Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1915. THE GREAT ENIGMA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, Issue XLVIII, 13 July 1915, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1915. THE GREAT ENIGMA.

THE whole world has taken to wonder-j ing in a dazed kind of way why the i Germans, who used to be very decent people, thoroughly domesticated, arid fond of children, have taken to behaving infinitely worse than a pack of wild beasts. In a large book entitled "Changing Germany/' Mr. Charles Tower, a London newspaper correspondent who-resided in Germany for several years before the war, endeavours to supply an answer to.the question. He boils It down to this—that Germany as a nation is like an individual "who cannot stand success." The insufferable manners of the Germans in peace time and their vile brutalities to women and children and wounded men and noncombatants in war time are all traced to this cause. The Germans were for generations the most poverty-stricken people ( in Europe. . Then they made money by robbing France. And having acquired moße y--by the straightforward procedure of open burglary—they became intolerable. Frederick the Great, who broke into Austria and stole Silesia, was the original Bill Sikes of Germany. Even Bismarck was only an imitator. Tho present- Kaiser, however, has made a lamentable failure of the job. He was caught while getting through the window of Belgium, .so'to speak, and though he is still struggling violently with his- captors, he has been prevented by main force from making his burg-larious-way to the pantry of Paris—where the silver spoons are kept. Mr. Charles Tower quotes a. number of incidents—some of them decidedly unsavory—to show how complete is the disappearance from Berlin : of the old style of Germans, made up of equal parts of poetry... domestic .sentiment,; and lager bier, although that pleasant| old chap is still to be found in the 1 rural districts. The. , acquisition .c-f wealth- by the Germans has been a calamity for the rest of the woild.

Mr. Tower tells his artless tale of brutality above and servility below, of riches breeding horrible, vices in the "officer class/' and of a temperamental inability in all classes to ruiderstand decent" behaviour. The author makes an excellent point when he writes: "At the bottom, German brutality before and after the war was based less 'perhaps upon the:.teachings of Nietzsche than upon the inability of a people upon whom has never passed the cleansing fire of Roman civilisa,'tion to understand sweet reasonableness." The.Germans distrust all. overtures of friendship. AH courtesy they regard like savages as weakness. They are infinitely worse now than they were 40 years ago. Mr. : Tower describes their more than doubtful amusements, their fettered press, their spies, their policy of hate, and their double-dyed duplicity.. He also describes some of the terrible things that German officers did in France to the civilian population.