TO-BAY IN THE HUNS'S COUNTRY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3152, 2 August 1917, Page 8

TO-BAY IN THE HUNS'S COUNTRY

AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR IN BERLIN THE AWAKENING OF A DELUDED PEOPLE ; [Professor P. Softon Delmer, who left Berlin on May i' 3 last, has been writing in tho "Daily Mail, a series of authoritative articles on the. state of Germany at the present hourr. Ho is an Australian,, was a student at ■ Berlin, and became English lecturer at the University there in. 1901. Interned at Ruhlebon from November, ISU, to March, 1915, ho subsequently enjoyed unusual opportunities of observing developments in Berlin.] What do people in Germany say and think about the war? Do they condemn tho Imperial war policy or do they still support it? Are they still enthusiastic or has the cup turned to gall and bittorTho answer can bo put in a nutshell. Tho Germans were enthusiastic for the war only as long as they were convinced that it was going to pay a tangJWe, material dividend. As long as it promised to be a big scoon- of other nations' wealth they were for it, heart and soul,, peer and peasant. Socialist and Junker. Let tins never be forgotten. Their enthusiasm waned as soon as success be.gnoi to look doubtful. Their doubts will turn to execration from the moment ther recognise that defeat is inevitable. The last of these three stages has not yet been reached, but they are well on in tho second. It was in'the days immediately following Rumania's entrance into the war tbot their' confidence reached its low.ost ebb. It was nboiit this time that the criticism of the 'Emperor and his fnm.% and bis policy became nositively bitter—so bitter a-i'to alarm His Majesty not a little. The Rumanian debacle saved the situntion, and tho offer of peace clinohed it.

The Kaiser's Motives. When the limelight-loving Kaiser stepped forward as the protagonist of pence it was a clever move with a double object. It aimed at throwing dust in the eyes of pacifists abroad in order to promote dissension in tho ranks of the. Allies, and at tho same time' it was meant to. convince the malcontents at homo that they were the victims not of the German Bmpoiw's own criminal policy but of "that wicked England" and its accomplices. On my remarking to the intelligent old Portierfrau of a honso in tho aristocratic Tiergarten cnavtcthat I had seen the Kaiser a few days before, and that lie was looking vr.iy well, "Ach, der!" (oh, him!), said the old bodv. "I dare say he docs, but he wouldn't look so well by a long chalk if he only knew what folk round hero arc thinking and saying about him. And be thought ho was going to beat the ■En»ish! Him, indeed!" Anyone who knows German will no longer recognise the Germany in which the contemptuous demonstrative pronoun "der"' canbe used of his Imperial Majesty. That in itself is almost a revolution. No; the common peonlo and, what is more, tho common soldiers have not the faintest trace left of enthusiasm for the war. Ach, Gott. wenn man.nur das Ende abwhenkounte (If one only knew when and how its all going to end), they sigh. Tou bear tho same song wherever you go: at tho Borrso (Stock Exchange), in the banks, m tho shops, and in the queues..

The One Question.'' At tho police station, where I had to report myself daily, 1 often exchanged, a few words with the man whose duty it was to stamp my paper. . He used to ask mo about once a fortnight when 1 thought tho war was caning to an end, and to givo an oracular answer each time rather taxed my supply of commonplaces. With some people who asked this question I usually fell back on the reply of the Scotsman to his German prisoner: "I cauua say positecvely; but I think the fur-rat threo yoar-rs '11 seo the wur-rst of it." On another occasion, when 1 modestly disclaimed all powers of second sight, tho man, a furniture dealer, would not take "I haven't tho faintest idea" for an answer. "Oh, yon must know all' right,-' he said, tor you're an Englishman." Tho Kaiser's Government, having so far hoodwinked tho people, must continue to hoodwink them and divert their attention from foe real facts. The Government Jcnows that a confession of failure would mean the downfall of tho dynasty. It has tried, and is still trying, all sorts of devices for regalvanising the confidence of the people into life. It unscrupulously uses tho Press, the pulpit, tho university, the 6chool, the theatre, and the kinema as instruments in drugging and fanaticising its subjects. into hate. "Help Us to Lie." It is said to bo the enrso of certain drugs that they need to ho administered in ever larger doses to have effect, and the German public has, as far as I have been able to observe, -already ceased to react to any but the strongest stimulants. That hoarse-voiced pastor whom I heard shouting his war evangel to a spellbound crowd from the steps of the Knitcr-Wil-helm-Gedaohtnis, Kirche (Memorial Church) at the beginning of the war would now be jeered at if lie repeated his harangue. He was only one among many such ecclesiastical barnstormers in those days who imagined themselves Eichtes.

