BERNHARDI IN AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 33, 9 February 1915, Page 10

BERNHARDI IN AMERICA

MYSTERIOUS VISIT IN 1913 DR. STARR JORDAN'S EVIDENCE. ' (MOV OUR OWN CORRESPONDINT.) LONDON, 22nd December. How General' yon Bernhardi visited America last year and warned Germans to prepare for the coming war is told in thp Toronto Globe. Dr. David Starr Jordan, distinguished Californian, Chancellor of Leland Stanford University, who is well known in New Zealand, is the authority quoted by the Canadian newspaper It seems that on 23rd November the editor of the Globe met with Mr. David Starr Jordan, and the fact of Bernhardi's mission to America was mentioned. Dr. Jordan's answer was in substance as follows : — < "I met yon Bernhardi in San Francisco and heard him give an address on 26th May, 1913, just as I was leaving for Europe, Germany, the Balkans, and Australia. The invitation was from the German Consul in San Francisco. It ! was on the official paper of the Consul's office. The gathering was composed of about three hundred persons, all Germans, except one other American and myself. "The Consul presided, and the meeting was semi-official, but private So far as 1 know there was no reporter present, and no report was published. I would not have known that the German cavalry general was in America except for that "meeting. He went to Los Angeles for a similar gathering, then to St. Louis and eastern centres of German population. I understood he came over from Japan, PURPOSE OF THE MISSION. "Bernhardi read his address, which followed the arguments of his book — the historical, psychological, and biological arguments for war." Asked as to Bernhardi's mission and Dr. Jordan said : "Bernhardi's mission was to Germans in America. His very evident purpose was to neutralise the policy of goodwill among the nationalities represented in our population, to counteract the work for international peace, to prepare the Germans for the coming war, which he said was both inevitable and near, and to convince them that Germany's idea of war is righteous, and that this particular war was thoroughly wellplanned, and would be carried out to the greatness and glory of the German Empire. GERMANY A NEST OF SNAKES. "Very unmistakable were his references to the planned march through Belgium and the taking of Paris. He did not mince mattevs. Questions of morale, of international treaties, of national rights, he brushed aside. 'Law,' he said, *is a makeshift ; the reality is force. Law is for weaklings ; force is for strong men and strong nations.' "Perhaps his chief purpose was to advise Germans in the United States that Britain, not 'France, is in Germany's way, that Britain would soon be reached, and reached by Germany's war. Bernhardi's address was a little more unreserved, more brutally frank, than his book. "Belgium was to be invaded for the purpose of securing Antwerp and oth/r naval bases from which to strike Britain. When I heard Bernhardi I thought his words those of another of the warmad militarists. Whpn I was in Germany last August and saw his plan of campaign adopted by the German Army, [ knew he spoke for the General Staff, and that they are all victims of the same madness." When asked his opinion of the justice of the Allies' cause, Dr. Jordan answered :—: — "When I read 'Germany and the Next War,' before meeting its author, I said that if Germany really adopted Bernhardi's views, Europe would have to crush it out as a nest of snakes. Germany is now trying to carry out those views, and there can be no peace or safety until the snakes and the whole system that has produced them are utterly crushed out.