THE GERMAN MUTINY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 244, 12 October 1917, Page 4

THE GERMAN MUTINY.

German ways are so devious, and . news of Germany is often so unreliable, that one hesitates to express positive opinions about the reports of a mutiny ; in the German Navy. But it may be said that if the mutiny uas anything like as bad as v is said to have been, it is the first bad breaK in the fabric of the Herman military moral. !>n such occasion, it is a good thing to put one-elf in the onenn's place; let us imagine what British feelings would be if we wok.' up one morning to find that the crews of one of Sir David Beatty's Dreadnoughts hud thrown its captain overboard, that the crews of three other battleships had mutinied, and that the , men on a cruiser had seized the ship and started out to seek safety in a Norwegian port. We should feel pretty sick. The Navy, however, is not Germany's first line of defence, for which reason we should like to hear more about the reported mutinies in the . Army. The German Government attri- , butcs the naval mutinies to the propae ganda of the minority section ot the Socialists, and this may be true; but it j is to the Government's interests to disj credit the Socialists. Another cause mentioned, bad and inadequate food, , had probably something to do with c the outbreak. It may be found that ~ the complaint was not so much that 1 the sailors were insufficiently fed. but r that the oHiccrs fared much better than I the men. In the Herman services there l is nothing like the spirit of camaraderie ~ and sharing of hardships between oflit cers and men that there is in the French ( and Rritisb armies. The officers are a , caste who treat their men as inferior . beings and take care that they them- . selves shall not go short. , The Carman authorities will have t dealt drastically with the mutineer.. The Government is exploiting the occurrence ' for all it is worth to discredit the anti- ! war Socialists and rally the people round . the (iovern-ii'-nt anl the reactionary . party. It is a shrewd move. We must remember that when the Russians broke ' in Calicia iv .Inly we hoped and expected - that tin- shame of this desertion would unite the warrint. elements in Petrograd an I elsewhere. Similarly, the Kaiser and the Chancellor hope that alarm and discontent caused by the military situation and the (lovcrnment"s evasive attitude towards peace, will be swallowed up in dis.usf at the unpatriotic conduct of tbe mutineers, with its possibilities of disaster to the Fa ther! a ml. If this hope is fulfilled the moral of the German people will be shown to l>e still strong.