GERMANY’S SECRET ARMY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16423, 6 May 1924, Page 8

GERMANY’S SECRET ARMY.

4,000,(100 MEN AVAILABLE. The first, number of “The Fighting Forces,” a quarterly magazine for the Royal Navy. Army and Air Force, is edited by Lieutenant-Colonel F. G. Whitton, and is so excellent from cover to cover that it should at once establish its position. The editor has been so fortunate as to obtain from a great French authority, General Fonville, an article dealing with the menace to France from Germany. He says: — Germany has not disarmed. She eludes disarmament just as she eludes reparations. File has been able to laugh at all these limitations and prohibitions (of the Treaty of Versailles). She has duplicated her regular army, the Reiehswebr, by a military police of Jot),000 men. This Scluitzpolizei (the Hcliupo) is composed chiefly of ex-officers and noncommissioned officers from the Imperial army. It is quartered in liarracks and does military training. It is a nursery of cadres. Similar, too, is the Eeicliswehr. A system of mobilisation is arranged by which the cadres can he filled up at any moment. It is camouflaged under all sorts of disguises. The whole is under a Great General Staff which has been reformed. Artillery is wanting, it is true. But there exist means for turning it out quickly. We know from trustworthy information that the manufacture of guns could begin at the end of a month, and that only ten •months would be required to equip the whole mobilised army of Germany.

The very competent authority of Colonel Rcboul is cited to the effect that Germany has nowj» a inobilisablo army of 4,000,000 men. General Fonville thinks that during the last year, when the activity of the Allied Commission of Control was paralysed, German industry could have produced the guns required. “France would be mad,” he says, “if in the face of such danger she did not busy herself with the question of her safety above all else.”