The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1918 GERMAN HELPLESSNESS

Taihape Daily Times, 17 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1918 GERMAN HELPLESSNESS

(With wUich is incorporated The Tfti*

In sa cable message t'hat came to hand yesterday afternoon was embodied a rather startling announcement. It was expected that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph, would return to New Zealand about May of ncxtycar to take part in a session of Parliament commencing in June or July, end the National Muddle the country has been worrying through under, and arrange finally for a representative Parliament being elected in December. Now we learn that the Peace 'Conference is likly to develop into a body for governing Germany. We rather like the idea; New Zealand is not large enough to fully display the talents of its two leaders, but Germany aiud Austria will take some governing during the first ten years of finding money to pay the little bill of indemnities the Allies are about to present, and the special talents of our legislators in such an impasse would be given all opportunity their possessors could wish. While Sir Joseph practices his remarkable powers of getting the money out of the Huns j for indemnity bills Hie Premier can j keep them hoodwinked and hypnotisI ed with his “Square Deals,” “Settlement and still more Settlement,” and other turns for which he is eminently noted and in which he is unquestionably a pastmaster; our advice to the I Huns is “Hunc tu caveto.” The foregoing is the mind picture that came to view on reading the London Daily Teldfraph’s, Paris correspondent’s message stating “that because there is no sign of a permanent government in Germany it is likely that the Peace Conference will be extended, ' becoming a Council for the Govern- ! ment of Central Europe. The Allies j may occupy strategic points in Gerl many, possibly for twenty or thirty j years. Inasmuch as the North Ger--1 man Confederation is not permitted t during (that period maintain tin i army or navy, the burden of admini istration (will be .‘thrown on the ! Allies.” We arc in doubt as to whe,j ther this statement ought to be taken ! seriously, '.because headers lof Allied ' Governments have given unquestionj able indications of having their govI erning powers very much overtaxed in keeping revolution out of their • own domains. Mr. Massey and Sir I Joseph Ward have left no beds of roses behind in New ZieaDanJ for j Ministers to lie upon, but there is the advantage in governing Germany that there will be no general elections to face for the next twenty i or thirty years or, until the sclf-im-I posed government gets tired and j finds good reasons for assuming that | the Huns are once more endowed with | sufficient sanity to be trusted with 1 looking after their own business, j Whether they would, tolerate Mr j Massey as Kaiser and Sir Joseph J as his Chancellor is another matter j anyway both might have opportunities of learning from close contact some of the little schemes of the Bolshevism they have been unwittingly inviting in - this country during the past four years. The Bolsheviks have a rather peculiar and peremptory, but withal, effective manner in settling the land aggregation question; they just simply put a bulJ let or knife through the aggregator. There is neither time or money wasted in printing and passing anti-aggre- | gation laws that make aggregation easier and less susceptible to the operations of other Acts of Parliament; they just wipe it all out with one pull of the trigger and enter into I possession of the land aggregated. ! We arc averse to the “first pop, sudI den death,” methods being introi duccd into our governing schemes. | There mere reading of the experience 1 oH countries where Bolshevism . is rampant should be all-sufficing to compel New Zealanders to> 'bar the national door against the Bolshevik with his little fratricidal and homicidal tricks. Closer experience of Bolshevism in Germany may go some way towards warning our leaders of the danger and risks they unsuspectingly ran in their own country, for, of course, no one would suggest they did anything so stupid deliberately. What a mighty win for democracy the in-*-dicated situation discloses; who would have believed when conscription became law in this country that Mr. Massey might be a candidate for Kaiserism, or that the two leaders of politics in this little country had any designs on becoming members of a government oi Germany? Yet that is

what tho cable message published yesterday seems to convey. Tho Peace Conference likely to be extended, becoming the Government of Central Europe, and what a change from the Mittel Europa scheme for; the attainment of which the uncrowned, beaten, dethroned Kaiser 'precipitated the world in an orgy of blood. Viewing 1 the message referred to seriously, whether it has any foundation on solid fact or not, it holds an almost overpowering mass of terrible pangs | for Germany; it helps to disclose what a complete, absolute consummation the Allied victory and the (German defeat is; there is no qualifying aspect, look where one will; it is difficult to comprehend the thoroughness to -which the subjugating processes have been carried, a process - in which Germans may even have lost the right and power to govern themselves. The military caste left the German people nothing but a political and economic breakdown; the problem of political development is inseparable from the food question. Stocks of food, the subject of bluff before surrender, exist only on paper, and this fact emphasises the part played by tho British Navy’s blockade, it again gives proof to the statement that armies fight through their stomach, food is the most powerful and the most lasting weapon of war. Now r we know that the Central Powers lost the war* primarily for want of food to feed armies that were still availably The present Head of the German Government states that his Government must depend largely upon the political intelligence of the Allies, and to savq Germany from Bolshevism Germans would welcome an invasion by tho Allies, which would organise politics and increase the food supply. This is the condition to which the military lust for power has brought tho country of erstwhile 'supermen. 'lt is indeed difficult to withhold sympathy and help in such an unqualifiedly helpless case. No nation was more effectually subdued,, or rendered so powerless to help itself as Germany now is. Surrounded with the means to lalmost untold wealth, the German people are so bankrupt of mental and physical power to politically organise that they cannot commence to develop the mines of gold that exist around them. The 'national strength 'has been so sapped by the war that erstwhile political entity has become an inert, debilitated mass, unable to lift its head or reach out for the food that only needs taking from the ground. For sometime to come the conquerors must feed the conquered I and nurse back to potilical life the viper of 1914. No people ever forced upon themselves such, a terrible defeat.