HORRORS OF HUNLAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 2 September 1918, Page 3

HORRORS OF HUNLAND.

; (o) BACKWASH OF FRIGHTFULNESS. Domestic schrecklichkelt is beginning to worry our dear German brothers, though why it should is a little puzzling. The gentle German having been taught to be frightful abroad, It is hardly surprising that force of L. it will assert itself when he gets ■home. That it is doing so is obvious from the "Berliner Tageblatt," whic;; is raising a verbal riot about the number of burglaries and robberies in Berlin, which, according to this authority, average more than 300 a day, and the paper alleges that most of them are committed by deserters from the army. The "8.Z.," as the Berliners affectionately call the "Berliner Zeitung am Mittag," a small but influential midday journal, is quite excited over an increase in >the number of policemen to the extent of 100. It says:

"We are going to be safer in Berlin. Military patrols will carry on* raids on the criminal elements and street lighting will be increased. Quite a hundred additional policemen will be.on duty in the streets at night. A hundred is indeed a very fine figure when it is a matter of eggs and sugar, but for the surveillance of Greater Berlin an increase of a hundred policemen is rather small. It is true that the entire police machinery is overburdened, but the only ccnsol. :

that can be drawn from this fact is that the military, must intervene on a large scale, as isolated patrols an quite inadequate. "The High Command, which appears to be very interested in the matter, will place every night at the disposal of the President of Police a certain number —and not too small u, number —of soldiers, thus obviating the necessity of a policeman having to patrol alone. Unfortunately things have now reached such a pass that an individual policeman is no longer sure of his own life. In any case, guerilla warfare in the streets of Berlin must be suppressed at all costs."

Farther up north the moral depravity of the Germans appears'to be sad indeed, and the indictment brought against the inhabitants of the' Fatherland by the "Kieler Zeitung" is truly alarming. According to this journal, which before the war was a staid, nor to say stodgy, organ, there is r ' hardly a person in Germany of high or low degree who does not deserve hanging to the nearest lamp-post. They are all rogues, thieves, anc murderers, steeped to the lips in crime of every sort. After a detailed and rather repulsive description of the prevalence in Germany of what the French call crimes passionelles, the "Kieler Zeitung" goes on to say:—

"Fraud, embezzlement, peculation, and deceit in all its forms, these unhappily arc the characteristics of German domestic life at the- present day. i'.i mi

"Whoever considers this an exaggerated statement should himself to the few decent, upright men who are left in Berlin or Hamburg, in the Rhine provinces, or Saxony, and who have bestowed^o'meattention on this painful situation. -The gravity of this state of a'ffairs"is further enhanced by the position held by the worst sinners. Among them we find State officials of every! degree, functionaries of the court and'; highlyplaced police officers—in fact the very class cf whose impeccability .jve. were once so proud.

"Our returning victorious Warriors will be confronted with a terrible disillusionment, and our children will Ices back on these years as a time of the rankest barbarism, of unchecked crim-

inality, and of utter absence of mor als

"How can an improvement be effected? Not by means of fresh penalties, for revolution must come from above—from those official and semiofficial circles in which the fine phrases about patriotism and sacrifice are nothing but wilful lies to disarm the victims whom they have already mark cd out for spoliation."

The suggestion of revolution—moral revolution/political revolution, so. cial revolution—is becoming increasmgly and significantly frequent in the German papers, and some cf the most distinguished men in Germany arc discussing possibilities quite frankly. For instance, JDr. Friedrich Naumann is always harping upon the subject in Ws paper, the Berlin "Hilfe." In a recent issue he wrote:—

"The number of those who are directly or indirectly concerned in a general upheaval is too great to be silenced by any repressive measures, and the war outlook is too grave for a recourse to temporary palliative measures seriously to affect the situation. No force of arms will prove capable of allaying the internal war spirit that has been aroused in our land. "The true safeguard against ,the waves of a general European revolution must be established within the sphere of a German Popular State, as distinct from one founded on Imperia!ism and force, the persistence of which can only end in utter disintegration,"