IMPRESSIONS OF GERMANY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18193, 14 September 1933, Page 9

IMPRESSIONS OF GERMANY

■ CAN HITLER CURB STORM TROOPS ? | ROYALTY OFFICERS LIKELY TO OUST HIM I Colonel Hubert, 15. McCormick writes i to the Vancouver Province: — We doubt the veracity of our n emoiies. Can the things I have seen in 'Germany so recently really exist? Let me record them before 1 lose all confidence in my recollections. The poverty of the people. Not the grinding poverty of the Orient by sharp contrast to ‘the countries of Europe. The general shaibbiness is genteel, at best. And a shortage of habilainents is evidenced by psychology. Elsewhere iu 'the white world * clothes are so common that women reject them. In Germany women are covered “cap a pied” from mended sleeve to darned stocking. When a womau is bare-legged she is barefoot, 'too—not in sensuous sandals on the soft sand but flat-footed on the hard highway. 1 saw a man walking barefooted on . the road, as in Poland in war time, his boots slung around his neck to save them. Poverty iu shoe leather reacts iu the chief article of the Storm trooper’s wardrobe, a pair of great boots.

In the market at Munster on Saturday farmers were standing in little booths to sell a few pounds of butter and a few dozen eggs. They had old wagons, old shays and tired old horses. They must improve their condition many fold to attain the stage of our farm ’problem. For this poverty the Treaty of Versa illes gets all the blame, but does not deserve it all.

The vast construction projects of the Social Democrats in Germany on unnecessary public buildings and unused public roads are just as responsible, and the canals that look well on the mans.

ROYALTY IN EVERY CAMP IN

GERMANY

The egotism that wasted the savings of a people on ‘these was as great and selfish as that which erected the palaces at Potsdam, where still reside a colony of the old artistocracy. What of this class, once seemingly so I hard and deserving compared to the I futile nobility of the rest of Europe ? | Certanily they were heroic in the I war, which they dominated, but they [did not win. They did not overcome the Communists in 1018. They did not overcome the republic. Many, not all of them, occupy minor positions in Nazidom, not leading ones. A great many of them have Jewish mothers or grandmothers and come under the proscription. Let us hope the German .respect for the high “geborn” may some day rescind it. And the all-highest—what about him and his? I think it is “hieraus mit him,” and as to his, it will be a matter of convenience. Just as in (Scotland, in the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Scottish families placed a son in either camp to keep the estates in the family and from attainder; whoever won, the royal princes have subdivided themselves into all. If any faction ever needs a royal figure to round out its strength there is a royalty at your service. Hoch, will your all-highness condescend to rule over ns and do exactly as you are told? Yah, wohl, my children, I will do anything you say for a crown and three meals a day. What will ‘Hitler do with his new-found power? It is futile to speculate. He is being whirled along faster than a linotype can operate. One who promises so much must attempt much and run from one unknown to another — to what, who can tell? Will he go to war for the three shrivelled limbs, denoting Elsas Lothringen, Silesia and the Polish Corridor, that are found on the tree which decorates the back of every German coin? Having raised and fired his storm troops, can he hold them? ,

Who knows? Mussolini has. Like Mussolini, Hitler is an ex-non-conmiissioner. If he permits a war, he will need officers and generals. If these worthies get organised and in power once more, what about the bootmaker of Vienna, wehr weist?

For the army is the shrine of the German soul. Wherever it marches the crowds throng after, larger and more enthusiastic crowds than follow the storm troops. What soldiers they are! I attended some exercises of these troops with a former officer. His great-grandfather wore a red uniform at Waterloo and he feels emotion when the colors troop in London. Banzai has resounded in his ears and the roaring bands at Santiago beyond the equator. He has heard the Russian tramp and remembers the soldiers of Abdul Hamil, but nothing, he believes, compares to the military precision and serpentine beauty of the Rcichswc'hr.