The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 1917. MENE TEKEL

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9613, 20 March 1917, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 1917. MENE TEKEL

The desperate plight of the House of Romanoff has been promptly seized as an object lesson for the House, of Hohenzollcrn. When the Socialist deputy presented it to tho Gorman Reichstag the Junkers of that despicable body were furious. They knew that tho threatening Socialist, was denouncing their dominating body, the Agrarian and Junker section, as well ns the Kaiser, who, for all his posing, is in their hands as their servant. They know, in other words, that tho target of this mcnaco was tho fountain of honour and the ruthless wiolder of force. But they did not know that there are limits to tho endurance of even, tho most slavish nation, which Germany quite surely is- Thanks to Bismarck and tho men of Bismarck’s day, Germany has enjoyed forty years of progress, which an astonished world has accepted as phenomenal. It has been also a period of degradation, of which the true measure has been given to tho world by the war. Tho true character of representative government in Germany stands revealed by the war. It is a .sham set np for the masking of irresponsible autocracy claiming Divino right. A hundred incidents have demonstrated tho absolute powerlessness of the German Parliament. I’he last of them, tho Zahorn episode, startled the thinking men of Germany. But tho wildest imagination never went so far as to realise the horrors of the cult of Tvultur. They were foreshadowed in many writings and many speeches, particularly those of the Kaiser. But these were largely discounted as the ravings of madness. Some of the German leading writers were mad, the chief of them died in a mental hospital; and the Kaiser, as a megalomaniac, was even compared to Caligula, but few men thought he would ever achicvo that madness any more than ho would achieve the greatness of his ancestor Frederick. What would you? The Russian case was on a different footing. With all its faults, Kaiser-

ism enjoyed-the -prestige of efficiency) living on the feats of the great men who had achieved it. Russia, on the other hand, has been for years notorious for inefficiency." It was a deliberate inefficiency maintained for the benefit, of a class by murderous illegalities. The nation suffered disaster after disaster, but the tyranny, protecting itself at home by brute force, met outside remonstrance by the plea that no outsider could understand the complexities of the Russian character, of which the inside tyranny alone had any comprehension. At last Russia proved herself to he humanly as other nations are. The nation was, in spite of all the horrors of the tyranny, intensely patriotic. Mot realising this great fundamental tact, the tyranny deliberately planned to sacrifice it on the altar of war. When the I ‘glorious troops’’ of the Kaiser were, concentrated for their great campaign of tho Donajcc they knew that they were going to murder disciplined regiments of unarmed men. The Kaiser knew that the Russian tyranny had arranged a battue, for his armies, just as gamekeepers arrange battues of pheasants for the guests of their masters. Kot content with disarming the armies' of the nation, the tyranny betrayed to the encmv every plan of the commanders. The heroism of tho Russian troops baulked both tho cowardly ambition of the Kaiser and the diabolical treason of tho tyranny; and the hour of reckoning became a mere question of time. Tho hour has struck, and the Kaiser and the tyranny stand for ever frustrated and disgraced. In the very hour of revenge the discovery was made of the working of tho avaricious plans of the tyranny for the starvation iii the midst of plenty of the people. Its plans for repeating the • attempt to sacrifice tho army on the field had long been known. The worst chapter of human history, a disaster without a .single redeeming ray of light, has been closed by a patriotic and manly people. Is there anything different in the dark chapter of German history ? The German tyranny has struck down ten millions of the human race. From its inception in fraud and murder: for the murder of Sarajevo was without doubt as much a German as an Austrian crime, a crime of the mediaeval order —to the present moment there is not a crime on the blackest list of human wickedness ■ that it has not, committed.. Tho efficiency of its military'machine— a legacy from better taen —has given it a glamour throughout. The mendacity- of its rulers has concealed tho impending, downfall of that machine as weir as the failures of the crassly ignorant German diplomacy from one end of the world to tho other. But tho hour of collapse is at hand,and with it is moving in close attendance the hour of revelation. Germany will ask why hey sons have been slaughtered ; why - has black dishonour been heaped on i;hc German name; why hits the commerce of Germany been swept from the ocean; why have tho people of Germany been brought to starvation. The nation will ask also, why have these things been, when Germany' was enjoying a career of prosperous peaceful progress . which need never have been disturbed. When these crucial questions are put with tho accompaniment of a thundering invasion pressing on in furious revenge, mendacity will not furnish acceptable answer. Tho only possible answer to German tyranny will he the answer given by tho Russian nation to Russian tyranny. No other answer can make for the peace of the world.