REMILITARISATION ISSUE BEING KEPT ALIVE IN GERMANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27277, 31 December 1949, Page 5

REMILITARISATION ISSUE BEING KEPT ALIVE IN GERMANY

N ZPA—Copyright

Rec. 11 p.m. LONDON. Dec. 30. Reports in German newspapers continue to keep alive the theme of active or prospective remilitarisation, says the Frankfurt correspondent of The Times. The latest reports repeat that German contingents should be raised for Western European defence, and one writer suggests that to pay for this the occupation costs should be increased accordingly. So far as chn be ascertained, the Allied High Commission has not entertained any such idea and the question arises whether such reports are merely a by-product of the present completely inactive political period in Germany or whether they are being launched by Germans who still think it best that their countrymen should again be called to arms. Those who take the second view do not believe that militarism is being reborn in the same form as has trampled upon Europe twice in half a century, but that this time simply a sense of insecurity has taken root. Every sample of opinion tested recently shows that the German people are still primarily concerned with their daily worries, that they have had enough, at least for some time, of attempts at military aggrandisement, and that their political consciousness is expanding, although slowly. .