UNREPENTANT GERMANY

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 9

UNREPENTANT GERMANY

STILL DREAMING OF WARS TO COME. The Berne correspondent o£ the London. Sunday Observer telegraphed to hie paper on 3rd November: — ■ I Although a considerable portion of the German people may be inclined towards peace, yet thoso who hold power and influence and all the strong organisations, are doing their utmost to stimulate war feeling. A sign of this is the book written by Lt.-General Baron Yon FreytagI Loringhovon, Deputy Chief of the Prussian Grand General Staif, entitled "Lessons from the Great War." It is now by faT the most widely read and discussed book in Germany. It is published by Mettlor, of Berlin, and for the last few Weeks has been sold by tens of thousands.

I have ascertained that not only is no one allowed to send the book out of Germany to any neutral country, but no quotations from the book are ■ permitted in the German press. The reason for this is probably not the book's violent advocacy of immense arma-ments after the wojt and of Germany's being in the future even more bellicose and aggressive than in the past, but that in its discussion of the lessons to be learned by Germans from the war it gives the real oauses of the German defeat on the Marne and of the failure of various other German .plans, such as the famouß advances to Calais and Verdun. . . ■ :

The German frontier authorities have received special urgent instructions to be on the watch for this book, and to open all book, parcels and investigate all books in order to make sure that they do not contain either all or part of Yon Freytag's book. Even the Austrian frontier authorities have received orders to be on. the watch for this book.

Nevertheless Professor Lammasoh, a leading authority on international law and the chief Austrian technical delegate to The Hague Conference, discusses tho book at great length in the Die Zeit, of Vienna, even giving a few short quotations from. it.

Professor Lammasch, who cannot conceal his admiration for tho ability and stylo o£ -the book, makes no attempt to hide his extreme disapprobation of ite ideas and arguments. The last chapter ends with he words, "Continue to be ready for war," and the author's main contention is that "our aTmatnents eventually proved to have been inadequate," whence he infers that what must be done is to take to heart this lesson: "That in future we must never in any circumstances permit any difference between our demacds and what actually must be done in war to become so great as it was in. the present w<ax, and we must sweep aside all arguments urged to the contrary." Again, Yon Freytag says: "The war ha.s shown us that the extra expenditure incurred for the army would have been worth incurring sooner. We should thus not only have saved many billions in the war, but in all probability not have needed the 1 sacrifice of nearly so many lives."

Yon Freytag then says that the present period of German military service must not be reduced, and declares that the demands for military and naval credits which have been made in the Reichstag- were a bare minimum of what they ought to have been.' "The only security for lastingl peace is powerful armaments."

It is evident that Yon Freytag is a lineal intellectual descendant of Treitsohlce, and is utterly opposed to any form oE international organisation, which, ho feare, would ma.ke it imfrossibls for a strong State in future to ride roughshod over smaller and weaker. States.

It is well thus to be reminded that Germany is still the most aggressive and combative of nations, and that peace cannot even bo. mentioned to her yet upon any conceivable basis.