DOES GERMANY WISH FOR WAR?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3040, 10 November 1908, Page 4

DOES GERMANY WISH FOR WAR?

An interesting interview recently took place between M. Joseph Montet, a well-known French journalist, and "a high German personage,"

on the question, "Does Germany wish for war?" and was published in "La Depeche Coloniale." The German personage scouted the idea that war was likely to take place between Germany and France over Morocco, but he said that in military circles in Germany there was a firmly-estab-lished conviction that war between England and Germany was inevitably at no distant date. He went and said that Germany looked forward in five years to vanquishing England on the sea, and France on land. Germany was stifled with her narrow frontiers, and wanted other provinces. In aspiring to defeat France, he explained, Germany counted largely on the religious and political dissensions in France; on the anti-militarism in the same country.; on the General Confederation of Labour, which, at the outbreak of the war, would preach a general strike and a strike of the soldiers; on the physical and moral decadence of France; on the devnoralisation of her army and navy; on the French professors, who, for the most part, were "peace-at-any-price" men, and on insurrections of the natives, which would be fomented in the French colonies of Algeria, the Soudan, Indo-China, etc., while a similar attempt would be made to bring about I'evolutions in Russia, India, etc. Finally, he said that Germany counted on being able to take from Russia the Baltic provinces with Riga.