GERMANY'S CRIMINALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17112, 18 March 1919, Page 3

GERMANY'S CRIMINALS.

MUTUAL RE»B« IMI NATIONS,, || EX-KAISEK AXD HIS SON". •' I ATTEMPTS TO AVOID BLAME. j The Germans "have no lunger the heaifc ! i r > argue that they did not choose war. j Officer? cower before their men or cravenlv join tti»ir revolutionary societies. No one dares raise the cry '-hat Germany ha? not been guilty, writes the special representative of the Sydney Sun from London, under date Decern ocr 6. j There is Litter truth in the- Herman gibe, that Wiiheim lias brought, six grown sons alive through the war, wherein he ordained at leart six million deaths. But Wiihelm, ovei whom the shadow of the gallows is to-day very real, crios that he is not guilty. They say that he spends much time now in prayer, and that a light burns at his window long into the night, while he writes with feverish speed his personal defence. So far as this has besn published it shows him to be a very ordinary liar. It 1 claims, over his own signature, that Bethmann Holhveg and von Jagow sent him away to Norway and told him nothing, thft he learnt, of the dangers of war only through Norwegian newspapers, and that he returned too lato to prevent tho conflict. Bethmann Hollweg has emerged from his mouse's hole at Hohenfijow to deny ,j thai this was so. Independent evidenca comes from the Norwegian journalists, whose duty it was during the Kaiser's cruise to report his doings. They say; that wherever lie stayed wireless communication was established, and messages were constantly exchanged. It was notorious in the Norwegian telegraph service that the Kaiser received far more telegrams than on previous visits. He seldom landed, being so occup ed. And when ott one occasion he spent a few days in a fjord, where mountains prevented wire- 1 less telegraphy, a destroyer came daily to deliver and ■collect messages. The Kaiser's whine that his Ministers and generals told him " nothing" is one of tho most inglorious episodes of bis career. " The Other Fellow.'' > Princes and princel'ngs hasten to dis- ■ avow the crime. They no longer deny i that Germany planned and provoked war. But they say it was " the other fellow in Germany." The Crown Prince throws in ( ; a passing testimony that " father, I am [ sure, never consented," but his long in- J i terview with the American correspondents I shows primary concern for his own skin. , . Tho one pleasing and amusing aspect? ! of the Crown Prince's defence is ill tho anxiety with which Wilhelm Junior, tba man who told Mr. Gerard that there would be " a jolly war when I come to the throne, if not before"— his supposed military reputation. His masterly military intuition, he says, told him in October, 1914, that the wax was lost; it. 1 was lost then by the nervous follies of the general staff; bo was opposed to tho Verdun offensive, "though for three days I did very well, and would have won if 11 had been property supported"—the cry; 'of every general; he quarrelled with Ludendorff and sought peace. The Crown Prince, on his own showing, was frequently told to mind hie own business. Tho Germans will see what a) tragedy it is that the business of this i little-minded man was, as he says, " t<j run armies." Revelation ol State Papers. More Important are the revelations front State papers published in Munich, Vienna, and Beilin. Is it by accident! that they put tho whole blame on tha Kaiser and the utterly discredited Great! General Staff? Or is the Kaiser to bo the victim to hang on the tree! Bethmann has more respect. BfltiiJ mann's scapegoat is von Tirpitz. Ho de- 1 clares it was above all tho naval policy " which led us into the most dangerous antagonisms." Tho naval staff, supported by the Hohenzollerns, and all-powerful ' because of their newspapers and their appeals to the peoples imagination, insisted* upon a naval policy which musti bring English opposition. To this the 'Frankfort Zeitung, savagely beating its old idol, replies:— " Herr von Bothmann Hollweg himself declared in public that the English Gov. I ernment strove loyally and successfully. for the composition of the Balkan troublesEven If that declaration had been only diplomatic deception— wo do not. i believe—and if his real conviction was j that England was making for war, what. , madness must have controlled a policy i which was absolutely incapable of findj ing means to conciliate either England or Russia by concessions in this direction or that, and which now, after our unparalleled bankruptcy, still repeats with, positively stupid stubbornness—'l had to do it; von Tirpitz made me!' " Von Mueller in Print. One of the last defenders of Tirpitfl is Captain von Mueller, who fought the Emde'n gallantly against H.M.A.S. Sydney. He has sent an open letter to the Berlin newspapers, claiming that German. ships built by Tirpitz are not inferior to British warships, and that the Effldeti was as good as the Sydney, except that she had not.beavy enough guns. Ho defends the submarine warfare. That campaign, he asserts, would have 6\iccceded had it been inaugurated as Tirpitz wished • in 1916. But he pitifully admits that the moral forces of Germany have so collapsed and the navy gone to such ruin that there is no saying whether ally navy, can be built up again. ' Even Baffin, in his will, accepted tho view that Germany's day at sea woidd have to wait for many generations. He left as his last gift to the German people r - programme for peace, based upon an appeal to the generosity of the Allies to permit the Germans to use their own merchant fleets, provided that ships built in Germany over a long period of years were given to the Allies. Anything, he thought, rather than have the German raer-< cantile flag removed from the oceans. _ 1 doubt if Germany will be left wits a s : ngle ship upon which to hoist her - ensign. The British Cabinet has already agreed to a policy entailing surrender o£ everything that f'oats. Nor is Germany's case helped by her recriminations and recantations. _ \Vorso than any terms that call inflicted upon her is the moral blight under winch she llud come. Nothing but hard punishment and deep reform will remove that. Generations of Germans will come and go before the race can stand in equal maun hood with the peoples of the world.