The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1918. THE TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 9869, 15 January 1918, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1918. THE TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY

Professor Trueblood has recently given ns the opinion of a hundred million Americans about Gorman behaviour and German aims. To them now the fiction that the Prussian leaders are separated by an impassable gulf from tbe people, no longer holds even a semblance of truth. In the beginning, like the pacifists of to-day, they found it impossible to believe the evidence put before them of the system of Ger'man frightfulness at work. Had they been ordered into the war against the objects of many well-proved indictments, they would have raised', as the Professor said, a first-class rebellion. But, unlike, the pacifists, they were without axes to grind. They were keen only for the truth. The Lusitania murders and tho lying explanations added to the evidence, the Mexican plot of the scoundrel Zimmermann swelled the addition; the hideous cold cruelties of the first Gorman retreat brought overwhelming conviction. Then the whole bad story of German aggressive depravity stood revealed l before the American public, from the Pptsdam meeting that engineered the war, through the deliberate breach of Begian neutrality, the massacres, burnings, exactions and deportations of Germany in Franco and other victimised" countries, to the final ordered coldblooded fiendishness of tbe retreats from the Somme and ' neighbouring areas. There was no longer any possibility of holding the hundred! millions of the United States. Even the men of Gorman blood, without exception of the Ajnorioans of German birth, stood with the rest as citizens of the United States, revolted by the horrible practices of the German attempt to conquer the world. The President took hold of that righteous temper of his people, proclaimed war with their enthusiastic approval, and- organised their forces with astonishing celerity. Now, half a million trained troops are in the firing line, a million stand ready to follow at once, and many millions of men are ready to begin their qualification for war. At the same time the fleet of the United States i,s in the thick of it doing splendid service.

The President has recently stated with clearness the object that this vast determination is directed to attain. It is, inter alia, the restitution and reparation of Belgium, Northern France, the occupied districts of Russia and of the other countries victims of the unprincipled German aggression. The reply is -unofficially an unqualified negative. There will bo no official reply except by the sword, as various high-placed Germans have declared. The reason, which must make this determination of the American people and of all the Entente people •who are with the Americans absolutely, if possible considerably stronger, has been supplied in the powerful booh of Herr S. Grumbach, which has recently reached us —in an abbreviated translation by Mr Ellis Barber setting forth the objects demanded by all classes of the German people, the governing classes, the business and agricultural classes, the intellectual classes, and' the great majority of the Socialists. Of these demands the most unequivocal and direct are those of the men of business, industrial, and agricultural, and the intellectuals. Ihe first is set forth in a petition to the Chancellor and all the State Governrnonus of Germany in the year IUIS, the text of which is given verbatim in the professor’s book and reproduced in tho abbreviated translation (we publish it in to-day’s issue. this petition asks for the annexation of Belgium and Northern France from Belfort, by Verdun, to tho mouth of tho Somme. The reasons given are, (1) strategic, partly on account of the naval value of the coast line; partly because of the command the new frontier will give over the rest of France; (2) industrial and progressive, chiefly as transferring to Ger-

many valuable territory for German habitation; the coal mines of Belgium and. Northern France, as yielding vast quantities of coal far superior to anything in Germany; and the iron deposits of Lorraine, which are indispensable for German munition »purposos, and would have been included in tho original seizure of Lorraine but for an error of the geologists consulted by Bismarck before the signature of the Treaty of Frankfort. Then follows a condition so cynical and Satanic as to make the blood of any reader of decent feeling freeze with horror. All property, asks this petition of German citizens, in those districts, industrial and landed, must bo confiscated and given to German hands so as to give Germany their full industrial, economic, and land power. France is to indemnify the expropriated, who may be deported over the border. And the closing infamy of the proposal is that whatever proportion of the original population remains in its old country is to be without political power—so as not to disturb the political serenity of the German Empire—and only to be employed in labour of a temporary character. In plain words, the remnant of the population is to be reduced to slavery. This is tho demand in the twentieth century of German Kultur, which pretends that the Gierman race is tho superior in all things to every other on the face of the earth. The same awful demand is made in this petition for the treatment of the Russian territories occupied by the Gorman armies and of their peoples. In addition, both Franco and Russia are to pay huge indemnities —France in which Britain cam. supply; Russia in land, in the shape of lands taken from the present Russian owners and handed over to Germany free for a great German colonisation. The petition is signed by th,o representatives of six associations, with an aggregate of many millions of members. The names are tho League of Agriculturists, the German Peasant League, the Westphalian Peasant Society, the Central Association of German Industrialists, the League of Industrialists, and the German Middle Class Association.

The petition of tho Intellectuals is on the same lines exactly, fh© only difference being that it is better expressed. The signatories are 1341, amongst them 352 university professors, 159 educationists and clergymen, 145 high officials, 148 judges and lawyers, 40 Parliamentarians, 18 retired admirals and ■ generals, 182 business men, 52 agriculturists, 252 artiste, authors, and publishers. There is a great deal more in the matter of demands of Germans of all classes, taken from speeches, articles, and documents extending into the year 1916. But the date is immaterial, for (-1) a Dutch professor has, as we showed the other day, brought this damning German evidence up to date, and (2) the exposure of tire fraud. attempted by the German representatives at Brest-Litovsk, which they are still trying to establish, even by threats of remorselessly continuing the war by massacring the armies of Russia ruined by the idiocy of the Revolution —the exposure of this fraud proves that the Government of Germany is now trying be carry out in the, East the programme demanded by these citizens and_ intellectuals of Germany. . Tho subject cannot be , completed without another reference, and its presentment will not bo complete without the text of the second petition, which wo propose to publish presently. One we publish to-day as stated above. Enough for the present that it is abundantly demonstrated that the Message of President, Wilson and the speech of Mr Lloyd George cannot he answered by Germany, because Germany intends to keep the occupied territories,' confiscate all their properties, and enslave their populations. This is the Truth about Germany.