NEW LIGHT ON GERMAN TREACHERY.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1917, Page 2

NEW LIGHT ON GERMAN TREACHERY.

THE LIE OF AUGUST 3, MM

NO THOUGHT OF ANYTHING 'BUT, WAR. """

Mr. W. H. Wilson'Ha, the June "Nineteenth Century and-.After," gives the substance of a? remarkable and most mwork., recently piblistod in jjfaria, >'-Le Mtnsonge;;du !.Abu», >il»H"' (-The Lie of August fl< ;18il4)T. Ttos Ger* ; !imu Government -. still.. persist*'! in its ifilaim that the war wa s noti provoked .by ■it, 'but forced upon-it, alleging!thai ifl did. not act aggressively iuntiluEussi* mobilised, and that. ,'botft• IRuask: and France committed overt acts of' War 'before Germany .began hostilities;.-?* even declared war.-Dr. Miehaelfe- is'jusb as insistent upon this point as his predecessor, or as-the self-righteous ! <K«jiser himself. In a general way -we Allied peoples have always known that to .bo deliberate falsification of history on the part of the rulers of Germany, but there was so much confusion at the- time and there has been so much sinister clouding of evidence since, that complete proofs of German mendacity have not been available. Further' information tending to confirm the impression made by the diplomatic correspondence given to the world 'by Allied Governments has from time to time leaked out, but not nutil the- publication of this French book was the whole series of German falsehoods exposed and critically examined. With the help of much information supplied by the iFrench War Office from its archives, supplementing that containBd in the Allied diplomatic correspondence, the author of "Le Mensonge"Hells the story with a wealth of new facts, all carefully "documented," a3 the French say, with depositions, official papers, photographs, and so on. THE SECRET MOBILISATION.

TC is plain that when the Kaiser went off yachting to Norway on July 5 everything was in train,'huge supplie* of corn had been bought, a largo number of hospital beds and a quantity of hospi-' tal stores had been duly provided, and under the pretext of "exceptional grand manoeuvres," arrangements had been made for the concentration of 500,000 men close to the French frontier. The Kaiser's absence was obviously designed to throw the Entente off its guard and give the German staff an opportunity of stealthily mobilising the German Army. That, in fact, was what occurred. The published reports of the French Embassy in Berlin went to show that German secret mobilisation began on July 21. Among the new facts jiow brought out are:—(l) That on July 24 the colonels of German regiments at Metz gave their officers tho secret instructions—never divulged till the eve of war—as to the duty of the "covering force" on the outbreak of war; (2) That on July 25 railway stations throughout Germany were occupied by the military and the entraining of troops towards the Belgian frontier at once began; (3) That on July 27 German infantry commenced to lay barbed wire along the Frcnqh frontier, men on leave were ordered to rejoin, officers of the reserve at Antwerp were secretly instructed to depart at once for their regiments, and five classes of reservists, numbering in all about 1,050,000 men, were called" up, thus making, with the Army as maintained on a peace footing, "a, total of well over two million men (or more than double the force used for the attack on France in 1370), actually in process of mobilisation on this date; (4) That on July 23 troops in war uniform were pouring through Frankfurt, and reservists from neighboring countries were arriving in Germany, and that on July 29 the whole German ''covering force" was in position on the French frontier, thirty" military trains passed befcweon Metz and Treves, and another large category of reservists, the Ersatz (about 1,500,000 strong) received special notices,' by whit'h their mobilisation would be accomplished automatically on the issue of a proclamation. Thus by July 20 Germany had actually mobilised or was in process of mobilising 3,500,000 men. On the afternoon of that day the famous War Council met at Potsdam, and at Petrograd the German Ambassador informed the Russian Government of "the decision of his Government to mobilise if Russia did not stop her military preparations, which, unlike the greater preparations of Germany, had been publicly announced, and were, in fact, limited to the military districts affected by the Austrian mobilisation of eight army corps." THE LUST FOR WAR. ''"'

It had evidently been resolved at the Potsdam War Council to make a public proclamation next day of the German mobilisation on the pretext that Russia would not stop her preparations; but late that evening the Tsar replied to an effusive personal appeal from the Kaiser with a message which the German Government has persistently suppressed. It asked iwhy there was such a difference in tone between the Kaiser's telegram and tho Ambassador's threat, and ended -with an offer to submit the Austro-Ser.bian question to The Hague Tribunal. The Kaiser and his Chancellor, rejected the offer offhand, but they must, late that night, have decided to delay the mobilisation proclamation, probably -because'■ they feared Austria might break away. (Here again "Le Mensonge" throws new light on the course of events. It has always been known that soon after noon on July 30 tho Lokal Anzeiger published a special edition announcing the German mobilisation. , The edition was sotted, and at 2 p.m. iho German Foreign Oliice telephoned to the French and Russian embassies to say the news was false. It alleged that the 'paper had been printed in advance, "to be ready for, all eventualities," a very curious story in view of the tight hand the German C ' ' 7Bincnt keeps on its press. It now v «rs that four other Berlin newspaper* nlst) published the news at 1 p.m. oa that day. This simultaneous action of five newspapers can be explained only on one ,or other of the following hypAthoscl:— The 'publication occurred (1) because some person present at tho War Council had not been informed of the change of plan late at night; (2) or, having been informed, wished to force the Kaiser's hand; or because the German Government deliberately decided a lay a trap for (Russia and force her. to mobilise. Vienna also was informed of the mobilisation as "new s received by an Austrian correspondent from one of the Emperor's staff." Further, in the time assigned on July 31 to the issue of the Russian order of mobilisation the German Government deliberately falsified its own document for publication in Germany. The above do not by any means exhaust the taie of missing links which "Le Mensonge" supplied to complete the chain of evidence against the lying German Government, but they are enough to indicate the historical irnnartan.ee of the brak