"HAPPY GERMANY"

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 133, 2 December 1922, Page 14

"HAPPY GERMANY"

DEAN OF WINDSOR'S IMPRES-

SIONS.

Dr. .A. Bailiie, Dean of Windsor, addressing an audience in- the Hojal borough upon his recent tour in Germany, said he 6peni, his 'holiday in that, country trying to study the condition of Germany, not its material but its mental condition (reports the '"Daily Telegraph"). Ho knew Germany very well Before 1870, and watched the country change during the forty years before the war—change incredibly in mind, in character, outlook on jife, in habit, in everything. During his visit he went outside the sphere of the ordinary tourist, and the first thing that struck and astounded him was the extraordinarily happier look of the whole population, infinitely happier than they had been before the war, and more as they had been when he was young—cheerful, happy, friendly with each other and with him. Before the war they had become irritable, quarrelsome, and' often very rude and offensive. The increased spirit of cheerfulness surprised him the more when he learned what their condition was. Very few people in Germany were making money. The whole of the wage-earners, the salaried classes, the people with fixed incomes who had either'retired, had pensions, or had invested money,- were certainly not making money. A working man in full work, with- no children, could afford alittle meat on three days a week; if he had children, less. There were few of the salaried classes, clerks, etc., who could afford meat more once a week, in very small quantities indeed^ The whole of the class who had saved and retired—a very large, class in Ger^ many—were suffering, except where they had been able to get some little job to give them extra pay. Everybody who. had a fixed income was absolutely ruined. One could not think these were conditions to produce happiness, •' and yet the Germans were happier. Why? Because they had freedom. They had been released from the tremendous mental tyranny of the last forty years. There had never been so elaborate ar. education of the people as the education of the Germans during those forty years. Before that education came into force they were very easy-going, imaginative, poetio people, a. nation who dreamed sentimentally of the past. Then they were controlled from the cradle by a. perfect network of machinery. They had longed for a united Germany, but in the glory of reaching it they turned the wrong way. Now they felt the intense relief of freedom. It was the most extraordinary change he had ever seen or could have believed possible in a nation. One intelligent man had said to him : "It seems very difficult to say it now, hut I believe we shall all feei ill the future the greatest possible blessing came to us through being beaten., ill • the ■war." Tieid discipline for the young had gone. For the first time in history. Germany had gone mad over /-football—not on watching it but on playing it. . ;