The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1921. SENSATION-MONGERING.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1921. SENSATION-MONGERING.

The Berlin correspondent of the London Daily Mail appears to be keenly alive to serving up sensational stories of happenings in Germany, well knowing that they will be to the taste of those who delight in “shilling shockers.” His latest horror is a “secret murder club,” which he asserts the monarchists and militarists have organised for the purpose of assassinating leading political and other personages in order to force the socialists to take violent measures which will give the signal for civil war. There is nothing new in a plot of this kind. The oft-used stage properties wherewith these German melo-dramas are presented again appear, but they have lost their freshness and serve rather to emphasise the garishness of the setting than to indicate the existence of probability. The world at large is quite prepared to admit that the swashbucklers who engineered and fostered the late war would give much and go to extremes in order to once again ride roughshod over the German people and become a terror to the nations, but even these firebrands cannot ignore the trend of the efficacious way in which Germany’s militancy has been gripped in a stranglehold that has resulted in imjmteiiey. Though they may, to suit their own vanity, profess not to be dismayed by the failure of the Kapp coup in Berlin last year, they are not so utterly devoid of intelligence as to dream of any return to power in the near future. That they will plot and intrigue goes without saying, for they have been steeped therein for generations. It is, however, imposing too great a strain on the credibility of other nations to expect them to believe that the end in view will be attained by means of a murder club for the assassination of Ministers. Such a method would certainly defeat its own purpose and would surely recoil on its authors with crushing effect. There is, of course, a possibility that the murder of Herr Erzberger was deliberately planned and carried out. The correspondent states that cumulative evidence, arising out of the recent arrests at Munich in connection -with Herr Erzberger’s murder, discloses the existence of a militarist club in Central Bavaria, which connived at the assassination. That is quite possible, but falls a long way short of proving the existence of a murder club. The nature and value of this evidence ■are important factors, and the need for its being carefully sifted is at once apparent. If so much is actually known as to indicate the guilt of certain persons ' the latter are likely to get short shrift from the Government. The correspondent goes so far as to give the names of the leaders of this murderous organisation, but even this bold attempt at, reality weathers the sensational story. Germany today is making strenuous efforts to stimulate her industries. The reported boom may be fictitious to some extent, but there can be no doubt that relief from the heavy burden of armaments is giving industrial operations an opportunity they have never enjoyed before both in men and other resources. The workers’ councils have obtained great privileges, especially concerning the relation of profits to wages and reducing prices in order to lower the cost of living. They can now realise that war does not pay, just as they have had practical proof of the tyranny of the militarists and junkers. The future of Germany entirely depends on industrial expansion, and there is much truth in the eon’elusion arrived at by the managing director of Vickers’, namely: “There is no medium position for Germany; she will either swamp every other country industrially and economically, or become Bolshevik.” The militarist conspirators may well pause and. consider which would be their fate if they drive the workers into the arms of the Red terror. Obviously they are a menace to their own country, but the application of even a modicum of common sense should be sufficient to prevent

the outside nations being iu any way perturbed at sensational stories of murder clubs and organised secret, societies bent on goading the people to civil war. The present Government is quite capable of dealing with malefactors of this type, and may be credited with possessing even more information as to what is taking place than that to which the Daily Mail’s correspondent has given publicity.