BERLIN TO-DAY

Taranaki Daily News, 29 August 1917, Page 7

BERLIN TO-DAY

WAR WEARY BUT "STILL ALIVE." INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS. The following article 19 by Mr. F. Sefton Delracr, who left Berlin on May 23, and appeared in the London Times of June 22. He is an Australion, was a student at Berlin, and became English lecturer at the i;niversity there in 1901. Interned at Kuhleben from November, 1914, to March, 1015, he afterwards enjoyed unusual opportunities of observing developments in Berlin. Although the fact has never been publicly, proclaimed, everybody knows that a major of the General Stan" gsithers the newspaper editors together once a week and tells them what they are to talk about in their newspapers during the coming week and what attitude to adopt. On the whole, the German Press is a meek flock, and buas loud or soft, east or west, as the Military Press Bureau prescribes. The courage of even the most dauntless of the Berlin journalists, Maximilian Harden, oozes out at his. finger-tips when it comes to the point. I heard him one evening tell a crowded public meeting in the big 'Philharmonic Hall that he had been forbidden by the authorities to discuss the question of peace terms. With an heroic gesture—he has been an actor in his time—he protested, "Der Wunsch der Regierung ware mir aber kein Gebot" (I would not let tho wish of the Government stand in my way if I thought it was to Germany's advantage to disregard it.) The crowd applauded this unheard-of-independence of spirit, but at Harden's next meeting he cooed as soft as any dove, for his magazine, the Zukunft, had in the meantime been confiscated and he had promptly come to heel. From private sources I know that Harden is convinced not only that there need have been no European war had Germany not decided on it, that' England and France did their best to prevent the war, but, what is worse in his eyes, he thinks that Germany blundered into an unequal and therefore disastrous contest through departing from Bismarckian traditions of statesmanship . i Needless to My I attended such public meetings as the one at the Philharmonic Hall mentioned above entirely at my own risk. I vas supposed to remain in my home after 8 p.m. Three or four times, like a criminal drawn as by a magnet to the scene of his past crimes, I went out to liuhleben and walked through Spandau. I sometimes visited Kinemas, too, that wero showing war films, but the game was never worth the candle. These films love to show the Boehe as a philanthropist, Now he will be sharing his dinner with some orphans in the occupied territory, now standing with bowed head in some ruined church, and anon feeding a Belgian baby from .\ bottle. dust before I came away, however, the Mowe films were shown, and they were from many points of view well worth seeing. From a German standpoint they are undoubtedly a gross mistake, for, in their grim realism, they bring home to the beholder the wholetalc and wanton destruction of peaceful merchantmen and lead the imagination to conceive the unsptakable horrors of the U-boat war, horrors which the Germans, as a whole, have not yet .grasped. One sees on these films, which take exactly one hour to show, steamers and sailing ships brought up, one sees the torpedo strike the ship, and the noble vessel, as in agony, struggle, writhe, fill, and sink. The effect on the spectators was the very reverse of what the military authorities wished to produce. Far from being exhilarated, the public seemed depressed by the sight of what they felt to be cold-blooded murder of unarmed ships. "Schrecklich ! Schrecklich !" (Frightful !) they whisper, as if it is just beginning to dawn on them why that other more terrible and cowardly form of hostilities, the U-boat war, has made the German name so detested throughout the civilized world. HIDDEN CASUALTIES. In spite of all the Germans' twisting of facts, and all their skill in making lie worse appear the better reason, they really do not believe they are winning. None of them has, it is true, any idea of their actual losses in the field. Vague estimates are current. I take the one that is going the rounds as being most symptomatic. Among the officials at the Deutsche Bank a report was recentl) in circulation estimating Germany's losses alone at 1,300,000 men killed up to the end of March, 1917. A civilian in a high official position, who was present at the discussion, contradicted this, saying that he believed this estimate to be too low by at least half a million. But no official totals are published The long sheets of casualties are still pasted up on the polished granite of the Kriegsakßdemie (Staff College) in Berlin, but one no longer sees the groups of weeping women and eager searchers that were constantly standing there in the early stages of the war. The authorities now liave more expeditious private ways of informing the relatives. In spite of their doubts about victory and of their distrust of and resentment at the methods their own Government have adopted towards them, there is, as I said before, no sign that the Germans will yield till they are at their last gasp. I have, however, myself heard certain members of the Roman Catholic Centre Party in the Reichstag pay that they did not see how cither Germany or its enemies could possibly hold- out till Christmas. Any such discouraging statements when made by less privileged individuals than members ot Parliament are liable to be regarded aa treasonable, and a reward of £l5O is promised to anyone who can bring any propagator of such rumours to book. 'Poilce proclamations to this effect adorn the advertisement pillars in the streets. This public incitement to private denunciation has produced a reign of terror. "Ncbody is Baf: in' even the most confidential conversation," I heard a university student say. This new regulation has certainly had theeffect of muzzling conversation between all but the closest friends. Even their idol Hindenburg n jw como3 in for criticism. He lias the reputation of being a man who boasts of never having read any books except those written on military subjects, nor have I ever seen or heard of a single statement of his that betrayed anything more than a mediocre mind. Nevertheless, among the Reventlow party Hindenburg is still a fetish. Hindenburg or no Hindenburg, both soldiers and officers are heartily sick of the war in general and the Western front in particular, from wbith officer*

