REPUBLICANS V. MONARCHISTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18532, 14 July 1922, Page 7

REPUBLICANS V. MONARCHISTS

LATENT CIVIL WAR IN GERMANY 300 MURDERS. I LONDON, July 12. I The Manchester Guardian’s Berlin correspondent states that at least I three hundred men and women, including Liebknecht, Erzberger, and Rathenau, have been murdered for political reasons in Germany during the past three years. They were all either Liberals or Socialists, and all the murderers were reactionaries or Monarchists. The few acts of violence committed against Monarchists have been punished with excessive severity. It. is not possible to make an estimate of the forces engaged in the latent civil war between the Republican and Monarchist movement. The counter revolution, militarist reaction Monarchist movement are practically identical, as the overthrow of the Republic and the restoration of the Monarchy will be the first step towards a Germany sufficiently militarised to wage a war of revenge against the Entente or France. The whole of German organised labour is Republican, and a general strike its only weapon, which is probably sufficient to destroy any attempt to overthrow the Government, but it is a defensive weapon, and practically helpless against the Monarchist agitation. AU the landed gentry and bigger farmers are Monarchists. Probably the majority of the middle class are Officers in the Reichswehr are nearly all Monarchist, and the rank and file of a hundred thousand would probably follow the officers in civil war. The security police, who number 150,000, are a semi-military force with Moip aichist officers. The strongholds of the Monarchist movement are Pomerania, East Prussia, and Bavaria. Secret military organisations all over the country are the backbone of the active Monarchist movement. The most powerful is the organisation consul, of which a hundred members have been arrested. It is a secret society, with hidden depots of arms and ammunition, spies and agents. Gunther, who organised Rathenau’s murder, is a member. It was mainly his indiscretions in boasting that revealed the conspiracy. Sections of reactionaries are fighting to restore the partially lost privilege of their class, ■and to re-establish Germany’s military predomination in Europe. They are largely actuated by racial hatred of 'all foreigners, particularly French and Poles, and most of all Jews. They are educated Germans who seriously maintain that Christ was German. The universities are notoriously retrograde politically, and a vast majority of the professors are extreme reactionaries. Students have played a. sinister part in every offence and have been guilty of most of the political murders committed in Germany-. HIDDEN ARMS DISCOVERED. BERLIN, July 12. A search for hidden arms at Madgeburg resulted in the discovery i of twelve hundred carbines and fifty machine-guns, also much equipment and ammunition.