WAR RESPONSIBILITY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 21 April 1927, Page 5

WAR RESPONSIBILITY.

OFFICIAL GERMAN DOCUMENTS.

Wliat has been described as the ‘‘most gigantic whitewash book in the world” is now complete, save for its index, savs the “Daily Chronicle.” This is the immense' collection of 15,889 documents from its Foreign Office archives which the German Government has been publishing during the last five years under the title “Die Gross© Po'litik der Europaischen Ivabioette, 1871—1914.” The object is a piopagandist one: —to clear German dl.plomacv from the charge of having provoked the Great War, and thus to ■prepare the way for a. drastic revision of the neaoO' terms. The documents are printed in volumes of a small •quarto format, of which there are 39, ■including tlie new consignment of six volumes just received from Berlin. •But as several of them are in two parts the real number of volumes is 53. The total pages isi 22,024, and on an average 500 words of German go to each page, so that the hook contains over 11.000,000 words. It is ponderous in every ‘sense, reaching 1101 b avoirdupois, or nearly a hundredweight. 'The cost of the work must have been very heavy. By way of comparison it may be remarked that the British Foreign Office papers, which are now in course of publication for the period from 1898 to 1914, are only to fill 11 volumes.