LUDENDORFF A PACIFIST

Evening Star, Issue 20362, 19 December 1929, Page 21

LUDENDORFF A PACIFIST

BUTT OF GERMAN PRESS General Erich Ludendorif, the “brains of the German armies ” in the last two years of the World War, militarist and one-time monarchist, has turned Apostle of Peace. This transformation of the greatest strategist on the German side, and certainly one of the loading military figures of the war, is no more startling than his confessed conversion to “ rule .by the people.” The military chieftain who moved millions of soldiers about on the fronts in France, Belgium, Russia, Rumania, Greece, Italy,- and Turky, like so many pawns on a chessboard, declared the other day in Munich that war is immoral and a crime, “except for, the preserving of a nation, or for freedom against oppression.” Perhaps speaking from experience, the general said that “ the people are the tools and the fools of the war-makers, to them unknown,” adding that “he would devote the rest of liis life to unmasking the hidden war-makers.”

These “supernational Rowers,” as the former Gorman militarist chieftain characterises them, arc, ho claims, the “ Jews, Jesuits, and Freemasons.” Superior in intellect, genius, strategy, and energy' during the war, to his chief, Von Hindenburg, but lacking the latter’s strength of character, or possibly his judgment, Ludendorff has broken with all that remains of the former Imperial German military hierarchy, and travels over Germany like a fanatical missionary, lecturing and preaching against the “ super-national Rowers,” whom he asserts are seeking to keep Germany enslaved, endeavouring to bring about war between Britain and America on the one hand, and between Britain and Russia on the other hand.

On anything but friendly terms with the ex-Kaiser since the end of the war, in an almost ten-year feud with exCrown Prince Rupprccht ol Bavaria, having little good to say of the former Royal German princes, whom, he once declared, thought of themselves first, their dynasties and families next, and the German people last. Ludendorff has turned his back on all his former friends, including Field Marshal Von Hindenburg, President of Germany—or they have turned away from him. Virtually military dictator of Germany from 1916 to the autumn of 1918, Ins present activities against those powers which, he alleges, “know no national lines, frontiers, or sentiments,” and his campaign to arouse the “old Germanic virtues, unity, freedom, morality, truth sacrifice, patriotism, spirituality,” have subjected Ludendorff to attack, ridicule, or pity of a large part oi the German press. “There will be no permanent peace until the people rule, rule in fact, not in theory. What they call the ‘ rule of the people’ to-day is largely an illusion. Not until there is an end of secret dislomacy, secret pacts, secret meetings of responsible statesmen at Geneva, as well as everywhere else, an end of secret organisations which insidiously influence the public mind, and all relations between nations and people aro determined in the full glare of publicity, will there be an end of war.” So says tbe one-time reactionary leading German militarist, the real chief of the German General Staff, whose military rank was next to that of Field Marshal. Scarcely sixty, robust of health, a dynamo of energy, he is inspired with all the fire of a zealot. Laying aside the sword for the pen, General Erich Ludendorff has become the editor and publisher of a newspaper.