Who is there among' the common folk to-day that reads the Momnonian utterances of the Press.with anything of the old reverence and belief? "Es stand ja in der Zeitung" (it said so in the newspaper) used to be a shibboleth sufficient to disnel any doubt as to the veracity of an official statement; but standing in

'queues one nowadays hears sniffs of contempt whenever newspaper renorts aro quoted. "Who beliefs what tb» newspapers say. I'd like to know! Kie lu<ren ia alle!" (there's not o'ie of them but lies!). In all th" third-class railway carriages at the f.ime of thp last wot loan there were placards -parted no showing a steel-helmeted soldie..' Wii'ul a barbedwire entanglement at the famine front. "H"'ft uns siogen!" (Heln ns to win!) be was saying. On many of the placards, however, the word "?iwr»'i" had been crossed out by some cryptic hand and \ho word "lugeil" scribbled ferociously above it. "Help us to lie!" Although tho fact has never been publicly proclaimed, everybody knows that a major of the General Stall' gathers tl.o newspaper editors together once a week and tells them what they are to talk about in their newspapers during the coming week and what attitude they are to adopt. On the whole, the German Press is a 'meek flock and bleats loud or soft, east or west, as the Military Prelss Bureau preschibes . Tho courage of even the most dauntless of the Berlin journalists, Maximilian Harden, oozes out at his when it comes to the point. I heard him one evening tell a crowded public meeting in th'e big Philharmonic Hall that he had boon forbidden by the authorities to discuss the question of peace terms. Witli an heroic gesture—he has bfen an actor in his timo—he protested, "Der Wiinsch der Regierung waro mir aber kein Gcbot" ("I would not let the wish of the Government stand in my way if I thought it was to Germany's nilvantage to disregard it"). The crowd applauded this unheard-of independence of spirit, but at Hardcn's next meeting he cooed as soft as any dove, for his magazine, the "Future" ("Zukuuft") had in the meantime been confiscated and he had promptly come, to hc;l. From private sources I know that Harden is convinced not only that there need have been no European war had Germany not decided on it; that England and France did their best to prevent the war; but, what is worse in his eyes, he thinks that Germany blundered into an unequal and therefore disastrous contest through departing from Bismarckinn traditions of statesmanship. The consequence of all the terroristic control of the Press is a crop of all sorts of subterranean cabals and camarillas among the educated classes, and among tho uneducated a feeling of distrust, a feeling of being blindfolded and pcr.iaps misled. Ths Moewe Film, Needless to say, I attended such public meetings as lhc one at the Philharmonic Hall mentioned above, entirely at my own risk. I was supposed to remain in

