PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25458, 12 February 1944, Page 3

PASSING NOTES

To eradicate the war frenzy of a whole German nation and to restore the sanity of peaceful collaboration with civilised peoples is a task to test the wisdom of the world. It lies at the basis of all post-war reconstruction. Yet no international conference has been held for this special purpose, no co-ordinated plans have been publicly adopted, and suggestions of this sort or of that have met with little discussion except in the scattered pages of the press. Much has been said about the re-education of Germany. But this most desirable process, says ex-Ambasssador Gerard, would be as slow as evolution. In this lengthy period the disease may break out afresh before the cure is completed. To tide us over the period of trouble more immediate steps are called for —stern enough to be effective, yet concentrated and simple enough to be easily workable. So Admiral Land, head of the U.S. Maritime Commission, puts forth his simple double plan—prohibition of an Axis transocean mercantile marine, and prohibition of all aircraft construction. The first would draw the Axis partners’ claws, the second would clip their wings. The exAmbassador, whose four years in Germany brought him ’’face to face with Kaiserism,” roundly declares that the Allies in 1918 should have begun with the hanging of 10,000 leading Prussians. And Emile Ludwig, addressing the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives, places the Prussian militarists in the forefront of the proposed purge. For, he says, the German revolution which ended the last war was not a people’s revolution, but was concocted by the generals.

What is this Prussianism whose liquidation must precede all pacification of Germany? Its heart and nerve centre Is the German general staff corps. Accounts of this malign organisation present a menacing picture of a close, compact body of highranking offiers hand-picked from the German war academy. Its numbers are variously estimated between 1000 and 3000. For 80 years it has run every German war, has been responsible for every victory, has ascribed defeats—as in “ the great lie of 1918 ” —to a civilian stab-in-the-back. Its job is war. After victory or after defeat it sets to work immediately to plan for the next war with cold mathematical calculations. The staff corps never dies. The Treaty of Versailles officially abolished it—it was immediately reborn under a new name. Prussians dominate it in numbers and in spirit, and Prussian pride and arrogance inspire it. It clings to the mystery of special insignia, Its members favour the monocle, not fnerely as a help to their superciliousness, but to train the face to the immobility of granite and the eyes to the coldness and hardness of steel. Ruthlessness is their ideal of the Prussian military gentleman. This staff corps is the true inspirer of German militarism and the monkeywrench in any plan for German pacification. It presents a model of behaviour to the whole class of lower officers who, before the last war, swaggered along the Unter den Linden in all the pride of their duel-scars, as if the world was theirs, and pushing the civilian off the footpath. They are the symbol of the Prussian menace.

Alexander Werth, the well-known special Moscow correspondent of the English press, writes of the growing Russian interest in the national culture of foreign nations, especially of Britain: Russian interest in foreign lands runs high, higher than at any time since the early twenties. But to-day’s interest is different in character from that of the early revolutionary period. It is centred more firmly on the national culture of the various lands, and has lost much of its political character. This is shown by the fact that on the first day of the Suvorov Military Schools, which opened this week, one of the subjects studied was the English language. Among the most interesting methods of introducing English thought is that of lectures on contemporary English literature. The rise of an Anglomania in Russia would be an interesting and piquant counterpart to the Russomania of many British lands throughout the inter-war period. It might well happen, for “ exotism ” has had its charm in every age. And English life has an attractive aspect that would present itself to the Russian mind in a rosy hue. Mankind has never been without its inquiring minds who, seeking to give their idealistic imaginings a local habitation and a name, have placed them where distance would lend the necessary enchantment to the view.

The modern world, too, has had Its u manias," when men tended to build their castles in the air beyond the border. Atlantis and Lyon esse, the land of Prester John and the fabled realm of Nicomicon were poetic “ manias ” of mediaeval days. Europe in the 18th century wds a victim of Anglomania, when England became the moral and political El Dorado, the Fortunate Isles, presenting new idols to Voltaire the iconoclast, and offering new conceptions of life and liberty to thinkers and philosophers whose books were read from Dunkirk to the Golden Horn. Under English skies continental imaginations pictured ideal dwelling places, whole cities of philosophers, everybody free, wise and happy. England had everything that Europe had not. She was prosperous, not impoverished by taxation, not oppressed by religious despotism. What mattered it if, according to Voltaire, she had only one sauce? She had 30 religions, and therefore lived in peace and happiness. England was a land of liberty where v a foreign visitor was witness of the amazing spectacle of a street porter disputing the pavement to a noble lord and publicly knocking him down after a bout of fisticuffs.

The Magistrate, who last week had before him six students charged with bathing in a public reservoir, struck right at the root of the offence. “ How would you like to drink your own bathwater? ” said he. “ You turned the Tiritea Reservoir into a bath and asked all the city to drink the water afterwards.” His Worship’s rebuke suggests what might be called a “punishment in kind.” An appropriate penalty for the student bathers might be three weeks’ solitary confinement on bread and their own bathwater. Similar “ punishments in kind ” may easily be imagined. A sheep-stealer’s sentence might be to be rounded-up. dipped, shorn, branded and tied up for a week in a Burnside sheep pen. The city abattoirs would be within hearing distance. And so on. For the student-bathers’ offence there are precedents of sorts. A prerevolution French marquise followed the practice of bathing in milk, to preserve the whiteness of her complexion. She afterwards sold the milk to the poor of Paris, adding so much per cent, for the scent. There is also the case of the modern young child who, receiving the last tidying touches before being shown off to a company of guests, was heard by every guest ejaculating outside the door, “Mummie, I won’t have my face washed with spit.”

A second offence of the students was obscured by the greater offensiveness of the first: thev turned the water of a city reservoir into a common bathwater. Only those who have lived in lands where water is doled out by the spoonful know the discomfort of sharing bathwater with a whole household. A traveller who knows all about it writes:— In a four-storied Damascus hotel the various bathrooms were situated one above the other. In the top bathroom v/as a Vassal- girl, on the third floor was myself, beneath me was a Texas judge, and in the lowest was a Brooklyn landlady who was " doing ” the Mediterranean. Everything went well till the Vassar girl finished her bath and pulled the plug. Immediately my batli was filled with her bath-water, plus a dozen cigarette butts. I leaped out of my bath and pulled my plug. A muffled roar of water and rage told me that Texas had received my bathwater, plus the cigarette butts. As the judge usually ate grapes when he took his bath, I could well Imagine the feelings of Mrs Grabbitt in the bath below when the judge pulled his plug. Her wails still ring in my ears. Civis.