Emden Dilemma

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 684, 8 June 1929, Page 9

Emden Dilemma

CAPTAIN C. E. W. BEAN’S VIEW

Honourable Reception Due SAYS GERMAN ARMY FOUGHT CLEAN (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Received 9.15 a.m. SYDNEY, Today. “IF the Emden were to come to Australia, it would be my 1 hope that she be honourably received,” says Captain C. S. W. Bean, official war historian of Australia, discussing' the dilemma of the civic authorities in Auckland over the visit of the German warship.

“We were pretty suspicious of the German officers at Gallipoli, but I know that throughout that struggle the German Army fought a clean campaign. Many a time when our men were taken prisoner by the Turks, German officers stepped in and saved them from savagery.” Captain Bean recalled an unrecorded incident during the recent tour of the battlefields, when he noticed a man in mufti wearing several decorations, including the Iron Cross, place wreaths on the Anzac Memorial at Lone Pine and Hellss, both of which bore fitting inscriptions from the German Navy. The reported brutalities of the German armies, Captain Bean points out, were vastly overestimated, and have caused much post-war prejudice. Captain Bean, it will be recalled, was in 1914 elected by the Australian Journalists’ Association to fill the position, which was suggested by the British Government, of official war correspondent for the Commonwealth. He sailed with the headquarters staff of the First Australian Division in

October. 1914, and was with it at Mena Camp and at Anzac from the landing on Gallipoli until the evacuation. After leaving Gallipoli he was attached to the headquarters of the First Anzac Corps, and later to the Australian Corps throughout the fighting in France. On his return to Australia in 1919 he was commissioned by the Commonwealth Government to edit the Official History of Australia in the War.