The Dominion MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1919. MUCH THE SAME GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 122, 17 February 1919, Page 4

The Dominion MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1919. MUCH THE SAME GERMANY

Judging by the latest news on tho subject, the Allies are taking no risks in renewing the armistice with Germany. According to a message from Paris they are not only insisting upon the complete fulfilment of their previous demands, but are imposing others in order to obtain safeguards they deem essential. No other policy should be regarded as consistent with ordinary prudence. A firm and unyielding control of Germany is necessary, and is justified on several grounds, above all because there is no real evidence that in essentials the attitude and outlook of the German people are different now from what they were when Germany dreamed of seeing the world at her feet. Germany is defeated and baffled, and her people and politicians of course have changed their tune, accordingly. But there is nothing to indicate that they feel remorse for their crimes, or that adversity has enabled them to cultivate a. new moral outlook. While the- hope of victory remained the ruling sentiment in Germany, was the hope of unlimited plunder. On the evidence jji- sight the ruling sentiment to-day is simply a whole-hearted desire to escape punishment and the inconvenience of making reparation for past crimes. With such a spirit dominant it is to be expected that the men now appointed to rule in Germany will resort to every possible shift and trick in attempting to evade the, enforcement of a just peace. It is evidently incumbent on the Allies to lay their measures accordingly, and above all to take no risks.

The best evidence yet afforded of the state of feeling in Germany is to be found in a speech, reported to-day, in which Herr Scheidemann, as political head of the new Government, outlines its policy. Nothing is more remarkable in statement of policy than his failure to break new ground. As a devoted henchman of the old regime in Germany, ever ready to devote his own efforts and those of his party, to advancing its projects,' Scheidemann in any case would have been suspect now that time and events have made him Chancellor. But, looking at the reports transmitted to-day, the case seems' less one for suspicion than for certainty. He seems to have found it impossible to conceal his moral identity with the predatory gang whose members found Germany in all respects obedient to • their will, until overwhelming military defeat brought them to an end of their tether. His speech is on just such lines as might have been followed by. Bethmann-Hollweg or By von Hertlinq had they been called upon to adjust themselves to the-circumstances in which he spoke. In fact, he supplies incontestable' proof that the old political order still holds sway in Germany, though it is doing its best to present a new face to the world.

Nominally Scheidemann is at the head of _ a reformed Government. Its creation follows upon the meeting of a National Assembly elected on the broadest suffrage. If the people of Germany and their, new Government were sincerely bcrit on reform, their first concern and anxiety would bo to effect a clean break with their evil past, and in particular to disown and denounco the crimes of militarism. Soheidemann's utterance presumably is re-' presentative, and • reflects public in Germany, released as she now is from bondage to autocratic militarism. It shows, however, no trace of an honest determination to create a new and better Germany. Scheidemann's whole anxiety, apparently, is to gloss over the abominable crimes which have made his country infamous in the eves of the i world., and to treat them as trivialities which ought to be forgotten. "I hope," he observes, "that America will be able to convince the other Allies that it is to the interest of the whole world to see the old Germany replaced by a .new Social Democracy rather than heap damning epithets upon Germany." He either does not perceive or is determined to ignore the fact that the Allies are under no concern to heap epithets on Germany, but are filled with a practical determination to exact reparation for her foul crimes and establish all possible safeguards against their repetition. The new Chancellor's inability or refusal to face the moral issues involved in the peace settlement appears still more plainly in his farcical ' denunciation of "peace of violence," and in his demands for the restoration of the German colonies, and for the admission of Germany into the League of Nations, "with equal rights. The impudent assertion of rights which Germany has forfeited is less remarkable, however, than the exclusion of matter the speech of necessity would have contained had its author and those for whom he speaks been as much as touched by the genuine spirit of amendment and reform. As he is reported, Scheidemann had not a word to say in pity or compunction for the martyrdom inflicted upon Belgium, France, Serbia, and other countries by the military autocrats whom, in their day, he faithfully served. In 1914, when the German hordes first poured into Belgium, the Imperial Chancellor of the day admitted in the Reichstag that the invasion was a crime. _ Scheidemann speaks for an ostensibly reformed Germany. As reports stand—and it is likely that the fullest prominence would be given to anything he might say on the subject—he said nothing in denunciation of this crime or of any item in the and abominable list that followed. . His silence is more effective than any words could be in demonstrating that Germany is' altered only in outward seeming, and remains unchanged at heart. Shortly after the armistice was concluded an American writer laid just emphasis upon the fact that the Kaiser was dethroned not on account of the infamy and detestation he had brought upon his people, but because he failed to win the war. The German people, he added,

could forgive the disgrace and degradation were tliey in possession of loot; they have shown that a thousand times by glorifying, deifying, the fiendish crimes committed by the Kaiser and his brutal minions. Plaintively they have whined a protest against the- universal contempt that has been heaped upon them, and professed not to understand it; but not once, so far as has ever become known in this country, has any important element of the German people yet rebelled

■against the frightful immorality of German practice and the German standard of thought; not once has any considerable faction in that now unhappy land sought to rid the German race of' the rottenness in the Potsdam Palace on the ground that the royal family had done a wrong against peaceful civilisation. It is now to «e added to this indictment that after freely electing a National Assembly the German people have put forward as their spokesman a time-serving henchman of the old regime, a man who has no word of honest reprobation for the crimes of the war, though his anxiety to evade the consequences of these crimes is not in question. The Allies could ask for no plainer light upon the policy it is necessary to adopt in dealing with Germany now and when the time comes to enforce and safeguard the peace settlement.