GERMANY’S “DIGNITY”

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1921, Page 8

GERMANY’S “DIGNITY”

APPEAL BY VOX TTRPTTZ. Tn rth article to the Taeglischo Rundschau, Admiral von Tirpitz exhorts the German people to cast off theh spirit of servility toward the Entente and to cultivate national self-respect. “The main cause of our present desporate. situation,'’ lie says, "lies in the method which began with <mr declaration of wrong-doing against Belgium, continued with the Reichstag peace resolution of July, 1917. That entailed the loss of the war, and found its grotesque culmination in the autumn of 1918.” Admiral von Tirpitz then dwells on the lack of national dignity exemplified, inter alia, by the display of enemy flags at the Frankfurt Fair, and the publication of certain illustrated papers of pictures of (he opening of the Parliament of the Free State of Danzig;- “If we had shown our enemies,” ho says, “that (here were limits to the humiliations to which a conquered people could be subjected. President Wilson would never have joined in imposing the armistice conditions, nor would Mr Lloyd George at Spa have been able to snarl at the German Imperial Chancellor as if lie were a shoeblack. l lf we restore the unity of our national front and drop sectional quarrels, our chains of slavery will smash like glass, and the later generations will fulfil Germany’s mission of which the present generation is unworthy.” The admiral himself has no hope of living to see the sun rise on the Gorman horizon, and doubts even if the present generation will see it. He lays stress, however, on the claim that the recovery of self-respect is the sole means of enabling the coming generation to remove the curse that lies on the present generation.