THE MENTAL OUTLOOK OF THE GERMAN.

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 July 1915, Page 8

THE MENTAL OUTLOOK OF THE GERMAN.

SEVEN MONTHS WITH THE INVADER.

ESTIMATE OF A BELGIAN DOCTOR

(By Valentine Williams, in the London “ Daily Mail.)

The great war has added another problem to those already engrossing the attention of pathologists —namely, the amazing psychology of the modern German. In war as in diplomacy he has shown, himself to be heavy-handed, brutal, and sanctimoniously self-complacent. His methods of warfare do not bear comparison* with those of even a savage but high-minded people, like the Zulus, but rather recall the hideous and unbridled violence of the Mahdi’s nomad hordes.

His savagery, however, is not of the assegai and shield order. It is the coldblooded employment of every device of modern science, asphyxiating bombs, incendiary discs, and the like, irrespective of the law's of civilised warfare. "When baffled, his malice is that of an angry gorilla, senselessly slaying and destroying everything in, its path, and his evident unconsciousness of the- detestation his crimes excite everywhere is only equalled

bv the zeal wherewith he invokes the blessing of the Almighty on his handiwork. In political and civic leadingstrings from the cradle onward, he allows himself to bo spoon-fed with the most

amazing official fabrications proclaiming the invincibility of his arms. The bewildering blend of primitive barbarity low cunning, and highly-trained intellect which ho comprises in the word “Kultnr ’ is the standard by which he judges the other peoples of the world. Taught from birth that egotism is the highest expression of manly strength, he is sheerly incapable of putting himself, in the place of others, of understanding the other man’s point of view. ‘ Mis ne coniprennent pas la foule” (“T hey do not understand the popular feeling”) is the verdict of a distinguished Belgian doctor from Ghent, who for the past seven months has lived with the German Army in Belgium, and who, from- conversations with German officers and men who were billeted in his house or whom he was attending ir. hospital, has furnished _ me with notes and observations which, pieced together, present an extraordinary but remarkably accurate picture of the Hun mcntalitv. A CONSTITUTIONAL LIAR.

“There was a sergeant of field artillery from Hamburg, for instance,” the Belgian doctor says, “who came to Ghent lor a vest: He was the most outrageous liar. He told of a young girl of seventeen who at Arboye, near Roulers, fired a gun at his battery, wounding a horse, and was taken out” and shot. ” He described how the British used to pour blazing oil (brennendes Gel) over their German prisoners, ami that that was the reason why the German soldiers were given orders not to take any English prisoners in future. This man appeared constitutionally unable to fell the truth. About eight o’clock in the evening of January 2nd a shot rang out in the Park of Ghent, in which the International Exhibition was held. It was followed by a second detonation and then a volley, and presently a shot resounded through the street. My gunner sergeant had already gone to bed, but the firing awoke him, and in a trice he was dressed and had sallied forth armed with his carbine. In an hour’s time ho was back, quite breathless and very hot, but jubilant. ‘Civilians don’t shoot, don’t they, lie said. ‘Well, we’ve just caught two fir. iuir at our sentinels. We captured one, the other got away. He was in a nice funk, the one we bagged ! He is wounded in the thigh. He was lurking among the bushes and fired with a French rifle.’

