GERMANS DOCILE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17324, 25 May 1918, Page 11

GERMANS DOCILE

REVOLT UNLIKELY. Mr H. G. Wells wants to encourage tho German people to overthrow the Kaiser by revolution. He believes it is within our power " absolutely to revolutionise the internal psychology of Germany." No more dangerous hope, in my judgment, oould po6Bibly bo planted in _ Allied breasts at thia hour (says the Berlin correspondent of tho London Daily Mail). I bow in admiration of Mr Wells's perspicacity in foreshadowing various engines of war. But in the realm of political probabilities in Germany I prefer the counsel of Mr Gerard: " The German nation is not one which makes revolutions. There will be scattered riote in Germany, but no simultaneous rising of the whole people. The officers of the army are all of one class, and of a class devoted to the ideals of autocracy. A revolution of the army is impossible; and at home there are only the boys and old men, easily kept in subjection by the police." Let ue, for heaven's sake, relegate "revolution" to the scrap-' heap to which we should long ago have banished " starvation." Both of these hopes were, are, and always 'Grill be. iridescent dreams. Mr Wells states that " access to German papers" would show that the Germans are ripe for revolutionary sentiment. He declares that " in_ the German' press there is far more criticism of militant imperialism than those who have no access to it cam imagine," and that " there is far franker criticism of militarism in Germany than there is of reactionary Toryism in this country, and it is more free to speak its mind." As readers of my paper know, I have unrestricted " access to German papers." I read 25 or 30 every day. I have done so, with brief interruptions, ever since the beginning pi the war. My eves are growing pceitively dim from looking for reliable evidence of revolutionary sentiment in Germany. I cannot find it. I have never found anything a tithe as revolutionary as Mr Wells's own proposal that " republican circles" should forthwith be organised in Great Britain I never see articles onehalf -s " upheavalish" as those published every week m a certain class organ in this country. The price of printing " criticism " of that sort in Germany is suppression and hard labour, as Harden and Liebknecht know. Does Mr Wells know that. President Wilson's eloquent appeal to the Germans to throw off the tyrannous yoke of militarism produced ? universal guffaw throughout the Fatherland? I do not mean a journalistic guffaw for, with few exceptions, newspaper opinion in Germany, like munition factories, is Government-controlled. 1 mean a _wavo of popular resentment, bitter and nation-wide, which welled up in countless public meetings—meetings of town councils, chambers of commerce, universities, public schools, trade bodies of all sorts, churches, and in practically every form of organised life in the country. But possibly Mr Welle relies on German " Liberalism'' and Socialism to light the revolutionary fire. He is building on sands. Every '' Liberal" or Socialistic} utterance in Germany, almost without noteworthy exception, has pleaded for peace on tho terms of acknowledged German victory. I refer to utterances on which there is no restraint—in the Reichstag and the Prussian Diet. The speakers who deliver them "grouse" in tho traditional manner about the iniquities oi Junker rule. But they never indicate any 'ntention to smash it by force. They make what the Germans call "a fist,in their pockets." Revolutions are not born in that region. Political revolutions spring from a people's intelligence ae well as their woe. Mr Wells pays small tribute to tho intelligence of Germans if ho imagines they are going to accept an Allied victory—ho contemplates nothing else—while their own arms are undefeated. Thero is iust one way to help the German people to shake off the oppressing coils. That is to make them see that militarism is a bad investment. We shall accomplish that end _b.v defeating militarism in trio field. That is the " point." it seems to me, that we shall do best to " stick to."