POST-WAR GERMANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21360, 13 June 1931, Page 4

POST-WAR GERMANY

STUDIES' OF VARIOUS ASPECTS " Modern Germanics: As Seen By An Englishwoman,” By Cicely Hamilton. Illustrated. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. (7s 6d net.)/ “The Uneasy Triangle: Four Years of tho Occupation." As seen by “Apex.” London: John Murray. (7s Gd net.) " Brush Up Your German." By J. B. C. Grundy, M.A. (Cantab.), Ph.D, (Lend.). Illustrated. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. (2s 6d net.) " A Post-War Museum." Cartoons by George Grosz. Criterion Miscellany, No. 31. London: Faber and Faber. (Is net.) Miss Cicely Hamilton’s “Modern Germanics ” ig an informal, but always informative, record of the v author’s impressions during, some months spent wandering in Germany. “Its sources of information vary from scraps of talk heard in third-class railway carriages,” she says, “ to facts provided by, State and municipal officials.” It . is, nevertheless, by no means a scrap-book of impressions. Miss Hamilton has been a close and interested observer; of the developments in modern Germany that the reader, if he travelled there, would remark upon and like to investigate. Under separate chapter headings she writes of the theatre, with special regard to its political tendencies; of the passion of the youth of Germany for games and physical culture: of the Youth Movement in its general influences on the lives of millions of younger Germans, both helpful to the, nation and dangerous; of the new style's' of architecture (a challenging and impressive chapter, this); of the attitude of _ the German people towards Great Britain, and the view that the German child is being given of the Great War; and of the “Cult of the Bare,”/which she considers generally to be,,copijnended. She is, convinced that whatever their difficulties and mistakes, “ these German people will surely, in the end, pull through.” A people that'has raised itself, in a few short years, from the abasement of lost war, from the ruin of inflation and the seizure of the Ruhr is a people that even those nations that love it not must respect. Nor is that all; it has ~ inaugurated new systems and worked • them, cultivated an air-sense, in face of, all discouragement, and trained its children in new health. It has built up again its shattered and disintegrated industries; and less than 10 years after the_ Treaty of Versailles had robbed it of its merchant fleet, it launched a new wonder-ship to win for Germany the Blue Riband of the Atlantic. . . No light achievements, these, for 5 a people struggling up from catastrophe; but perhaps even more indicative of strength is the fact that, in the hour of misery and hardship, it was seized with the creative impulse, showed a new skill in the art' of literature and was fired with new inspiration in the art of building. “Modern Germanics ” is informed with considerable literary grace, and is very pleasantly illustrated, particularly with photographic reproductions of tlie new types of German architecture. ¥ ¥ *

The German view of the occupation, after the first bitterness had worn off, and,the view to which ‘"Apex” definitely inclines, can best bo epitomised, perhaps, * n , cartoon from a Berlin newspaper which makes the frontispiece of “The Uneasy Triangle.” It shows the departing French “ Captain Saligot ” leaving the interallied headquarters in Wiesbaden, accompanied by three lady friends and a 'native servant carrying the valuables from the house, then a “ close up ” of the disorder remaining, and finally the English “ Colonel Pearsoap,” who is taking over, entering accompanied by a staff of charwomen and an orderly laden with footballs and tennis rackets. Indeed, the cartoon apparently speaks the, truth. When “Apex” moved from Cologne to Wiesbaden with the British forces in 1925 the leading hotel, at which the French command had been installed, was found to be infested with bugs, and could not be occupied until it had been .fumigated. The Germans steadily and often humorously and ingeniously made the French occupation difficult, and the British seemed invariably to have to straighten things up. In the meantime “Apex,” who was with the British Army of the Rhine from 1923 to 1927, was gradually becoming more and more sympathetic towards the Germans, and. saw Germany rise from the abjectness of war criminals to a status of equality with the Allies as a member of the League of Nations. He came in touch with the French and Germans officially, and through German family connections had exceptional opportunities of meeting Germans privately. Everywhere -was a hatred and distrust of the French, and the British ivere by no means loved. “The Uneasy Triangle” is a candid, graphic book, which would be more disturbing had not the evacuation of the Rhine now taken place. * * *

Dr Grundy’s “Brush Up Your German ” is a companion volume to Dr W. G. Hartog’s “Brush Up Your French,” of which some 40,000 copies have been sold. The author is a master at Shrewsbury, and his purpose is to provide examples of German as she is spoken today. There are in all 55 entertaining conversations, each accompanied by an English translation and amusingly illustrated with sketches by R. R. Ward. Dr

Grundy takes us with Herr and_ Frau Meyer to the Berlin night-clubs, the kinema, and into the. air, while at the back of the book he provides a series of vocabularies from telephone conversations to laundry lists, and a mass of tabloid information about German ways.

George Gros.z is a German artist whose satires in line on decadent aspects of post-war society approximate to Hogarth’s most baneful works. IJe is an iconoclast who believes neither in the League of Nations nor the goodness of mankind, as the' 28 drawings in _“A Post-war Museum ” testify. Peace is depicted _as a battered, becrutched, scarecrow holding a broken feather over _ a conference of European statesmen including Mr MacDonald, while fat Germans who look like profiteers are mercilessly pilloried. There is a bitterness of power in these crude, speaking dashing sketches. J. M.