LOOTING AS A MORAL PRINCIPLE••The whole thing was a tissue of Res. Tlie next morning an officer who had heard the shooting in the night made some enquiries, and found out what had really happened. Two Bavarian soldiers in a park alehouse had engaged in a drunken brawl, in the course of which the rifle of one of them was dischrgcd. At the report the guard in the park fired a volley, whereupon the two culprits, to divert attention from themselves, rushed out into the street, as though they were pursuing someone. A Red Cross orderly happened to have heeri passing at the time, and was able to state what really took place. But I wondered to myself at tlie time what would have happened if this affair had occurred, without, witnesses, in some remote Belgian village. “Their attitude of mind towards looting is baffling. On Octobr 13th, seven German officers, including an Army doctor, holding the rank of major, who was aged 50 if he was a day, arrived at a villa near Ghent from Antwerp, radiant at the capture of the place hy the Germans. The next 'day they wished to show their appreciation of the hospitality they had claimed by force of arms. Accordingly, they brought into the house a case of choice Burgundy, which was strapped on the back of a motor car. 'I hey explained to the master of the house that they had found the wine at Malinea in the house of a cure. They filled glasses round, and toasted their host, who, to their perfectly genuine surprise, flatly refused to touch a drop of the looted'wine. The army cioctor, ,vho was of the party, sent two shirts to a woinn living close by to be washed. When the woman brought the shirts homo and presented the bill, the doctor produced from his hag three pairs of children’s socks, which he presented to the astonished woman in guise of payment, saying he had ‘found’ them at H’aimut, in the province of Liege. What is one to think of the mental state of an Army in which a venerable doctor unblushingly steals children’s socks, and carries them about with him for months in his lug-

gage? THE MERITS OF THE BRITISH. “They appear to be insensible to all finer feelings. The officers quartered in my house took their meals alone in my dining room, while my wife, my child, mid I had our food in another room. One day an officer asked mo whether it would not be more sociable if we could dine together. -I stared at him. ‘Do you really imagine,’ I said, ‘that 1 would consent to break bread with you?’ ‘Why not?’ lie said. ‘Because, damn it all, you’re my enemy,’ I replied, with some heat. j-Ie went off, shaking his head. He never understood.

“I often used to cluit with this officer after dinner. ‘What do yo* think of the men that the Kaiser referred to as “.French’s coneniptible little Army?” I asked: him one day. ‘Very good soldiers!’ was his reply. ‘Then you admit that the Kaiser didn’t know what ho was saying?’'was my next question. He agreed, and added that the ‘British had a bigger army than people in Germany had been told. ‘But they didn’t deceive us,’ he said, knowingly; ‘wo Saxons are, cunning fellows!’ ' (Wir Sachsen sind hell© Leute.') “Their ignorance about the military situation is extraordinary. So implicit is, or used to be (for they are becoming more suspicious now), their belief in the reports of the German General Headquarters that even their undoubted military knowledge did npt help them to got an accurate idea of the real situation. Thus, in December last, iust before Hie New Year, I had a talk with the artillery sergeant whom I have already mentioned. “ ‘The war in the east is over. The troops from the east will be transferred to the west.’ ‘Bnt,M said, ‘surely W e’ve read somewhere that the Austrians have evacuated Servia, and that their commander, .General Potiorek„

has suddenly ‘been taken ill?’ ‘Quite so. But that is always the rule in war. When a war is over the troops never remain in the enemy territory.' “ ‘Ah!’

“ ‘You will see, it will be the same for Belgium ; we shall not remain here either*. ’

“ ‘What a pity! So we are going to be deprived of your amiable company V “ ‘Certainly. We want to go back home as soon as possible. As a matter of fact, things are not going, so well here in the west as they are in the east. Here we have had to withdraw, and we military men know that if you withdraw you do not advance.’ “ ‘Very true. La Palisse noted that!’ (In French, ‘une verite de La Palisse’ is a self-evident truth.) “ ‘Who’s he ’

“ ‘La Palisse? A Frenchman.’ “ ‘Oh! an enemy! These people know nothing' about the real situation.’ ORDERLY INEPTITUDE.

