GERMANY DENIES GUILT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 702, 29 June 1929, Page 9

GERMANY DENIES GUILT

MANIFESTO TO NATION ISSUED BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT (Australian and X.Z. Press Association) BERLIN, Thursday. The President, Marshal von Hindenburg, and the members of the Cabinet, have signed the following manifesto to the German nation on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles: “Today is a day o£ mourning. Ten years have passed since the' German negotiators were compelled to sign a document that was bitterly disappointing to all friends of justice and genuine peace.

“The treaty has weighed heavily on all sections of the nation, upon its intellectual and economic life, upon the labours of the workmen and of the peasants. Intense -work and wholehearted unity have been necessary to prevent the effects of the treaty from threatening the existence of the Fatherland.

“Germany signed without acknowledging her war guilt, and we repudiate the charge that Germany was solely responsible for the war, in the firm trust that a true peace, based upon the unanimous conviction of free and equal nations, will prevail in the future/*

Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles runs: —The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign William 11. of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctify of treaties. Article 231 runs:—The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a con.sequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Minhinnick in a cinema adjoining the New Zealand