BLAST OF HATRED.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 October 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

BLAST OF HATRED.

GERMAN CHANCELLOR'S ORATORY. A MERCILESS SURGEON'S KNIFE. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg ha 3 apparently saved his political skin by his Hymn of Hate against England in the Reichstag last week, wrote Frederic William Wile, the Berlin correspondent of the London 'Daily Mail, on August 23rd. With the Annexationists and the generals in full cry at his heels, the Chancellor, with an adroitness for which few would have given him credit, harped on the most popular chord now to be struck in Germany—the ferocious animosity against Great Britain—and wltii its aid seems to have regained the directing baton. Early editions of the week-end newspapers acclaim his one-hour harangue as an immortal pronouncement. The Cologne Gazette compares its "furious -power" with Bismarck's famous "Wc-Germans-fear-God-and-noth-ing-else-m-thc-world" speech, delivered from the same forum a generation ago. The first sitting of tho present bnei Reichstag session was entirely devoted to Bethmann-Hollweg's speech, barring a brief introduction by "iPapa" Kacmpf, the octogenarian President of the Chamber, on whom the Kaiser has just heaped, at one blow, the Iron Cross, the title of Excellency, and the rank of a "Real Privy Councillor" (Wirklicher Geheimrat). Kaempf's honors are to be interpreted as rewards for the Reichstag's docile voting of war credits, £500,000,000 of which were unanimously approved at the end of the week.

Bethmann-Hollweg's oration, which the German press thinks has "now once and for all established England's responsibility for the war," was undoubtedly a stage-managed affair, arranged to bolster up his tottering political fortunes. The tumultuous reception accorded it by all parties in the Reichstag and by the public galleries, followed by the nocturnal demonstration in front of liis official residence, suggests that, for the moment at least, Bethmann-Hollweg has triumphed "over his adversaries. Tho following panegyric from the Cologne Gazette is typical of the gush which his speech is evoking:— "The crowded House left no doubt that it recognised in the Chancellor the man in whom the nation's confidence is more and more reposed. He spoke in the full uniform of a field general. It is true that once a greater man stood in the same place, in the boots of the Halberstadt Cuirassiers, but one felt instinctively, as the words fell from Beth-mann-Hollweg's lips in a crescendo of allannihilating force, that the .militant spirit of Bismarck was again hovering over Germany's national Assembly. The Chancellor's military aspect gave the keynote for his speech; in both attack and defence it was invincible, just as our field commanders are. Magnificent and irresistible were the sword-thrusts with which he decapitated the manyheaded hydra of slander. How deeply ho plunged his steel into the hateful network of lies! How little was left to say of the blood-guiltiness, the sevenfold hypocrisy, and unparalleled deceit of our foes when his merciless surgeon's knife had laid bare their unholy bones. "How he thundered 'in sir Edward Grey's ear the ciimax of this historic. speech—the relentless exposure of English statesmanship and its double-faeed-ness towards Germany's efforts in the direction of compromise and understanding. Let Bethmann-Hollweg's iron words resound in the ears of all our foes! Let those who have been warned beware!"