WAR HORRORS IMAGINARY.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 1 October 1927, Page 5

WAR HORRORS IMAGINARY.

GERMANY’S DECLARATION.

SHADOWS ON HOPEFUL FRIENDSHIP

(Received Friday, 7.35 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 30. Colour is lent to suggestions of Franco-German coolness at Geneva, resulting from President von Hindenhurg’s Tanneburg war-guilt speech and the Belgo-Gemian controversy regarding an atrocities’ inquiry, by an interview with Dr. Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, published in the ‘ * Petit Parisienne,’ ’ in which he admitted that certain shadows still fall across Franco-German friendship. But he is convinced they will soon pass. He said that Germany’s collaboration obviously cannot produce a maximum result from a pacific standpoint until certain problems on which depend a lasting good understanding between the two countries have been solved. He concluded with a wish soon to see a league in which Germans and Frenchmen were able to unite without a shadow. The future of Eurppc was only assured if nations instead of thinking exclusively of their own interests had the courage to remember the Interests of others. The French and Belgian press are most excited about the declaration of Doctor Ludwig Herz, expert adviser to the German Parlimentary Commission investigating war guilt, that all the supposed atrocities of which the Belgian people accused the Germans were merely visions sustained by collective .hallucination —in other words, the horrors did not exist except in the imagination of the people.

The French scathingly comment that Dr. Herz is himself the victim of this disease and that his individual hallucination passes the bounds of iodiosyncracy and borders of idiocy. Meantime Germany is preparing to celebrate President von Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday on Sunday, when another speech is inevitable. The whole Palace will be decorated with flowers on Saturday night while the President is sleeping.