LUDENDORFF A PACIFIST

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

LUDENDORFF A PACIFIST

"UNMASKING THE HIDDEN WAR-MAKERS." ARMY "BRAINS" IN NEW ROLE BUTT OF GERMAN FRESS. General Erich Ludendorff, the."brains of the German armies" in the last two years of the World War, militarist and one-time monarchist, has turned Apostle of Peace. This transformation ,of the greatest strategist on the German side,* and certainly one of the leading military figures of the war, is no more startling than his confessed conversion to "rule by the people."

The military chieftain who moved millions of soldiers about on the fronts in France, Belgium, Ruesia, Rumania, Greece, Italy and Turkey, like so many pawns on a chessboard, declared the other day in Munich that war is immoral and a crime "except for the preserving of a nation, or for freedom against oppression." Perhaps speaking fronvexperience, the general said that "the people are the tools and the fools of the war-makers, to them unknown," adding that "he would devote the rest of his life to unmasking the hidden war-makers."'

I These "super-national Powers," as the I former German militarist chieftain characterises them, are, he claims, the "J.ews. Jesuits and Freemasons." Superior in intellect, genius, strategy and energy during the war, to his chief, von Hindenburg, but lacking the latter's strength of character or possibly his judgment, Ludendorff has broken with all , that remains of the former Imperial German military hierarchy, and travels over Germany like a fanatical missionary, lecturing .and preaching against the "super-national Powers," whom he asserts are seeking to keep Germany enslaved, endeavouring to bring about war between Britain and America on the one hand, and between Britain and Russia on the other hand.

On anything but friendly terms with the ex-Kaiser since the end of the war, in an almost ten-year feud with exCrown Prince Eupprecht of Bavaria, having little good to say of the former Royal German princes, whom, he once declared, thought of themselves first. _their dynasties and families next, , and the German people last, Ludendorff has turned his back on all his former friends including Field Marshal von Hindenburg, President of Germany—or they have turned away from him. Virtually military dictator of Germany from 1910 to the autumn of 1918, his present activities against those powers which, he alleges, "know no national lines, frontiers or sentiments," and his campaign to arouse the "old Germanic virtues, unity, freedom, morality, truth, sacrifice, patriotism, spirituality," have subjected Ludendorff to- attack, ridicule or pity of a larjre part of the German Press.

"There will be no permanent peace until the people rule, rule in fact, not in theory. What they call the 'rule of the people , to-day, is largely an illusion. Not until there is an end of secret diplomacy, secret pacts, secret meetings of responsible statesmen at Geneva, as well as everywhere else, an end of secret organisations which' insidiously influence the public mind, and all relations between nations and people are determined in the full glare of publicity, will there be an end of war." So says the one-time reactionary leading German militarist, the real chief of the German General Staff, whose military rank was next to that of Field Marshal. Scarcely 60, robust of health, a dvnamo of energy, he is inspired with all the fire of a zealot. Laying aside the sword for the pen, General Erich Ludendorff has become the editor and publisher of a newspaper.