BEHIND THE SCNEES IN GERMANY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3135, 18 September 1922, Page 8

BEHIND THE SCNEES IN GERMANY.

(By Dr Arthur Lynch.) Merc is a young student coining out of the gale of the University of Berlin. He is a blue-eyed, mild-looking young, man. with little of the show and swagger and ostentatious courtesy of those I remember in my own student days there: he meets another young man. whose tall .straight figure, military bearing, and: superior expression proclaim him a lieutenant of the oltl regime. * A nod. a look. They understand each other. Later in the evening these two. with four or five others, meet m a cheap little room that one of them has hired in the fifth storey of a. house in the northern part of Kredrich street. They drink, they sing, they talk, they plan. Therr songs have lively refrains, teljing how they will spit on the Republican flag, and use their whips on Republican backs when the Kaiser conies back again. Their talk is filled with contempt and bitterness .for the. present Government : it blazes with hatred of Socialists, .lews and Catholics. Thenplans are murder plots. Such is the type of those who assassinated Er/.berger and Bathenau. who tried to poison Scheidemaim, and who have long had Wirth on their list. They are nice-looking young men. rather distinguished in style, welf-educated, earnest and sincere, holding themselves superior to the rest of humanity, honorable in ordinary dealings, very respectful of their own code of honor, yet capable of sallying out in a borrowed motor-car. with L'2o in their pockets, to shoot a political opponent. ! have singled out these types, for they are the soul of the Monarchical movement. It is l true that any one of them, such as the young student Gu'onther. may boast that he has letters from Ludcndorff and advice from rlelfferieh. but these people are mere figure-heads. Neither Ludendorff. nor Helfferieh. nor Erhardt was privy to the murder of Rathenau. but that exploit, which really ran athwart their plans, was a symptom of the intensity of the propa-

ganda. Ko much for the spirit: as for tin' machine —various organisations more or less closely linked, nullify through the Fatherland. The most famous of these is "Consul." so called from the sobriquet of Captain Krhardt, one of the most active and daring of the Putsch (insurrection) leaders. The "Consul'' is wanted by the Berlin police, and lie is keeping himself safe in Budapest, which is. indeed, the great seminary of intrigues. The happy hunting-ground of tho Monarchists is Bavaria. There the old officers.most of the university professors, the civil servants, (he hotelkeepers, a great section even of the laborers, are Royalists. The restoration of the Monarchy is only a question of time, but it is the Wittelsbach line, not the Hohenzollerns. who will reign. The ex-Crown Prince Ruppreehl is fh.Ronnie Prince Charlie of the Bavarians.

A coup was actually’ planned for .June 27 last, tint tin- Rathenau affair disconcerted all plans. That coup is merely postponed, and not for long. Tin* Monarchy re-estahlished, Ravaria will take the Tyrol, ahsorh the Salzburg region, then by force or compulsion engulf Saxony, dominate the whole Reich, and eventually constitute a new Kmpire, with Ruppreeht as a constitutional monarcli, and with the •Junkers in complete control. That regime woidd, at first, seek friendship with Kurland, hut a war of revenue on Prance would he an article of faith, ’fhe new State would at the heginninir he strongly Catholic, in spite of the Protestantism of the Prussian .Monarchists. What stands in the way? The actual Republic? The Government is wellintentioned hut feeble. The great body of the working-classes are. however, determinedly Republican, fiercely democratic. Since Ratlienau’s disappearance the only outstanding figure is that of the Chancellor Wirth—a solid, serious, honest man, hut not big enough nor enlightened enough, nor endowed with prestige enough, to conjure away the evils that are now besetting Germany.