SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1914. GERMANY'S WAY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 17 October 1914, Page 4

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1914. GERMANY'S WAY.

A cable message receive I during the week states that London newspapers liave been publishing ex.; acts from the memoranda of the la^e Captain Bertrand'Stewart, They surely do well in doing this, and it would also be well if the press throughout the Empire, especially at, the present crisis, were to dwell with emphasis on the lesson taught by Captain Stewart's personal experiences and observations in Germany. They teach a great deal, which should be .thoroughly well known and never forgotten by British citizens, whether they live in the homeland or in the oversea dominions. In the important regions of philosophy, literature and industry, the German people stand in the front rank, but in government and

the principles of government, they are about five hundred years behind the .times. - In this connection —except with respect to organisation, in which they stand very "high—they are on a level not much above that of an African tribe; that is, in the process of its administration, their political system is almost primitively barbabrousj and it certainly is distinctly unjust and inhuman in its effects. It is necessary that all British people should remember this) for Germany's object in the present war, is not only to conquer France and subjugate Belgium and Holland, but to bring Britain, too, under her iron heel, and to impose her own military despotism and her political tyranny on the free institutions of her victims. It ! is, therefore, no exaggeration to say1 that the war is a war between barbarism and civilisation, despotism and freedom; and that Germany stands, in the military and political spheres at anyrate, for barbarism aiid despotism. The late Captain Stewart's testimony in this connection is most convincingly clear and strong; yet he is only one of a great cloud of witnesses who, not only throughout the world, but in Germany itself, testify to the same effect. It may be remembered that in August, 1911, Captain Stewart was arrested at Bremen in Germany on a charge of espionage, and after a trial that was tx malignant and grotesque mockery of justice and fairness, was sentenced to be detained in a fortress for three years and six months. There was only one! witness against him, and he was a worthless, vicious creature, employed as a decoy by the German military authorities. When Captain Stewart was

i released—which he • was before serving his unjust sentence to its full limit—he ; returned to England, and; shortly after--wards began to record his experiences in i writing. A memorandum drawn up by ■ him was circulated in the colonies, and 1 the National Review for June published an instructive article written by him on the subject. It may be stated parenthetically here that Captain Stewart went to the front with the first* British expeditionary force, and his-was one of the first lives to be lost on the British side. But what he wrote still stands as a true testimony concerning German methods. "Let us (he wrote) understand Germany's position. She has learnt that the policy of open hostility to England at all times does not pay, because it keeps us too much on the qui vive, and because it strengthens the hand's of those who urge that full preparations should be made to meet any German act of aggression. Hence a show, of friendliness has been assumed in the hope that she may obtain concessions from us, and that the British nation, with its proverbially short'memory, will be lulled into a feeling of false security. But what is really her present position as regards ourselves? There hav 6 been pleasant speeches by the German Ambassador. But has there been a reduction of one soldier or one sailor as a proof of this friendliness On the contrary!" Then, speaking from his own personal experience, he told how a prisoner might be kept six months in a cell waiting for a 'trial timed to suit the political exigencies of the moment. • A penniless agent provocateur, the creature of the Government—and already convicted of every sort of crime—may .try, but fail, to provoke the commission of some act against the law and yet be the only witness against the prisoner. This man's perjury, admitted in the secrecy of the magistrate's" room-as the prosecution is careful to arrange—counts for nothing Then, worst of all, a prisoner may be tried behind closed doors despite »11 his protests; lying statements, which the prisoner is given no chance to deny in public,, may be published for political mirposes; and a. judgment given absolutely contrary to the evidence and the admissions of "the prosecution because it may be politically useful, or an agitation may be in progress for more ships." Captain Stewart added that all this was justice—according to German political and military standards, and also right according to the same standards. But !m summing it all up. he asked very pertinently indeed-: "Is this, and the. Sabre L,aw exemplified at Zabern, and the treatment of their conquered r>rovinces, a svstem vhicH the.most callow i amongst.us would wish to see imposed on anv people, whatever their r.oce?" Yet this style of justice and govern- :

ment under Sabre Law are amongst the blessings which Germany would shower upon the world, and especially upon tho British people, were she to win in the present war. Truly an heroic ambition for Germany, and not less an inviting prospect for the British people, who, however, knowing the facts and bearing them steadily in mind, may be trusted to save or rescue themselves and their friends, with their friends' assistance, from, the fate intended for them by the Kaiser and his counsellors.