GERMANY HITTING THE HIGH SPOTS

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3280, 25 February 1926, Page 10

GERMANY HITTING THE HIGH SPOTS

While Two Million

PIDDLING WHILE BERLIN SEEKS TOIL I LONDON, TON 15. The Berlin correspondent of the Morning Post states that (he economic situation of Germany is anohijalous. | There are over two millions uni employed, and there is much distress j among the workers. Bankruptcies are growing at “an unprecedented [rate, and many old-established busi- . nesses are stopping. Working men complain thal the unemployment pay is despicable. An unemployed man, : and his wife receive only thirteen j marks in Berlin, though the lowest 1 a man and his wife can live on is | twenty-six marks. j Yet gaiety in Berlin is greater than lit has been for years. Church and other organisations are begging the people to desist from holding masque balls and other carnival revelry while distress is prevalent, but the pupae have gone to the other extreme. It is calculated that more than £250,000,000 has been lent to Gerr many since August, 1924. Financiers arc very optimistic, especially as Americans are buying largo parcels of shares in industrial enterprise. THE NEW GERMANY. . ! SPORT REPLACES DRILL. For the average onlooker in Germany, writes the Berlin correspondent of the London “Observer,”; cer-i tpin very definite characteristics emerge from the seven lean years between the Versailles Treaty of Peace and the Locarno Security Pact, and should satisfy those outside that a genuinely new Germany has been built up on the ruins of the old.

Asking oneself at the outset how far the now Republic with a HTndenburg at the head would strike a complete stranger to Germany during the past seven years. ..certain picturesque details strike the imagination atj once. The most, reactionary shop-j keepers have at last" painted out the i sign that they were. purveyors to: the I Court—no matter which Court; there were so many of Them. The palaces in Berlin and petty capitals have been | turned into Government offices. There j are no, brilliant, uniforms in . thej streets. .Royal enclosures and parks; are open to the public. : But to set against this the schools! and streets, dedicated to various j members . of .ox-reigning families,'the i countless Hohcnzollern avenues and 1 .Wilhelm Gymnasia have retained their titles. £ It. was found-impossible a 1 short while ago in Berlin to change, the.name,of any leading street in the; centre of traffic into that of “Frle-1 drich Ebert Strasse.” Friction with Hungarian patriots was preferred, and j the handsome “Budapest-Strassd" | was rechristened in honour ,of the! first Socialist President. Berlin taxi-j drivers still ask, "Which Wilhelm-1 Strasse?’’. and the fare, if new to the' city, has a choice of seven or eight; important thoroughfares of thafTiamo | within the' radius. > . |

The men around the Kaiser have vanished from public life, leaving only Admiral Von'. Tirpitz. Luflendorff, who refused to accept facts, has dwindled to a cipher. Another pillar of the Republic, Dr. Walter' Simons, head of the Supreme Court,, an office of extraordinary Influence is a convert to the Republican system only after a long struggle. Yet his conversion is genuine. Another powerful figure Genera! von Seeckt. organiser of the now army, and often considered the mightiest man in Germany, saved the Republic at the time of the Kapp Putsch. This is the man of .mystery whose thoughts no one can guess, whose erect figure on his solitary daily rides through the Tiegarten is grim as his mask-liko. tightly-drawn features that have earned him the popular title of “The Death-Head. Yet nobody suspects the Ge’neral of being democratic at heart, Only Dr ; Schacht, who stabilised the, currency j and controls Germany’s economics

I through the Reichsbank, is a new man, born of the Republic alone. The Republicans. In the party arena itself Dr. Stresemann, easily the most powerful politician in Germany to-day, played a very small part in the pre-war Reichstag. His is the only non-programme : party; his electors the black-coated citizens of the nation who reverence I the past, but are forced by expediency jto go with the times. Not so very ■ far behind him in influence are 'Catholic leaders who played *to part at all under the old regime: Fehrenbach, Marx, and Wi'rth. Not even i the masses of the great Social Demoncratic Party which, if its heads were in proportion to its body, would carry all before it, are more typical of the new spirit in the government of the nation than the influence weilded by these men, 1 ,

The Republic, handicapped at' first by the ballast carried over from the old,regime, in all branches of public life has been swept clean from the beginning in the realms of art—perhaps because the true artistic temperament cannot be conseiVative. Gerhardt Hauptmann was not eligible at Court in the old days; his is the most venerated name in literature to-day. The Socialist director of the State Theatre! in Berlin, Dr. Jessner, broke down | (he stuffy supersUtion of how classics | should be mountedsand played, and I the oldest reactionaries have become staunchest supporters. All over the Reich the old Court theatres are Ee•ing “revolutionised.” The New Thing.

But the really new thing in " Germany is that everywhere sports clubs for young' people occupy the old military drill grounds, as regards the real spread of games on grass, Germany always will be handicapped owing to the price of ground. Their huge Sunday parades of these sports clubs, in the lightest aquatic or gymnastic clothing, are a sublimation of the old military precision. This is as remarkable in its way as the growth of the chemical industry, of progress in air, craft, the recrudescence of the mercantile marine, or the fact tthaf all the old-established firms are sending out Christmas catalogues in exactly (ho same way as though the years of inflation had never been, while all those of new mushroom growth have vanished —as remarkable even as that servant-girls are returning to their old practices of asking humbly for a written “character” and compare “references” of better-class places 'jealously,, or that journalists at official Ppess meetings walk on crowned eagles embossed in parquet floors, and may sit on a crimson throne at will, •