THE GERMAN NAVAL PLOT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLII, Issue 10105, 12 October 1917, Page 4

THE GERMAN NAVAL PLOT.

It would he a mistake to attach too much importance to the German navy plot, particulars of which appear in our cables to-day. The Socialist deputies Dittman Haase'and Von. Therr, who are charged with complicity in the plot to disseminate revolutionary ideas throughout the German navy, with the view to tho German sailors and marines emulating the example of tho Russian Soldiers and Workmen's Councils, constitute but a very small section of the Socialists returned to the Reichstag. They are the associat-os of the famous Leibknecht, the one man who was courragoous enough to vote against supplies being granted lor the purposes or the war, when the first vote of credit was passed by the Reichstag in August, 1914. lycibknecht is now in gaol, undergoing a long term of imprisonment, for daring to address a May Day meeting at Potsdam, in favour of peace. The main body of Socialists in the Reichstag repudiated his earlier action, and went so far as to expel him from the Socialist group. Hut he still has his followers in tile little hand of Independent Socialists, who would gladly see the present regime ended and peace entered upon. That Deputies Dittman, Hasse and vonTherr should have been surreptitiously engaged in propaganda work amongst the German sailors is not surprising. The Kaiser's "Canal-hound Fleet" has little or nothing to do, save for its submarine enterprises, and the Gorman Government is simply paying the penalty of its cowardice in keeping its ''high seas fleet behind the minefields and fortifications with which it has hedged Heligoland and Wilhelmshaven about. Hail the vessels been at sea, the men would have been t<n> busily employed to think of mutiny, or to study those social problems, which have evidently been presented by the Independent Socialists for their enlightenement and edification. Germany may, some day, free herself from the thraldom of Prussian tryanny. but the indications are that the time for that has not yet arrived. The whole nation will have to undergo a radical change before that happens, because nine-tenths of the people are still obsessed with the belief that Germany's cause is triumphant on both land and sea, and that it is only the perfidy of the accursed British people that is keeping the Allied armies in the field against them. And, as Mr D. T. Curtin shows, in : 'The Land of the Deepening Shadow," the people are content to put up with the suffering and privations they are called upon to face, because they are convinced of the invincibility of their armies and navy, and further because, they believe it is necessary for the welfare of mankind generally that German hegemony should be established throughout the world.