The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1918 TEUTONIC POLITICAL CHAOS

Taihape Daily Times, 21 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1918 TEUTONIC POLITICAL CHAOS

(With which is Incorporated The Tai« nape FMt t-nd WalEyarl-ao News).

The Kaiser promised German armies in 19H ‘that their mission against France* would be completed and that they would be in their homes again to spend the Christmas with their families. In 1S?18 the Kaiser is a refugee in a foreign land and the German I people have appealed for a proIdngation of an armistice granted to ’ ‘them early last month, which Marshall Foch has conceded and he has informed the German people that the Allies reserve the right to occupy Rhineland right up to the Dutch frontier, The government formed to organise tand establish a democracy to replace military autocracy has admitted failure and is retiring, and, between the various parties striving for power, the people would welcome any form of rule that is free from the bloodshcdding of war. There are strong evidences that the intense degree of cunning and corruption to which the Germans have been schooled will operate no less disastrously politically than it has done militarily. Campaigns of spying and lying, no longer possible in Entente countries, arc being practiced by German against German, with the result that the whole empire is being split up into factions which have already commenced internecine s'trugglps that are calculated to carry desolation and destruction to an extreme that only political ignorance and fanaticism is capable of. Instead of the greatest minds in organisation, industry and finance combining to find a stable government ive find them holding conclave of cunning, and deception, the remarkable aspect being the thoroughness with which they /seem .to deceive themselves while they fail to deceive anyone else. They have become so obsessed with the idea of indemnities that they are still, amid the ruins of the most complete defeat in history, busily at work assessing the damages and indemnities the Allies should allow them. It is almost unbelievable that Teutonic supermen could make themselves so ridiculous as to file claims for feeding Allied prisoners, for German businesses going into liquidation, for food, aeroplanes and war material Germans abandoned in France while in headlong flight from Allied armies. The fact is Germany is losing the substance that is attainnable by frankness and honesty and striving after the shadow that can only result from the scheming and corrupting processes in which the Teutonic mind prides itself. To such an extreme has the development of division and faction already gone that it is now doubtful whether scattered political elements can be got together to form a government that would hold together long enough to gather the drifting pieces and weld them together into one tangible whole. What is obvious, standing out above all the turmoil, corruption and tumultousness, is the one great fact that the Allies cannot and will not allow Germany to drift into a land of rabble. A war bill has been run up which has to be paid, and the Allies are-not going to allow their debtors to drift into bankruptcy. There are ample riches in Germany to pay that war bill and furnish sufficient means for rehabilitation of German industries if sanely garnered and employed. No dodgery, cunning and insincerity will prevent the Allies from taking possession of all avenues of income, or even of taking ia hand in governing the disrupted Germans if ' they do not soon develop the sanity to govern themselves. With the retirement of the Ebert Government might be expected a Bolshevik attempt to plunge Germany into an orgy comparable with that not yet finished in Russia, but it is scarcely conceivable that the Allies are not in sufficiently close touch with the Ebert Government for there to be some definite understanding between them. Ebert lacked the power to establish a government that could govern, but the Allies have, all along the Rhine from Switzerland to Holland, ample force to crush the internecine elements, the blood lustful power seekers and to set up ,a regime founded on justice that may yet be the saving of the German Empire against itself. Without this power of the Allies the indications arc that the people who set out to grasp world dominion and government of all peoples would emerge from their efforts with their

own political entity gone, tand if loft to themselves now they would soon be engaged in national suicide, practicing upon each other what they were stopped from practicing on the rest of the world. Ebert has failed and the momentous question now is what party is there that can succeed? Cable intelligence has furnished nothing towards throwing light upon the situation enabling people at this distance to even recognise anything worthy of the name of a party excepting those extremists under the leadership of Licbknccht, and as he is advocating precisely similar doctrines to those advocated and acted upon by Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, the Allies cannot afford to allow him scope for further development. There is nothing in the shape of sane—government visible in Germany, but there is as certain to be an influence established in Berlin that will control German destinies, if only temporarily, as that there is a Germany, and as no other power is in sight equal to the occasion, it is wfithin the immediate realm of possibilities that the Allies may find it essential in saving Germany from self-destruction to take temporary charge of the whole coiintry, reorganise industry, exercise a calming influence upon the people until chaos of thought is replaced by order, permitting self-government to become practicable and strong enough to again assume absolute control. The Utopia of militarism has passed away, but that of B'olshcvism is yet to be destroyed. The Allies cannot stand by and see the riches and political assets of Germany entirely wasted; Germans w r erc responsible for war tand they must be held responsible for the costs of it. If Germans are incapable of managing their business so as to enable them to pay their war debts the Allies will put a military bailiff in charge with such force at comipand as will ensure a rapid return to a regime of reason and commonscnsc. Kb corruption or camouflage will be permitted to block the way to the Allies securing payment of the oi'ls they present, and in forcing recognition of their demands they nil/ yet have to establish themselves in Berlin and take possession of ~ all avenues, of national income.