J are known regularly to head their I letter* home with the word* "Noch am Leben" (Still alive;. And that, I think, expresses the state of Germany regarded aa a whole. "In spite of everything, we're still alive '." HARVEST HOPES. At the present momon! every German Is anxiously asking himself, "Will pur food supplies hold out?" On this subject the Kuisor's Government has thought it wise to be franker with the people than it has been on military questions. "We can and must hold out," any the authorities; "but it will be a clo3o filing. Our bread supply is assured till August 15, and with luck and good management we can make ends meet (ill the new harvest comes to on.- relief." The Food Controller and bis colleagues realize, however, that they are walking on the edge of a precipice. They know that the economic margins are - 4 o narrowthat a false step to right or left may hurl them into the gulf. The question is whether the new harvest of 1917 will be punctual. No one now dares to hope that this harvest will be a good one. It may, indeed, ao many with good reason fear, turn out a disastrous failure. The extraordinary weather that prevailed thioughout Northern Germany during the critical months of March, April, and May has .been from the farmer's standpoint the worst thinkable. Not once, but a hundred times, I have heard people say, "It seems as if der lie-be Gott (God) Himself were against !" Tiling unheard of —a rainless Mav. hot as mid-summer, followed an ice-bound April. The state of the cornfields, even to my unagricultural eye, us we passed through the plains of the Mark of Brandenburg and of Mecklenburg in the train on May 23, confirmed my surmises. The farther west we got, towards the Dutch frontier, and within reach of the North Sea coastal rains, the better the crops looked, and Holland was a smiling garden. There is a temptation in such cases to lot the wish be father to the thought, but I can, 1 think, say with safety that tht coming hay and grain harvests in Germany will this year be exceptionally poor ones, and that the grain harvest will, in the whole of Northern Germany—of Southern Germany I cannot speak—be fully six weeks late. But may not a fat year in Rumania help out a lean year in Prussia? What Germany has to expect from Rumania's coming harvest nobody knows. There have been ominous complaints in the Reichstag that a great deal more might Lavo been done to ensure a good yield from the Rumanian cornfields this year. •The Germans made a great fuss about the alleged baxnfuls of wheat that fell mto their hands when they over-ran the country last autumn. But, aa 1 know for certain, it was a case of much cry and little wool. The Rumanian wheat sacks, dangled before the hungry eyes of the German industrial centres, never arrived. Whatever grain did, after much squabbling between Germany Austria, find its way into the Fatherland was at once grabbed by the i military, SOLDIERS FIRST. And here I must emphasize the fact that in every case where the interests of the civil and the military clash, tie civil 1 claims have on principle to give way. "Soldiers first I" is the iron motto. I ' have heard members of the Reichstag assert that if the worst comes to the \ worst the aged of both seves must be allowed to perish first, as their work for the State is over and done. In order not to be unfair, I will here admit that at present aged people receive [ a special allowance of lib of oatmeal ' per month. The people in the queues, however, are well aware of the ultra- ' Spartan measures in store for .them. A few weeks ago I heard an old woman whose application for milk on grounds of illness had been refused lament, "Now ' that I can't work any longer or bear any more children they regard me 13 a burden on the State. And that's what , they call Kultur !" ' Next in importance after the men in the fighting lint—when it is a question: of grading rations according to the 1 recipients' utility to the State—come the munition 'workers, and after thorn—a long way after them—como the troops in barracks, the troops doing mere garrison duty, and even the jnen conlined to the Hospitals. These last three categories all complain of the short commons on which they have to live compared with the relatively plentiful rations of the first two classes, and are continually writing home to their relations for extra food. They write in vain. Such Liebesgaben—soldiers' comforts—have ceased. For it is impossible for people who have not a crumb to spare to send away even the smallest portion of their awn meagre allowance. The ouly things they can now eend their soldiers are tpbaceo and spirits. I was talking to our baker the other day and asked him how his eon, a boy not- yet fs, was getting on. "Oh. he's been in tho hospital at Pinsk for the last three months with rheumatism, and glad to be tiiree, except that he hasn't enough to eat. Rut what can we send him ? We haven't enough even for ourselves. Es ist zuni raaend word en!'' (it's enough to drive ono 'erf.zy!) The well-paid munition workers excite the envy of the rest of the working classes. "These munition workers, who are getting handsome pay and all sorts of extra food, even, sausage and fat, ore the last who nave reason to strike," says the ordinary workman. Tbe munition workers' strike in Berlin in the middle of April was brought about by the proclamation of a smJler bread ticket. The strike had practically no political inspiration and was soon nipped in the bud.