The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1919. GERMANY IN REVOLT.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1919, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1919. GERMANY IN REVOLT.

A year ago Mi. Lloyd George war warning the Empire of the severe trials ahead. Germany was then transferring her legions from the Eastern front, and preparing the great blow that was to smash the Allies' line, divide the British and Allies' forces, and roll them up, and then to dictate the terms of peace. There was to be no peace conference. The arranging of the terms was a matter strictly for the Gene:™ 1 as were the terms at Break''' 'J sk. Subsequent events proviueu only too well justification for the British Premier's warning ann fear.?. To-day' the gceue is changed. one

of the most powerful and the most ! united Empires the world has seen, lies prostrate, almost helpless; her rulers are fugitives and her people are fighting bitterly among themselves. There is ho example in history of so sudden and so complete a collapse. The nation that set out to conquer the world and was prepared to wreck civilisation to that end, is to-day in the throes of internal revolution. The German plans miscarried, and now they are recoiling upon their framers. The General Staff brought about the disintegration of Russia by organising the Bolshevik movement, which succeeded beyond expectations. To-day the Bolsheviks—or the Spartacusians, as Dr. Liebkneclit has christened them—are fighting hard in Berlin and making themselves felt all over Germany. "We made a Russian revolution," said Trotsky, "with German .money, and we will make a German revolution with Russian money." German curses are coming home to roost. The plotters have succeeded in bringing into their own country anarchy and violence of a character and extent the cables from day to day bear witness. For forty odd years Germany set herself the task of eliminating personal liberty and building up a highly-disciplined and organised State. The individual [was but a unit in the great national machine, to which everything was subordinated. That was all right when the machine was working smoothly and achieving its purpose. But, thanks to jthe genius of Foch and the tenacity and bravery of the Allies, the machinery was put out of joint beyond possibility of repair. The result is that the German unit, despite his training and discipline, is at a loose end and at the mercy of the extreme elements striving after power. "The industry of the German," said Buehan, the war historian, recently, "is beaver-like, ant-like, incredible, like the slavery of some laborious animal. . . .

The truth is that human energy is limited, and if too much thought is given to minor things, no vitality will be left for the great things. We see the same weakness in many other activities of the modern German mind—immense erudition which beats ineffectual wings, and achieves little that is lasting in scholarship; a meticulousness in business organisation which terribly frightens the nervous British merchant, and yet, somehow, does not do much." Another glance into German psychology may be taken from Buchan. The Tueton is usually looked upon as a stolid, unemotional, and unshakable type, to which "nerves" are unknown; and German editors were accustomed to claim victory on the argument that "the people with the best nerves must win, and German nerves were the strongest in the world." "The truth," says Buchan, "is almost the opposite. Scarcely any nation suffers so acutely from nervous ailments. The German lives on his nerves; he is quick in emotion and sentiment, easily fired, a prey alike to hopes and surprises. In his own way he is as excitable as the Latin, and he has not the Latin's saving store of common sense. He is the stuff out of which idealists are made, but also neurotics." The German is to-day in the transition stage from an automaton to a free agent, and it is perhaps not surprising that he is becoming disorderly and violent. Eventually he may be better for the experience; so may the nation. Meantime the world is witnessing proceedings iu Germany which only a few months ago would have been regarded as impossible.