HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?

Southland Times, Issue 19500, 14 March 1925, Page 6

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?

GERMAN “SUBMARINE TOPS.’’ It is a very sorry reflection upon our patriotism that there should be people in this country who encourage the sale not merely of German toys, but of toys modelled on that mast misused and naturally despised instrument of warfare, the “U” boat, says the Army and Navy Gazette.

As Mr H. Conrad Greer asks in a Times letter, who a few short years ago would ever have imagined that there would be on sale in our toyships small submarines, “Original-modell-Unterseeboot,” made in Germany, and dumped and sold here for the amusement of our children ? It is, or ought to be, an affront to the national conscience that such emblems are allowed in the country, especially to be put into the hands of our children, some of whose fathers or relatives may have been killed through the illegal use of the submarine. While we are apparently indifferent to such things, the Germans adopt a very different line in regard to their own youngsters. A calendar for 1925 on sale in Berlin contains daily “hymns of hate” intended to stir up national prejudice in the minds of those who use it. Under a picture of Metz Cathedral on one of these articles is a poem on ‘Peace, Contemptible Peace,” and another verse begins “Curse the strangers, curse thy foes.” Are the lessons of the war so soon forgotten— German sailors on our ships, and German submarine toys in oot,