The Man of Granite

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 128, 20 August 1927, Page 24

The Man of Granite

Hindenburg, Fierce Old War-Dog Preserves the Peace for Germany . . . ■ HE outside world was filled with misgivings when Hindenburg was elected President of the German Republic, for, with his military record, concluding as Commander-in-Chief of the armies of Imperial Germany, it was feared that< it meant the return of the Junkers to the saddle of Germany. Now approaching the eightieth year of his age, Hindenburg may be judged by his two years’ occupancy of the presidential office. “Character has made him,” says a correspondent to the New York “Times.” “Character has served him better than shining armour, and a rattling sword served his master, William Hohenzollern, better than ambition and brains served his colleague in war, Erich Ludendorff.” There is about Hindenburg a grimness, a solidity, a ruggedness which make men instinctively trust him; now. after two years in the Presidency of Germany, they have added to it a fame in peace which history may rank higher than his military laurels. Hindenburg was elected, as the choice of the Junkers, by an overwhelming majority, and the militaristic die-hards crowed with delight and openly showed their conviction that the hour of vengeance against the victors in the war would soon strike. Throughout Germany, one seemed to hear the clank of arms and the thud of the goose-step. The Entente nations, particularly France, looked on warily, ready to strike at the first sign of trouble, and the peace of Europe seemed to hang by a precarious thread. But Hindenburg was staunch to his oath to govern for the good of his country. He kept the peace and he rescued the ’Fatherland from new perils. He was implored to make himself dictator—it could easily have been done —but he said to the Junker who bore the message, “You go right back and do your part in quieting your fellows in the Nationalist ranks and see that they don’t continue to make so much trouble for me.” That was the end of the dictatorship talk. The extremists among the Junkers cursed Hindenburg. They took down his picture from the walls of the beethalls; they called him traitor. But the old man went his way unshaken, his mind fixed on the oath he had sworn; and so it has been to this day. Hindenburg leads the simple life, and unless it is absolutely necessary he refuses to leave the presidential palace for meeting the demands of official etiquette and ceremony—these must come to him. Except on very particular occasions, he sticks close to No. 73 Wilhelmstrasse until he can get away to Gross-Schwulper, not far from Hanover, where he can play with his grandchildren and his dogs. Between six and seven every morning, the old man arises, breakfasts, and goes for a walk in the garden with

his dog before beginning the work of the day. The motto over his desk is “Ora et Labora” (Work and Pray). He does not retire until 11 p.m. The only time when Hindenburg will go out with some show of willingness is when there is a gathering of old military 1 cronies—a gathering of men, now grey and bowed, who were once dapper young officers together in some crack Prussian regiment. Then he gets into his soldier toggery and sits down among them amid the shouts of his old comrades and drinks glass after glass of beer, amid the freest and easiest sort of “shop talk.” The Germans call these functions “Gan Zwanglos,” entirely informal aud they are the only kind that the old war dog of the Wilhelmstrasse really likes. So the life of old Paul von Hindenburg goes along smoothly from day to day, in peace and calm and dignity. And every day that he adds to his tenure of the German Presidency imprints upon the consciousness of his fellow-citizens and of the world at large a clearer appreciation of his solid qualities.