NEW HATE OUTBURST

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 57, 23 February 1918, Page 13

NEW HATE OUTBURST

"SVENGALI OF THE NATIONS." Doubtless under the influence of the hammering their troops are receiving in Flanders, the Germans are being treated ito a flood of literary productions vilifying England (said Mr. F. W. Wile in the "Daily Mail" recently). In the semi-official "Cologne Gazette" a novelist named Karl Bleibtreu has Ibegun a series of articles entitled "The .Truth About England." In "Voss's [Gazette" an essay on '"England, the Svenjgali of the Nations," appears under the 'signature of Lieut.-Colonel Hedwarth |'von;Bittenfeld. This officer was German imilitary, attache in the United States •and Mexico from 1010 to 1914, and later Ithe head of the "American Press Department" at the General Staff in Berlin. It j relates how the United States was "mesmerised" into going to war with Germany. ' , j The sort of "truth" about England I that Herr Bleibtreu intends to purvey 'may be judged from the following extract from his opening article:— ' "If a Bulwer Lytton were to-day to write an impartial work on 'England and

■the English' he would Come to the same 'conclusion as before—to the indignation of our demagogues — that Prussia is i Europe's ynost liberal' country. Lloyd iGeorge and Wilson before the war were I inclined to admit this as far. as social .•reform was concerned. Their present-day speeches are not the expression of ■ their real sentiments. These two full-fledgpd ! Imperialists, the English and the Yanjkees, always sacrifice domestic to foreign policy. How can . the England which .elevates Kipling to the dignity of a national-bard talk about the development ! of healthy democracy—Kipling who outdoes everything that ever went before in | glorification of British military and official power? | "Where Jingoism is holding such orgies as never were,. there can be no such thing as development of internal, freedom. Even in Americanisation, which is I taking the obnoxious form in England of the triumph of plutocracy over aristocracy, pursues Imperialistic aims. America and England have now foitned la trust to enable so-called Anglo-Saxon-'ism to exploit the other and inferior portions of the world for their mutual ! benefit." Lieut.-Colonel Hedwarth's diatribe is a 'sheer explosion of Prussian military | wrath over American intervention, which 'is attributed to the "hypnotic" influence of "England, the Svengali of Nations." He writes:— . ■ • „ "The present disordered 6tate of world opinion about Germany is a triumph of lies, such as history has never known 'before. The instigator of this colossal chaos in international thought is England, the model and master of her; Allies in this as in all the other arts.of darkness. The ■ countries and peoples which have succumbed to her suggestion have fallen victims to blindness and madness. I England resembles the demoniac figure J who was the hero of Dv Maurier's j "Trilby," the conscienceless mesmerist iSvengali, who converted his victims into helpless tools and robbed them of their individuality so that they had to think and feel precisely as their tyrant willed. As a Svengali of the nations England has

'contrived' by dint of monstrous massisusgestion to confound the countries ! allied with her and to impose her greedy ideas upon the world's brain,"