[ESTABLISHED 1875.] Manawatu Daily Times The Oldest Manawatu Journal. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 2O 1913 USEFUL DISCLOSURES.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 2030, 20 September 1913, Page 4

[ESTABLISHED 1875.] Manawatu Daily Times The Oldest Manawatu Journal. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 2O 1913 USEFUL DISCLOSURES.

I It would be impossible for too much I publicity to be given to the dis- | closures in connection with the . recent Krupp affair. The Germany military and civil authorities are det-erving of every praise for the fearless w.*y in which th-,y insisted upon every phase of that very sordid ( affair being laid open to the public, > even though, in some respects, it was not pleasant for the nation. The * revelations are unpleasantly sugges tive of the influences which commercialism is able to exert in order to profit out of a war fever, if not out of actual war. This phase of the iirupp scandals ha* been considerably stressed by British journals We will very briefly recall the in cidents of the "affair." In October last year flerr Liebknecht, a Socialist Deputy received by post | copies of eighteen confidential re- ' ports sent to Krupps by Herr | B afcdt, their representative in [ Berlin. The information in these reports same from officials' in the German War Office, and Herr Liebkaeeht laid the documents before the War Minister. -Later several otb>ials were arrested and a search | at Krupp's offices in Esseu led to the I discovery of many documents. Later still Herr Liebknecht made the adI ditional revelation to the Reichtag that another German armament firm had secured the publication in a , French journal of a lalse report that Jb ranee was re-arming her artillery | The publication of this report was i obtained with the object of stimulat- [ ing Germany to further military I competition The trial of tbp officials i implicated in the Krupp affair to a i great extent confirmed the earlier I - suspicions and some of the partici- ( pants have been imprisoned. There 1 was no doub; Krupp's paid the German officials for secret information relative to Germany's armaments and , as to her future intentions in that i direction. Morals are drawn from this sordid tale by the British papers. One leading London daily said there was no reason to suppose that German armament firms were less scrupulous, or German officials le-s incorruptible than British. The paper goes on to point out that before the outbreak of the Franco Prussian war Ktupp's offered their guns to Napoleon 111. English, like foreign armament firms manufacture for the world, and compete with all other nations, so that any secrets they we'e to obtain would L*e of extreme busintss value. Nothing was said at the trial of the effort of a German firm to manufacture public opinion by means of false statements. Yet herein lie-" the real danger. In Germany, and not in Germany alone, the press is a well - established annexe to the armament industry. Krupps alone control several newspapers. The feeding of the British Press with information—often utterly false, as the legend about Krupps increasing their staff by 30,000 men in twelve months by armament firms never fails, whenever the war industry netds a fillip. Lies apart, the armaments firms cannot he blamed in a commercial world for making public opinion favourable to their business in terests. What is singular is the readiness of newspapers and public men to circulate, without inquiry, even the wildest stuff on their authority.