LIFE IN BERLIN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 172, 25 March 1915, Page 7

LIFE IN BERLIN.

A NEUTRAL VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS OKiiUANY WILL BE BEATEN. (The London Times has received the following article from a well-known South American writer who lias just returned from a visit to .Berlin. It was written unmanly for the Soßh Ameri- • an Press. in which it will also up; ear. ■ but has a general interest as the latest impression of affairs in the German rami capital and the views of a competent and neutral observer on the outcome of the war.) Life in Berlin is not very agreeable, chiefly on account of the absence of news and the great difficulty which exists of communicating with the rest of the world. The foreign element has almost disappeared from Berlin hotels. The traffic of motor-cars in the streets has diminished, and the aristocratic Enter den Linden is little frequentecr. the avenues of the Tiergarton are similarly abandoned. At every turn one runs against people in mourning else soldiers who are wounded, isolated or in- groups of eight or ten accompanied by Red Cross nurses, who lake them for walks in the parks, etc. People in the city meanwhile frequent the cafes, theatres, etc., more or less as usual, but the dancing saloons have | been closed, dancing being prohibited. Anything French is taboo, and really Berlin deprived of the "chic Pansier) : ’ and the “English correct cut” is not an enchanting spectacle. Nowadays the foreigner in Benin hardly experiences a sense of absolute security; to talk a foreign tongue is to attract immediate attention. GERMANY BEING BLED 10 DEATH But if superficially life in Berlin goes on as usual one should not look only as far as this to sudge of the effect of the war on Berlin; t? do so won hr be to judge of a corpse by its apparent tranquility without taking into aeon;! the decomposition taking place below the surface. In the origin and source of all her power, her industries, her enormous foreign trade, Germany is being slowly bled to death! Banking transactions with the outside world are paralysed) and it is only on talking with business men that one can realise what Germany is losing, or judge of the enormous labour which the British Navy has accomplished for the benefit of the Allied cause. Germany is beginning to run short of many much-needed articles, among them copper, rubber, nitrate, etc., for which high prices ere offered; all motor tyres, for example, are now commandeered for Government use. BRITISH HATED, BUT FEARED. All this explains the great and evergrowing hatred for perfidious Albion which has reached such a pitch that the hatred against France tends to diminish and one now hears occasionally friendly allusions to a time in the- not far distant future when France will form a quadruple alliance with Germany, Austria and Turkey. Nevertheless, the hatred for things English does not extend as far as the pound sterling, sovereigns beiu|g in much demand at Marks 21.85, with a rising tendency. But with all the hatred there is no cue in Germany that doubts the incomparable and even heroic valour with which the French and English have fought, and the “contemptible little English Army” has been converted Into a black nightmare to torment the dreams of the Kaiser and his staff. Every {returned soldier, be he officer cr man, brings with him unbounded admiration for the elan of the French and the coolness and iron resistence of the English. A German officer confessed to me that to capture a French or English trench was most difficult. The construction of these trenches is such that they offer ppactically no mark for the great German guns; often said this officer, “we would reach the first line of trenches only to find the enemy had retired to a second line, from which he poured a withering hie upon cur men, who offered a splendid target; if England, at the stalrt of hostilities had been able to put a million men in the field we should before this have been fightinjg. on German soil.” INVASION OF ENGLAND. One sees little by little the wane of their belief in the infallibility of their army. To-day all their fury is directed across the North Sea, towards the country they fire sure of invading. I have listened to many plans for this invasion, but none worthy of serious repetition. No, unless the waters of the Channel behave like those of the Red Sea, England is as safe from German menaces as she is from the dog that bays the moon. It’s a long way to Tipperary, but longer still to Louden! It is not from one of the papers which translate the publications of the German W|ar Bulletin, nor from the newspapers themselves, that one can glean the true march of the war. The Berlin public is deprived of all news of German defeats, except such as it is impossible to hide, but the (greater part of the adversities—the failures and the horrible sufferings of the soldiers—are kept from the public. THE END OF KAISERDOM. During my stay in Germany I had many opportunities of seeing soldiers on the march, and to note the differ-

ence between them and the Allied I

troops; the German soldier lacks the ardent spirit which inflames the English or French troops who go to war cheerfully in defence of ail they hold most dear; but in the Gdrman soldier is the frigid and calculating soul of the Germanic race, and it pushes this mass of men towards something which they have been taught to believe since infancy as a biological necessity, fatal and inevitable. Soon, no doubt, they will have occasion to convince therasclvs of the error of their unhealthy doctrines. I return convinced that in spite of all her efforts, great though those be beyond all pomleration, Germany will be beaten, and if the wdr goes to a finish the military power of Kaiserdcm will be buried for the remainder of the century.