GERMAN WORDS AND DEEDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15821, 19 January 1915, Page 6

GERMAN WORDS AND DEEDS

The late Administrator of German New Guinea, sailing for America under the terms of his capitulation to the Australians, spoke pleasantly of his sorrow at leaving his ''English friends'' and expressed himself as finding no words to express his ''admiration" for Australian women. The Belgians have not found German administrator's so genial and kindly, nor is it likely that Australian women would have received such respectful "admiration" had Germans come as victors to Sydney instead of as vanquished. Men and nations are to be judged not by the fair words they speak and the fine promises they make when they are powerless for evil but by the deeds they do when they feel themselves full of the "power" which has become the German idol. The fate of Belgium has taught us that there could be nothing more dreadful and horrible than to fall into the power of Germany, and we have been given every reason to think that the typical German would do everything and anything possible to bring our free British lands to that most piti-

able condition. Officially, Germany has no code of honour as understood among civilised nations. Her word is worthless : her treaties are "scraps of paper her boast is to be Hunnish and to emulate the foul fury of Attila : while the typical German, corrupted by an amazing national heathenism, apparently considers himself bound to plot and plan and spy and intrigue for the destruction of those to whom he professes friendship and to whose antiquated political moralities his egotistical "culture" makes him feel altogether superior. Doubtless there are many decent and self-respecting Germans in the world who are shocked at the degeneration of their old national ideals under the demoralising influence of Prussia, but every man who desires the success of Germany is the mortal enemy of the liberties of British lands and of the security of British peoples. Speak he never so fairly he would help make of any British dominion another Belgium, of any colonial city another Louvain. The bitter knowledge of this makes sardonic the complimentary speeches of reduced German administrators and explains the suspicious attitude of colonial publics to German residents. It is not for British peoples to treat helpless enemies as they would treat us were positions reversed, but it would be foolish of us to ignore the fact that in many cases nominal naturalisation is a hollow farce, connived at by German law to deceive the simple British, and that our unqualified hospitality to these foreigners within our gates commonly excites no reciprocal respect for our liberties and would be frequently abused to our sore hurt if opportunity offered. There can be no confidence in German words as long as Prussianised Germany remains a menace to civilisation, and there can be no respect or esteem in British minds for the German people as long as they aspire to tyrannise over free states whose liberties they evidently neither appreciate nor understand