WHERE THEY STAND.

Waikato Times, Volume 87, Issue 13275, 2 September 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHERE THEY STAND.

Mr Francis Gribble. the novelist, has been examining the attitude of the German Social Democrats on the war. He is a long and keen student of German affairs, and was actually in Luxembourg when the war broke out, and was arrested ami detained, and suffered in the Ruhlebcn prison camp. In an article in the "Daily Chronicle," Mr Gribble holds that the suggestion that the Social Democrats were hypnotised by the Kaiser's theatrical eloquence may be dismissed without disi ussion. A favourite theory in France is that they weie the tools of a Government which was playing a deep game; that they bad all along desired the war. but had pretended to oppose it in the hope of luring on the anti militarists, of France to sonic anarchical action which would paralyse French resistance. The subsequent action of some of them has been chauvinistic enough to give colour to the hypothesis. Heir Sudckuni has undertaken Governm nit missions hi Sweden, Italy, and Roumania; Ib rr Scheklermann has blustered as loudly as any .1 tinker. Still, it is impossible to believe in a real plot of the kind suggested. A handful of men might have lent themselves to such an intrigue, but not 111 men, constituting the party in the Reichstag. Their attitude must be explained more simply; and the operative factors were probably simple enough.

In the fir-t plate, we may credit them with the natural reluctance which any man feels to leave his country in the lurch, even v,hen he believes her to lie in the wrong; in the second place, v,e ni iv suppose that reluctance in have been enhanced by the expectation that Germany would win a quick and easy victory. Over and above these considerations there are three pertinent facts. In every German, or at all events in every Prussian, breast, there is always a lurking fear and dislike of Russia. A revulsion of feeling has, however, been marked. It began to manifest itself towards the end of October, 1914. when, being unable to print what they liked in their own press, the dissentients with the Scheidermann school inspired a review of the situation in the Swedish Social-Domokraten. A very brief extract will show the lines on which they were developing: In the official German ex position the 'complete pit tine* of the immediate causes of the war was in reality incomplete, and it. was apparently a. question for Germany of a preventive war and perhaps even a war of conquest—a capitalist war of annexation. It iis superfluous to develop here the view that any annexation whatsoever would be a danger for peace in the future and not a guarantee of peace." After that a minority—and a continually increasing minority—always voted against the War Credits. The largest hostile vote (including abstentionists as hostile) liunibeled 44: and the number of electors represented bv the fortv-fonr its 1,380,590. About twenty of the forty-four have joined the new Labour Party led by Herren Haase. and Lebedour; the others may be classed as independent supporters of that new party. They differ from it, not on any point of principle, but only in their reluctance to scrap their old associations and turn the Reichstag into a beargarden. And "Yorwaerts" has sided with Herr Haase's party: and " Vorwacrts" has a circulation of 200,000 copies a day. Their thesis covers many points, of which the most essential are these: — The Chancellor has bed as to the causes of the war. It was deliberately planned as a war of aggrandisement, in the interest of the Junkers and the capitalists, who are coining money out of contracts for the supply of war material and the increased prices of the necessaries of life. The Allies have fought cleanly, and Germanv has not fought cleanly.

The invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg was an outrage on civilisation; so is the bombing of open towns ami the sinking of passenger ships. It is the duty of the Government, as a preliminary to the arrangement of peace, to abandon all territorial gains and repudiate all ambitious schemes. The suffrage must be extended throughout the. Empire; imports must he free: and the burden of the cost- of the war must fall on the shoulders of the classes responsible for it. There is no sentence in that summary for which chapter and verse cannot be quoted from a "Vorwaerte" leading article, or from a Reichstag speech. The men who urge those views are not halieducated workmen: they are mostly barristers and journalists —the sort of men who, in France, might be sitting in the Cabinet. Timorous at first, they arc now. every day, getting bolder in their utterances; and every one who has studied the German character knows that when a German talks defiantly he believes himself to be shouting with the crowd. Haase and his friends clearly think that they are doing so; and they have some warrant for the belief. Martial law may still the clamour as long as the soldiers can pretend that the military situation is favourable. Later, when the _ Chancellor wants TTeace, and the question arises