DEATH OF BETHMANN HOLLWEG.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1921, Page 5

DEATH OF BETHMANN HOLLWEG.

EX-GERMAN CHANCELLOR. . WAR INCIDENTS RECALLED. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Berlin, Jan. 3. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, ex-Chan-cellor, is dead.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. [Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg was born in Brandenburg in 1856, and became Chancellor of the German Empire in July, 1909. He resigned on July 14, 1917, and was succeeded by Herr Michaelis. Commenting upon his career at the lime of his resignation, the former Berlin correspondent of the London Times said that during Bethmann-Hollweg’s first ten years in office he was regarded as an object of sympathy in his struggles to get some order out of the domestic and International tangles bequeathed to him by Prince Bulow. “He seems really to have expected to succeed in the complicated diplomatic game which was intended to render the British Empire harmless to ripening purposes of German policy. Much has been written concerning his persona] share in the events of July and August, 1914, but lie will be known for all time by two utterances—his speech in the Reichstag on August 4. 1914, proclaiming that ‘necessity knows no law/ admitting the wrong that Germany was committing, and saying that her only thought was to ‘hack her way through’; and, secondly, his famous definition to Sir Edward Goschen of an international treaty as ‘a. scrap of paper.’ Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg’s apparent desire to do right was always defeated by his ultimate decision to do wrong, and ho only made matters worse by his subsequent efforts to make black appear white. His responsibility for the present plight of the German Empire is great; his responsibility for the 'ineffaceable crimes of Germany is infinitely greater.” Since his resignation of the Chancellorship Bethmann-Hollweg’s disappearance has been, so far as the world at large has been concerned, almost complete. He has scarcely been in the public eye except during the taking of evidence by the German commission set up in the latter part of 1919 to determine the responsibility for the war, when he offered to stand his trial in place of the ex-Kaiser.]