BACK IN 1914

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 21

BACK IN 1914

GERMAN CONSCRIPTION

MATTER FOR APPREHENSION

BEITAIN'S FOIIBEAIIANCE

The catastrophic news from Berlin

of the restoration of conscription in Germany will, I imagine, take everyone in England, with the exception of a small group of ex-officers and exsoldiers, completely by surprise, excitins anger in some, confusion in others, and grave apprehension in all, writes J. H. Morgan, K.C., in 'the "Daily Telegraph:" ■ ■ ' ' And well it may! The only Englishmen it will not surprise are the little group of some 40 officers whom I had the honour xo command for many years in Berlin, when serving as the G.O.C. British Section of the "Effectives" Sub-Commission of that "Control Commission" whose duty it was to secure the execution of the Disarmament Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles: The history of ..that fateful experiment has yet to be written, or, rather, to be published. But it is sufficient, for the moment, to say this: The Eeichswehr Ministerium strained every nerve, studied every stratagem, and exhausted every effort to thwart the covenanted abolition of compulsory military service. As the officer entrusted by General Nollet with the task of securing its abolition, I found it took me 15 months to secure it. As late as a year after Germany had signed : the . Treaty, we discovered that the demobilisation of the millions of men of the old army, under our supervision, was being accompanied by the issue of "discharge" papers to every man, reminding him of his duty to report for mobilisation when called upon. In fact, we never secured it. No sooner, after 15 months' tenacious opposition, had the law of March, 1921, "abolishing" conscription been placed on the German Statute Book, than the fertile brain of General yon Seeckt, the modern Scharnhorst, set to work to reconstruct in cadre the very army which had been "abolished." By the conservation of the nerve-system (the Linien Kommandaturen) of railway mobilisation, the camouflaged retention of the whole of the army motor transport, the development of the training organisation, including the engagement, and re-engagement, of 72,000 n.c.o.s and other devices, the whole apparatus of the old conscript army was kept in being. We never sueI ceeded in dissolving it. THE ANSWER TO HERR HITLER. This is the answer—but only part of an answer which, if given in full, would mobilise the moral opinion of the whole of the civilised world against him—to Herr Hitler's plea of justification for his menacing departure, when he says that Germany has faithfully "carried out" the obligations under the Treaty of Versailles in the matter of disarmament, while "the five signatories representing the foremost victorious nations" had not. If those five nations did, indeed, contract to disarm, they, with the melancholy exception of ourselves, have not disarmed because they dared not. i Let. me refresh Herr Hitler's memory with what lawyers call an "exhibit." If he will look in the archives of the Reichswehr Ministerium he will find therein the original of a "Note," dated April 4, 1920, and addressed to the Control Commission, in which the German military authorities demanded the retention, with all their armament plant intact, of a number of armament factories—sixty-seven, to be precise— with an output capacity, not for the Treaty Army of 100,000 effectives, but for the old standing army of 600,000. In their argument supporting that astounding demand,-they claimed that the concession would contribute to "a healthy competition in armament production." From ! that moment the Allied Governments knew, , within a bare three months of the ratification of the treaty, that Germany never,intended to honour her signature. In view of the reproaches cast at our own Government by Herr Hitler, I would respectfuly suggest that the Government now publish,' in an English translation, the Final Report of the Control Commission. When, as the price exacted by Germany for her signature to Locarno, the Control Commission, after seven sterile years, wasi peremptorily withdrawn from Berlin, it drew up a "Final Report" on what it had accomplished and what it had failed to accomplish. The report is a French document, signed by a French general officer, General Walch, who succeeded General Nollet as President of the Commission,' but countersigned by all .the "Allied" Generals, including General Wauchope. A copy of it was sent to me by Marshal Foch, under whom I had served for four years. I would also suggest that there now be published the reports of the senior British officer in charge of German effectives for the years 1920 to J923, in which is to be found, supported by irrefutable evidence, the whole of the German design,, conceived during those years and now put into execution, for the restoration of conscription and all that conscription involves. If these things are now published the world will be convinced that never has any Government shown such forbearance—mistaken, though honest forbearance, I have always thought it—as has each successive British Government from 1920 until the present day. . Our Governments have trusted that, by not revealing what .they knew of her defaults in the matter of disarmament, Germany would support them in their hopeful plans for "universal" disarmament. That trust has been abused; Germany has exploited this period of silence by making use of it as a "close season" for the restoration of- her overwhelming military preponderance in Europe. There is one other publication I would most earnestly press upon our Government, subject to the approval of the French Government. AN ECONOMIC GENERAL STAFF. It is the publication of the Secret Service report, and analyses of the German military and "civil" estimates, by the French General Staff. Many of them have, thanks to the courtesy of my friend, General Weygand, been shown to me It is my conviction that, at almost any moment during the next few months Germany will, in the memorable words of Lord Birkenhead, renew her "tiger-spring at the throat of Europe." The twenty army corps—not the deceptive fourteen now announced in Berlin—exactly corresponding to the old territorial distribution, save for the seceded territories, are already in existence. Every German youth of military age has in the, last two years completed musketry training in the use of the Service rifle. Rathenau's dream of an "Economic General Staff," and with it of economic mobilisation for war, has been realised. The whole of the key industries of coal-tar products and synthetic nitrogen for the production of explosives and poison gas are now mobilised under Government control in the execution of a scheme to that effect which I discovered in 1922. [ Swiss friends of mine in Zurich teL

me that a war censorship of letters has been in existence for over twelve months. An enormous reserve of air pilots was—l am indebted for this information to General Walch—being built up at the very time the Control Commission was withdrawn from Berlin. Nothing has been neglected. "The nation which thinks of everything," as Lord Birkenhead pu^ it, has completed her mobilisation of men and of material by mobilisation of opinion and of all expressions of it. For nearly two years the youth, and even the childhood, of Germany in every Hitler Youth Camp has had its eyes hypnotically fixed on, a placard, visible by day and luminous by night, bearing the superscription "Wir sind zum Sterben fur Deutschland geboren" ("We are born to die for Germany.") The fatal cycle of the years is complete. We are back in 1914.