GERMANS AND BRITISH ENTERPRISES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 19 December 1914, Page 5

GERMANS AND BRITISH ENTERPRISES.

A citizen of Sydney recently received from a gentleman resident in London an interesting letter relating to the war, from which the following is extracted:—

I suppose you have read Bernhardi s book published some two of three years ago, which indicates quite clearly the intentions of the German people.

# "I think a great deal of the disillusionment here has arisen from the fact that most of the Radical papers were for years preaching the good faith and peaceable intentions of the Germans and they have had a sad awakening. I was told the other day that it was quite clear that they had misled their rea<fei;s ; The> bad for a long time been publishing statements issued to them by Wolfr s Telegraphic Bureau, which, of course, has been run in tlitt interests of the German Government. "Last winter I made six journeys to Berlin^ and it was extraordinary to see th© change which had come over the German people, particularly the military, who were very aggressive and arrogant, and evidently bursting for a fight. The attitude of the German peoplfc altogether towards foreign capital was very hostile, and most businesses with foreign capital in Germany had suffered from various forms of boycott. American motor-cars, sewing machines, and so on, had been pretty badly handled. Places like the White City which had been started in Berlin with British capital were harassed by police restrictions and had to close their doors. Usually those sort of things re-opened shortly afterwards under German auspices. "I am glad to see that the Australian people are taking the matter' seriously. Over in this country we have not sufficiently appreciated it yet. Personally, I doubt very much whether the war will be ov^r for another 12 or 18 months, at any rate, from the military point of view. It may come to an end pretty quickly from the economic point of view in Germany, as they are feeling the loss of foreign trade very acutely, and it is obvious that their plans for speedy victories have gone all agley. "I am told that for some weeks past lfc was almost impossible to get hold of a gold coin in Germany, as the Government had been making house to house visitations requiring everybody, to deliver iip their gold exchange for notes.''

Jim—"l'm in love, and the only disagreeable thing" about it is that the girl is older than 1 am." Jack—"How old are you now?" Twenty-two." "Make your mind easy, my boy. By the time you are twenty-one she'll be only twenty."