“The ineptitude of the super-organ-isation of the German Army was never better illustrated than in the handling of the wounded. When the wounded were detrained they were carried into the hall of the improvised hospital and given a number by order of arrival. Number 1 was treated first, number 2 second, and so on. The fact that numbe: I 7 might have a bullet in the abdomen „nd be bleeding internally would not secure preferential treatment for this number, though number 16 might merely have a shot through the calf. ‘Ordnung muss sein!’ (Order must prevail) is the German motto, and order prevailed .though human suffering might be thereby increased. If an officer entered with some wholly trifling, superficial wound, the doctors and orderlies, abandoning the patient, would slavishly spring to attention and dash hit her and thither in servile solicitude, though their patient might die for want of attention between whiles- The German hospital orderlies are by no means efficient. Students, medically rejected recruits, shirkers, embusques of all kinds, they have, for the most part, the vaguest notions of the care of the sick and wounded. Their training lias often consisted of a course of three lessons given by a professor to an audience of 150 persons. These are not the malicious strictures of a patriotic Belgian. lam a doctor, and know what I am talking about. Certainly in other countries these emergency ambulance orderlies leave something to be desired too, but Germany prepared for this war and has therefore no excuse. FEAR OF BRITISH AIRMEN. “The German soldiers have a wholesome respect for the British airmen. I shall never forget the terror in the face of a German railwayman, wounded in one of the British air raids, as he told me his story. I had been called in to attend his wounds. He was a guard in charge of a train and had been accustomed to make the journey from Ghent to Lille twice a week. He was with his train at Menin when a British airman bombed the railway there dining the battle of Neuv© Chapelle. He said that the English- 1 man came down so swiftly and at such a vertiginous angle that the German soldiers who had been shooting wildly at him thought he had been brought down, 'they gathered in a thick cluster looking upward, rejoicing in what they believed was a fine capture, when the airman, swooping down, suddenly dropped four bombs in quick succession into the middle of the group and then swooped aloft again and away. It was all over in 10 seconds but the slaughter was frightful. Tt was terrible, doctor,’ my informant said covering Ids face with his hands. (Seventeen German soldiers were killed outright- “ Life in Ghent is very quiet- We see the English newspapers fairly regularly. The ‘Daily Mail’ costs Is iJd a copy, ‘The Times’ 2s. The Duke of M urtemburg, who commands one of the German armies, has been there. He is loathed and feared by everybody, by his own men as by the Belgians. Wherever he goes he is held in horror. He is Ta plus grande canaille’ (the greatest rascal) one can imagine. There are three battalions of Landsturm and one battalion of very young recruits at Ghent. The young recruits display their martial ardour by bawling the ‘Hymn of Hate’ at all hours. One often hears their strong young voices rising to the groat, closing crescendo line, ‘We all have but one enemy, ENGLAND!’ BELGIAN CONTEMPT. “How the Belgian lower classes loathe the Germans- They never refer to them by name, they always speak of ‘Them’ (Hij in Flemish). They utterly despise the German soldier. ‘A dog with a gun,’ they call him in their homely Flemish phrase, signifying Ids brutish, obedience of orders. 1 have often delighted to hear the comments of the Ghent populace on the braggartnotices of German victories, imaginary or otherwise, placarded up throughout the town. They scan the notice carefully, then say very loudly in Flemish (which nearly all the Germans understand), for the benefit of any Germans in the vicinity : T wonder why there is no mention of the German victory at the Marne! or at Yores ! or at Neuve Chapelle!’ One day the Germans placarded Ghent with notices of a great victory in Poland, announcing the capture of 52,000 prisoners and 42 guns. During the night some unknown hand transferred the noughts from one numeral to (he other, so that the next day Ghent read of the capture of 52 Russian prisoners and 42,000 guns. Day and night the whole population of Belgium awaits (he coming of (lie Allies. The Germans have got our country, but they have not got our soul.’’ That is lire story of the Belgian doctor. It shows, I think, how utterly, how ignobly, the Germans have failed to win a hold on Belgium. Their “J'rightfulness’’ has caused them to be held up to the execration of Belgians for all time ; their clumsy attempts at reconciliation are despised as much as ■ their loud attempts to bully. Brutal, egoistic, and tactless, they have learnt in Belgium that there is at least one tiling stronger than the mailed fist, and that is the undying love of liberty in the breast of a free people.