WHAT GERMANY IS BELIEVING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 46, 25 February 1915, Page 4

WHAT GERMANY IS BELIEVING.

In an interesting and closely-reason-ed article in "Land and Water," on] the present moral of Germany and: Austria, Mr Hilaire Belloc passes a few remarks about the state of mind of the German population, which might well be kept in view by tho reader who has persuaded himself that by this time the German people are in a slough of despond over the war, and that something like a revolution must be growing nearer daily (says a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald"). "The iirst thing we shalli note if we are wise," ho says, "is the profound conviction, held everywhere, from East Prussia to the Rhine, from Hamburg to Silesia, that Germany will emerge victorious from this struggle. And by the word 'victorious' is meant (in the mind of these civilians) the full objects for which' the war was forced hy. Prussia. The! average educated man—let alone the mass of the population which takes its cue from above—would tell you soberly to-day in Frankfurt or Cologne—nay, does tell those neutrals who are seeking information on this point, and who convey it to us—that Russia can no longer recover the offensive, that France is already sick of the' war, tliiat soon England will be the only objective of the German effort, and that peace, will be dictated in no very long space of time, not in ruthless terms, for that would be impos-, sible, but in just such terms as the! German civilian has always conceived that it would lie dictated; a slight modification of frontiers to. the advantage of Germany, German and Austrian economic preponderance over the Balkans and Constantinople, the maintenance of the present economic superiority of Germany over France (which may, after this heavy blow, be left to what Germans believe to be its-own rapid process of decay). The only doubtful point is England; and here that German civilian opinion, of which I speak would tell you that with England as the sole enemy Germany's task would be quickly accomplished. This point of view is, in our ears—and still more in the ears of the French—so grotesque that it seems to belong to another world from the real world in which we live . But when you are talking of your enemy's moral you cannot, at the risk of error, concern yourself with what he ought to believe; you must concern yourself with what he does believe—and that is what the civilian in Germany is believing to-day."