THROUGH GERMAN SPECTACLES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XL, Issue 12727, 22 December 1915, Page 7

THROUGH GERMAN SPECTACLES.

BOMB FIENDS AND A SENSE Or' HUMOR, IMMORALITY OF REPRISALS FOR AIR RAIDS. Critics of the German people are pretty well agreed that, as a uatio:i, the Germans are wholly deficient in asense of humor. There are other qualities the lack of which has made German diplomacy a byword among nations who prize their honor, and others again whose absence has brought indelib'e shame on German arms; but it would doubtless be unjust to saddle German people as a whole with the sins whir a have reduced their rulers, both civil [ and military, to a moral status far !>••- low that of the average criminal. From this general indictment of a deficiency in the matter of humor, certain of the German newspapers must surely be excepted, among them the leading Leipzig organ. America has been seething with anger over the revelations concerning the German bomb fiends who, with the connivance of tli-.: German secret service, have dynamited more than a score of factories, blown up nearly a. score of ships, and caused many scores of casualties. PERIL OF THE HYPHENATED. At such a moment 'nothing but a singularly acute sense of humor could inspire ihe Neueste Nachrichten to make an appeal to German diplomacy to save the United States from the blunder of being too friendly with ourselves! This is what the Leipzig paper says:—

'"lt is high time for Germau diplomacy to step in with every particle of the force ■which it has at its command to put a, stop to England's machinations to convert the United States into one of her satrapies. "The German-American, conscious of his right to sow in his new home all that is best in tho German spirit, has long tolerated with mixed feelings the ■despicable attitude of his Englishthinking and feeling fellow-citizens and lis efforts to rob him of those rights. The idea, however, that his own children should, through England's cunning, be forcibly Anglicised and converted into enemes of his Fatherland is more than he can bear. '"To this characteristic English perfidy he longs to put an end. He is, of course, well aware whither any active opposition on his part will lead—namely, to an ominous civil war in America, but even that grim prospect has ceased to scare him. Should it really come to that, the responsibility will rest solely with the'blinded fools who have sold themselves body and soul to the Engish devil. •"Our Government should no longer hesitate to take the most drastic steps consistent with a quasi state of peace between the two countries to come to I the assistance of our -Germau kindred across the Atlantic, even though civil war be the outcome.' - BROKEN SPECTACLES. There is surely humor, too, of a kind, in tile Kreuzzeitung of Berlin, when it deals with Sir Edward Grey and M. Delcassc as "fallen statesmen":— "' 'Once upon a time there were two statesmen who were commonly believed to be able diplomats.' These will be the opening lines of a new fable, which yet is no fable at all, but a bitter, bioody truth. "Diplomacy needs a pair of spectacles made of bright, clear, cold glasses ; it lias no use for little, windows, clouded by hatred and personal ambition. "The two conspirators—fejir Edward Grey and Theophile Delcasse —were unable to grasp this. They wished to be Titans and storm the skies; they were only cloud-scrapers hovering in invisible vehicles over the masses of the uninitiated and the disillusioned, until a.i unforeseen thrust hurled them from their airy seat, and in their fall they smashed their rosy spectacles to atoms. "Then, at last they perceived the grey reality which in the fulness of the sinister events quickly turned to a blackness so dense, and impenetrable that the ardently longed for object became for ever obscured to their view. "The policy of these two was aimed at the destruction of a great friendly Stale, which dreamed not of conquests.' And to what has this policy led them Into a ghastly network of failure, to the brink of an abyss into which their two respective nations have now been plunged and from the depths of which others must perforce labor to rescue them." THE TEMPTATION OF ST. EDWARD. Moved, perhaps, by the same influence, the leading Bavarian newspaper, the Neueste Nachrichten, of Munich, puts forward a. new view of Sn Edward Grey, for whom it has hitherto had nothing but splenetic abuse: — •it would be as unreasonable to Maine Sir Edward Grey for the failure oi British Balkan policy as to charge him with responsibility for the war, the occurrence of which was rendered inevitable by ten years of preparation on the part of Great Britain ami her fellow plotters. "The pcrsonalitv of the Foreign

.Minister has as little to do with the result of the Anglo-French-Russian intrigues as has the personal character of the Archbishop of Canterbury. "All the same, Grey is indirectly responsible for the evil that has befallen the world. He did not desire war, blithe was incapable, of averting it. In private life a man of honor from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. he allowed himself to be tempted to lie to his own Cabinet and his own people, with the view—common to men of feeble calibre —that he was lying to a good purpose." A GAME FOR. TWO. ft. would be as futile to blame the Germans for their obliquity of vision as to upbraid an. ass because it brays. It appears, therefore, very natural that the Kolnische Volkszeitung, a Catholic organ, should, the very day after its severe attack of Zeppeluutis and after adjuring airmen in the most solemn and moving tones to cross the North Sea and utterly demolish everything animate and inanimate in London, lift up its voice and howl at the mere idea that aerial raids constitute a game at which two can very well play:— . '"Nothing is more revolting in English politics than its innate hypocrisy. Whenever English agents and statesmen deemed it fit to foment revolutions in any part of the world by means ofjnurJer ami massacre, they always did*so in the name*of humanity, liberty, or Christianity. "W'henever England desired to secure a petroleum concession, or one for a rajlway or port construction in Turkey, her agents, first in Macedonia and Albania, and latterly in Armenia, in a businesslike fashion set about fomenting massacres or rebellion in the nafcue Lot'"Christianity, until at length the Turkish Government got tired of the carnage and arose to action. "To cover the assassination of Serajevo England conjured forth the present world-war. Nor is it a mere coincidence, but rather a just adaptation of world history, that in the alliance of cur enemies it should be precisely those lands that are united in which regicide forms an important part of their historic traditions, such as England, Fiance, Russia, and Italy. ''Thus we can no longer wonder that to-day, in this twentieth century, in Christian (!) England, and in-the name, of Christianity, the demand should be made for aerial attacks on open German cities, on German women and children. Ti; is the old English hypocritical doctrine once again, that English soil is sacred hut foreign territory is outlawed."