my homo after li p.m. Three or four times, Hku a criminal drawn as by a magnet to the scene of his past crimes, I went out to ltuhlcbcu and walked through Spaiuiau. 1. sumolimes visited kinuiuas, too, Hint wore showing war films, but the gmno was nover worth the candle. Those films love to show tho Boche as a philanthropist. Now he will be sharing his dinner with some orphans in tho occupied territory, now standing with bowed 'head in some ruined church, and anon ieeding a Belgian, baby from a bottle. Just before I camo away, however, tho iloewo films (depicting the Atlantic raider at work) wore put on, aud they were from many poiuts of view well worth seeing, i'rom a German standpoint they are undoubtedly a gross mistake, for, in. their grim realism, they bring homo to tho beholder tho wholesale and wauton destruction of peaceful merchantmen and lead the imagination to conceive tho unspeakable horors of the U-boat wai— horrors w'hicli tho Germans, as a whole, have not yet grasped. Ono se*s on these films, which take exactly one hour to show, steamers and sailing ships brought up; ono sees tho torpedo strike the ship, and tho noblo vessel, as in agony, struggle, writhe, fill, and sink. The effect on tho spectators was the very reverse of what the military authorities wished to produce. Par from being exhilarated, iho public seemed.depressed by the sight of what they felt to bo cold-blooded wiur<lor of unarmed ships. "Schrecklich! Schrecklich!" ("Frightful;") they whisper as if it is just beginning to dawn on them why that other more terrible and cowardly form of hostilities, tho Üboat war, lnis made the Gorman aamo so detested throughout tho world. .On one of the pictures one sees tho captain, ot the Brecknockshire, after his ship has sunk, standing on the bridge of tho Moewo beaido Graf Hohna, the German commander. The latter liad made iaino joke at which tho British captain, as was intended, had felt constrained to laugh, although lie had just seen his sup stink; but his heart was breaking. Tho chivalrous German newspapers sneer at his heartlcssness. "This is an English dschentleman," they say, "laughing as ho watches his shin go down!

Hidden Casualties. In spito of all the German twisting of facts and all their skill in making the worse appear the better reason, they really do not believe they are winning. None of them lias, it is true, any_ idea of their actual losses in the field. Vagno estimates aro current. I take the one that is going the rounds as oemfi most symptomatic. Among the officials at the Doutscho Bank a report was recently 111 circulation estimating Germany s losses alone at 1,300,000 men killed up to the end of March 11)17. A civilian in a high official position, who was present at the discussiou, contradicted this, saying that he believed this estimate to be too low by tit least half a million. No official totals are published. TJie long sheets ot casualties aro still pasted up on the polished granito of tho Kricgsnka<lcmio(-tuir College) in lierlin, but one no longer sees tho groups of weeping women ami caper searchers that were constantly standing there in the early stages of tho war. tho authorities now have more expeditious private ways of informing tho roUitives. In spite of their doubts übout victory and of their distrust and lesentment at the methods their own Government havo adopted towards them, there is, as I said before, no sign that the Germans will yield till they are at their last gasp. I have, however, heard with my own ears certain members of the Roman Catholic Ceutre Party in the lleichstag say that they did not see how either Germany or its enemies could possibly hold, out till' Christinas. Any such discouraging statement when made by.less privileged individuals than members ot Parliament aro liable to be regarded as treasonable, and a reward of Al5O is promised to anyone who can bring any propagator of such rumours to book. Police proclamations to tins effect adorn tho advertisement pillars in the streets. This public incitement _to private denunciation has produced a reign of terror. "Nobody is safe m even tho most confidential conversation, I heard a university student say. lEs new regulation has certainly had the effect of muzzling conversation between all but tlio closost of friends •Even tho idol Hindcnburg now comes in for criticism. Ho has the reputation of Being a man who boasts of never havin« read any boots except those written on military subjects, nor have I ever seen or heard of a single statement of Lis that betrayed anything moro than a mediocre rjind. Nevertheless, among the Contlow'party Hindcnburg is 6bil a fetish. Hindonburg or no Hindenburg, both soldiers. and ofocers are heartily sick of the war In general and the Western front- in particular, from which otneero are know,frog«mrly to head their letter homo with the words, "Nocli am.Lebon (Still aiTve). And that, I think, expresses the state of Germany regarded as a whole. "In spito of everything wore still alive!" '