A PERVERSE PEOPLE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 37, 14 June 1915, Page 4

A PERVERSE PEOPLE.

i Intelligent Germans with wonderful perversity, even before this war of horrors, were Avont to express astonishment that the world did .lot love Germany, and frequently, in real or pretended ignorance, asked why this was so. A southern contemporary considers the, experience of Ellen Key, 1 a prominent Swedist feminist writer whose' works are particularly well known and esteemed' in Germany, makes it clear that it is tiute useless to expeet to do any good by a .swelling the intelligent German's question. Ellen Key refers her German friends to the treatment of idle people in the Danish districts of SchleSwig Holstein, where the oppressive conduct of the Prussian authorities is far more severe and illegal than anything the Finns have ever suffered. She cites also the Prussian methods

in Poland and in Alsace-Lorraine and concludes: "Those who, like me, love the Germanic spirit in the German people know that Germany's most dangerous enemy is not Moscow or Londari, but Potsdam." The reception} given in Germany to this candid and friendly criticism is quite characteristic. The Munich "Neueste Nach- ] riehten," for example, points out that Ellen Kay owes her position in the literary world to Germans, and de-. clares that as this is the manner in which she shows her gratitude Germans will know how to treat her books j in future. There can be only one end to such an avoidance of the truth.