GERMANY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18973, 26 March 1924, Page 11

GERMANY

JUNKER’S DEFIANT PROGRAMME. LONDON, March 24. The Daily Mail’s Berlin correspondent says that for the German electiona on May 4, the campaign is in full swing. The programme of the Nationalist People’s Party, to which the majority of the Junkers belong, provides for the restoration of the monarchy, and the tearing up of the Versailles Treaty. He declares: “We favour tearing to shreds the lying theory of Germany’s war guilt, breaking away from the dictatorship imposed by the Versailles Treaty, safeguarding German honour and dignity, and training our youth to bear arms. The Rhine is Germany's river, not German’s frontier, and German selfdetermination must be: One people, one Empire, one Emperor.” Other items in the programme are the abolition of the tyranny of Parliament, loyalty to the old German flag, and the suppression of Marxists and Jews. STEEL HELMET LEAGUE. LONDON, March 24. The Munich correspondent of the Times says that Von Knilling, the Bavarian Premier, and Von Lersner, who was president of the German peace delegation at Versailles, were the principal speakers ot a mass demonstration of the Steel Helmet Leagu e of Front Line Soldiers, held in Munich. The League is divided into 2500 groups, with over a million members. The object of the meeting was obviously to persuade other Nationalist organisations to make common cause with the League in the forthcoming elections to establish a programme acceptable to all wing s of German Nationalists. Lersner described the Versailles Treaty as the most terrible weapon of oppression in the world’s history, and declared that it was based on the infamous lie that Germany alone was responsible for the war. Germany would go under unless the Treaty was fundamentally revised Germany’s greatest weakness had been the disunion of Nationalist organisations. If these could be united they would be able to go forward to victory.

Von Knilling used similar langu age.