HINDENBURG ON TRIAL.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14705, 4 June 1920, Page 6

HINDENBURG ON TRIAL.

(Bv G. H. Perris.) . Tr-_l-_l.--.r_ 4„ n4- trisll-

Himdonburg is at length on trial--I not before any court oi lawyers, but ! more freeh" before a mightier .mn. That, in recalling his vou|h, his professional career, and his part in the war, he nowhere acknowledges the impeachment- matters nothing; his prido cannot blind, our suffering. He was not I among the chief —being but a retired corps commander —of those who six i Tears ago brought heavy woes upon- si too credulous world. His part in the grand crime is rather that lie gladly made himself the instrument of astuter -men, and that his ruthless, obstinate spirit helped much to aggravate and prolong'the agony. This he is far from denying, or apologising for. He would have prolonged the agonv still further had lie been allowed. It is a- plea of unqualified jus-, tiiication, not Qlily against the Allies, but against his oirti country men, who at last awoke from the spell he had put upon them and sent him packing. In the end, "the homeland collapsed sooner than the Army. ... <-.ould there be anything more crazy than tae idea of making life impossible for tne Armv P Has a greater crime ever had its origin in human thought and human hatred?" ' Thus at last the spleen hitherto reI served for the "too vivacious Fienth, l and the unskilful but persistent Hri- ! tish, was turned against his own people. And still the grim warriou keeps iup his bluff. "The old German spin, •will descend upon us again. . . i;roiti the tempestuous seas of our nn.ion.'j life will once more emerge that roels —the German Imperial House-to : which the hopes of our fathers citing in days of yore." This boob is no-t to-be scanned foi am revelation of important military secrets, though it throws useful sidelights on many episodes of the v,:i:. and especially its later V- itlli 'his gaze,• as ho savs, ' steaal;istl\ ct.rected forward arid- 'outward, • Marshal is more restrained nv treating, the points-of soldierly interest than in some of the secret reports that, have long been in the Possession of"tliP Allied' Intelligence Departments. (Incidentally, he is .as emphatic- on the efficiency 'of these departments as scornful of his own spy system.) ' Tt mav be in part, because he is now addressing an audience of general readers. Bevond this, however, we feel that hie 'rare stature and the sway lie exercised as a soldier arose from moral more than from intellectual dualities. That the keener brain of Ludendorff was content- to work through an overshadowing partnership is but the latest, testimony to the ancient principle that in war as in any other human conflict the moral and not thfe material factors are those of dominant importance.

It is the insistently-throbbing undertone of a queer, archaic morality that holds us in this life-story of an 'infatuated and impenitent Junker, that redeems it from contempt, and changes the venue of tfie trial at least in tins sense, that in our minds the collective eclipses the individual crime, and an evil history speaks through the drama as did the chorus in an old Greek play. Hindenburg is not above .untruths, yet we feel somehow that they arc not the essential stuff in him. He dogged millions of men to death, and Broke millions of women's hearts; yet, after reading this book, I cannot dismiss liiin as a murderous brute. Somewhere within that ponderous form, smothered by a lifetime of maiming habit and cen-turies-old superstition, there in a spark of the divine fire.

"It was 011 March 21 (1918) in St. Quentin, which was under heavy English fire. (iCEman columns were blocking tile bombarded streets. Enemy prisoners coming from the battle and carrying our wounded were forced to halt'. They laid their burdens down. A severely wounded German private, far nearer'death than life, raised his stiffening arm and .groaned to his hearer, who was bending over him: 'Mutter, Mutter.' The English ear understood the. German sound. The Tommy knelt down by the side of the grenadier, stroked his cold hand, and said: 'Mother, yes; Mother is here!' " What are we to make of tliat from the man who pretends, on other pages, to believe that England was only actuated by greed? Or of this glimpt'c of another "German General," with whom he was walking when a number of Allied prisoners passed:— When we reached the head of one of these columns he had a halt and spoke to the enemy officers a fewwords of praise of the bravery of their troops, consoling them with the reflection that the bitterest fate, that of capture, was often the lot of those who had shown the greatest courage. His words seemed to produce a great effect, especially on a very tall young officer who had been hanging his head as if from shame. The thin form now straightened itself like a young fir tree freed from the weight of snow, and its grateful glance met the eyes—of my Emperor!' The last phrase, is dramatically abbreviated—for Hindenburg, it -""is usually "my all-highest War Lord," or "my all-gracious King and Master." In the same spirit, every prince or grand duke he mets is a noble, and superb personage; and his youthful memories are not soiled by any sort of contact with the vulgar mass of laboring humanity. A son of "the old mon-archical-conservative stock of Prussia," trained by his parents to unconditional obedience, and the kind of force proper to a wild borderland in feudal times, he is a terrible instance of how the virtues of one age become the vices of another. And, since the German people at last see' it so, we may leave them the custody of the fallen mastodon.