GREATEST “YES MAN”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 851, 26 August 1933, Page 1

GREATEST “YES MAN”

Von Hindenburg a Tired Old Warrior. IS A MERE SPECTATOR. BERLIN, August 1. A dreamy-eyed youth moves languid fingers over the keyboard of a piano. Perspiring waiters with beerladen trays move surefooted among the crowded tables, and the smokefilled air is cut by the laughter and conversation of a hundred men jammed into a room forty feet square. It is one of the popular nightly meeting places of the voung Nazis. Here they talk freely, for they are among friends, and here, too, writers gather to sit and

listen without talking freely, for at best they are only among acquaintances. One sits and listens. “ A funny thing happened at the Reich’s Praesidenten Palais to-day,” a voice is heard. “ A man came to see von Hindenburg. Fie waited in the outer office for hours, and

then, being hungry, took a package from his pocket. He unwrapped it and began munching a huge sandwich. “ The paper from the package he carelessly tossed on a table. A horrified attendant hurriedly snatched the paper and put it out of sight. You should not leave any paper around here,’ he admonished the terrified visitor. 4 The old man might sign it! ’ ” A roar of laughter greets the story. It is repeated from table to table. The next day one hears it in the lobby of an hotel. The day after that it is all over Berlin. Music Hall Jest. Perhaps next week it will be told in the music halls. Laughter always greets it. It explains better than could any erudite treatise the present standing of Paul von Hindenburg. President of Germany. The rest of the world thinks of von Hindenburg as a grand old man towering colossus-I'.ke over Germany, a symbol of the majesty and solidarity of his country. A true patriot, a granite-like figure overshadowing the chameleon-minded politicians of Europe, he stands for the old order of safety and security. That is Hindenburg to the world. In Berlin? In Berlin he is merely a tired old man living in the memories of a glorious past, a pathetic figure standing alone and listening to the faint strains of the martial music of a parade which has long' since passed. Twilight. Nominally he is President of Germany, vested with many widespread powers. Nominally' he can declare martial law and summarily remove unfit office holders. Actually Berlin doubts if he has power to do anything but sign papers and review military parades. Hindenburg spends the twilight of his career acting as the greatest 44 Yes man ” in history, and living in the memory of the days when his name was worshipped in Germany as the victor of the battles of the Masurian Lakes, the man who saved East Prussia from the Russians, and the man who waged a great war against hopeless odds. Fie is eighty-five, and the years have been hard years, which are now crushing his mind and body under their cumulative weight. Alwavs a man of action, he now finds himself a mere spectator watching the greatest show in the world, but unable to participate in it. All his life the roar of the crowd has come to his ears as a pleasant cacophony, a worshipping chorus. Now the spotlight has shifted to those younger men who occupy the stage, and the Heil ” of the crowd is for Hitler and Goering and Goebbels. Under the Doctors. Von Flindenburg still looks imposing in photographs, but he is only a Don Quixote jousting with broken lances at windmills which he cannot even see. Fie looks military and erect in his pictures, but he is under the constant care of phvsicians, who refuse to allow him to exercise either body or mind. At present he is resting among the roses in his Neudeck garden, and Berlin whispers that he may never return.