SPECIAL ARTICLE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16478, 22 March 1919, Page 7

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

PRUSSIAN i'SYCIIOLOGY.

SVILL THE LEOPARD CHANGE HIS

spots:-'

<f (Bi Lord Heading, Chief Justice of | England.) (Rights Secured by "Tho Press.") f More than once recently I have heard toe opinion expressed that the future happiness and security of the world depends almost entirely on nnr ability* to work a complete transformation .of the German psychology. If this is actually the case —and, personally, I am inclined to believe that it is—what reasonable liopo have we that we will be able to accomplish so difficult a task P lb it possible to effect any really profound alteration of the German psychology? It is really a very important question for us, for if the answer is "No," then not all the Leagues of Nations that the wit of man may devise can make us feol sure that tho sword has been sheathed for good and all. I think of a possible Germany, with Alsace-Lorraine cut from one side and the Polish provinces cut from the other, with most of its navy either in the hands of somebody else, or sunk at the bottom of the sea, with a heavy tax to pay for the ruin that bus been wrought in France and Boigium I think of that Germany, without Kaiser o? Princes or Grand Pukes, ruled by a People's Government, having daily evidence of the fact that war does not pay, and knowing that peace is the greatest blessing that can bo given to a nation. Of course, we may not get such a Germany—indeed, I feel no confidence in the matter. But if we do, will it be as difficult to change the German psychology as for the leopard to perform his spot-clearing act? I do not think the Prussian was ever much other than a brute; but, unless 1 am greatly mistaken, the peoples of South Germany were cast in very different mould. Thence came all the art, the music, the poetry; there lived the kindly folk, of whom all sorts of observers have written. They seemed to be men of a different race. l \ So far as I have been able to judge, there has not been a pin t<r choose between the German peoples during the war. The atrocities in Belgium and 'France were well shared among Prussians and Saxone, Bavarians, and Westphalians.

men go back and become kindly, simple-hearted people? Can the civilians who cheered trfe sinking of. the Lnsitania and the bombing of London lay aside the past and turn their faces to the.light? Let us not forget that we have undergone changes. When the war started, a thrill of horror would have gone through Us if we had read of our soldiers bombing civilians, or of our troops hurling poison gases that eent soldiers back coughing their lives out in agony behind the lines.. And yet in tho later phases of the war wo did not worry when we were using gas; and wd werer quite disappointed ' when wo,did not read that one of the Rhine; cities was attacked from the air. "We were asking for many weeks why our airmen had not spread death over Cologne? And I belieive it was a big disappointment to large numbers of - people that Berlin, was not bombed before the signing of the armistice. I know we did not start any of it; that we felt we were only getting a bit of onr own back; that the only way to mako the Germans, feel how vile were their deeds was to let them see the other point of view. Jfrom whatever cause. I think it must -Wadmitted that the mind of our people did change, during the years of war; that'war did something to brutalise us, just as it did to brutalise them.' Not so'much, perhaps, but still it was there. Can we change back again? I have 3bo doubt you will say that when the horrors of war are past and gone we shall be just as gentle and chivalrous as ev?r we were. ■ ' So it is that I have real hope that a change may be found to have been wrought in the Southern Germans after , a generation of disarmament, and that . through their example even the Prussian, 'too, may learn to change his spots.