. “They will then ask why the Kaiser personally ordered the invasion of Belgium,. why the Kaiser refused to give advice of moderation in Vienna, why war was declared on France, ! why the revolt in the Trsjnsvaal was financied by Berlin banks, and many more questions not less searching, interesting, or instructive.

“The German people will Also have a, right to ask why, in spite of the tremendous financial sacrifices they made for their fleet, this fleet was unable either to fcce that of Great Britain or at least to keep open the commercial roads leading to Hamburg and Bremen; why the German Army had no competent generals and was entrusted either to retired officers not in touch with the modern methods of warfare or to princes who thought more of making merry in French and Belgian castles than to seeing to the comforts—not to speak of the victorious advance—of their men.

“They will ask why so many changes have taken place of late among the heads of the general staff, and why General von Moltke, who is responsible for Germany’s shattered plan of campaign, is reported ‘ill’ ; and, finally, why the German air fleet, which was said to be, like everything German, the strongest in the world, has done nothing in this war except throw bombs on undefended cities instead of trying to keep British aviators from the Zeppelin sheds of Dusselworf and Friedrichshafen, and from the Kaiser’s private headquarters near Thielt.

“It may safely be said to-day that I now that more than one hundred days I have elapsed since the first shots were fired, and Germany has not won the war, she has really lost it. She has not only lost heavily in men, but far more in universal regard; she has lost immensely in trade, and little, if anything, is left of her colonial empire.”