The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1917. IS THERE HOPE FOR GERMANY?

Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1917. IS THERE HOPE FOR GERMANY?

The only hope for Germany is for her people to rise against their rulers and the military caste, as the Russians recently rose against the Romanoffs and the pro-German camarilla surrounding the Royal families. German infamy, calculated and systeniatised, has made the German nation as a whole stink in the nostrils of the whole civilised world, and there will be no desiro evinced by tha Allies to extend consideration to iny section of the degenerate apostles of Kultur, feeling that they are all infected by the same microbe, and for that reason, and for the future welfare of the world, they should be obliterated. An eminent American publicist not long ago observed that "the traditional belief of Prussia, that might alone is to be trusted, has been drunk in by every baby with its mother's milk." Then the schoolmaster takes a hand, and extols the value of material success and national supremacy, followed by the University professors, and supported by the Press and the pulpit. The whole of the education and training have been and still are directed by the' Government with the single view of securing for Germany the first place in the sun, regardless absolutely of the rights of others and the claims of eternal justice. Evidence of the means employed by the Teutons to utilise the Press to hoodwink the people was given in instructions to the 'Press that somehow came into the possession of the Allies. As cabled, these instructions declare that "expressions of opinion regarding the new warfare would encourage the enemy. The determined approval of the entire people must ring out from the Press." There must bo no reservation, no criticism; the papers must speak for one united people. "The newspapers are requested to assert that the German navy is firmly confident," proceeds the instructions. This would not be a difficult task for a docile Press that lias led the people to believe that the battle of Jutland was a glorious German victory, though the German navy scuttled back to port l , battered and damaged, minus many of its finest vessels, and ever since has been in hiding, waiting for the cowardly British squadrons to dare show their noses again in.Germanic waters! "The personnel of the enemy's mercantile marine has been weakened and its material used up," the instructions continue, and "you are requested to employ this psychological weapon with a view to spreading fear amongst enemy and neutral crews." It shows to what pass the Germans have reached that such instructions could ever be written, much less obeyed. The supermen have no sense of humor, or they would have realised long ago the utter absurdity of the "psychological weapon 1 ' of fear. Threats, acts of barbarism and obscenity do not frighten free-born, lib-

crty-loving people; they only strengthen the will to oppose and overwhelm the authors. But the Germans are possessed of the insane idea that force can achieve anything and everything. They have deified Force as represented by the State, and are quite unconscious of the enormity o£ their national wrong-doing in this war. The cause or the war, of course, was the Entente Powers. The German supermen say so, and that is sufficient for the German proletariat. One notorious Hun superman, a professor named Otto Gramzow, talks of France in those fantistie terms:—''France is a nation of madmen, of perverse cruelty—a nation abundantly deserving the doom which is clearly its fate. To feel sympathy with this people is for us Germans only a luxury which wo cannot permit Ourselves. It must be our duty to see that everything which the French still possess of strength bleeds to death before the throats of our cannon and machine guns." Of the English ruling classes and the English people, Professor Clramzow is good enough to say that ''behind the English nation lies a history of 700 years of crime. The old Norman pirate spirit has never permitted a rival. The ruling taste in England lives and struggles alono for its money-bags. Righteousness is unknown to it, and moral considerations it has thrown to the winds. Its people are versed in every wilo and knavish trick, and practically unexampled persistence and cruelty. If the power of these people is to remain they will never rest until they build up fresh coalitions against us. What hate and greed can do will bo done 'by thein." Such writings are not singular; they are typical of the state of mind of the leaders of German opinion. That is why there is little hope for the emancipation of the German masses, except as a result of the success of the Allied forces. A recent contributor to the London Times, who has spent a great deal of his time in Germany during the past two years, recently stated that the hungrier the average German is the more docile he becomes, and the writer is firmly of opinion that bad as the German's lot is that of the Britisher and Frenchman is worse, simply because the He has been 60 dinned into his ears by the Press and the national leaders. The German nation is on its way to perdition as quickly as it can go, and there is no saving it. One would think that the German leaders, now that they know their game is up, would endeavor at this, the eleventh hour, to make themselves right with humanity. but what do we see? Human devilry in the conquered territory from which they are flying in a form as repulsive and barbarous as the world in its worst days has never seen. Germany as a people and as a nation deserves to die, and there would be no lamentation on the .part of the rest of the world if it suffered that awful fate.