DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 89, Issue 13751, 26 April 1918, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

The line of reasoning pursued by the German annexationists German in their efioils Lo justify . Conquest their plans for conquest Upheld. in both the East and the West is well exemplified in a semi-historical article found in a copy of the Tagliche Rundschau, recently received in London. According to the Rundschau article, Courland has" really been a German province since 1159, when, it was conquered by the German Orders. For more than a century German intelligence built up the hind, and it was not until "our ever. lasting vices—treachery and disunion" —got the upper hand that first the Poles and then the Russians tore "this German land from us," and compelled it to submit to the Russian lash. The Rundschau continues: "Once again has the German sword secured this ancient German frontier region, our north-east march, where for centuries the noblest German blood has been poured out on the watch. There are sections of our people who would regard it'as sacrilege were these lands finally joined to the German Emp : re. They are the same persons who find: no strong *vord of defiance when the Frenchman, with impudent forehead, romances about his rights in a truly German land stolen from us in our weakness." From Courland and Lithuania the Rundschau turns to Belgium, "a territory which has been in dispute between German and Frenchman for a thousand years." It is still a debatable land, as it was in the days of Heinrich 1., the paper says, and will remain disputed territory unless the German national power finally dominates it. The Rundschau proceeds: "Beglium and the Belgians are not a country at all, not a people, not a nation, but a number of race-fragments artificially joined together in recent times. In the north they are purely Germanic, in the south there is the Walloon mixture with all its shady qualities. The State, whose name has been borrowed from antiquity, is only the product of a sterile and makeshift diplomacy, 1 product of perplexity, and created'to serve as a defence against France. It was and has remained a hothouse growth with artificial roots, helped by artificial fertilisers, an experiment, as Belgian statesmen themselves have admitted. This experiment has brought itself to a close, and what is to be put in its place is not a question of morality, nor even of right, but a pure matter of German expediency. And the more categorically foreign shamelessness demands the cession of Alsace-Lorraine the stronger becomes the necessity to create a powerful flank protection for the Imperial provinces, the more actual and compelling the thought of defensive security. As to any re-establishment of Belgium as it was before the war there can be no question. Belgium as a State was tolerable for us only as 'onp as it remained neutral. In the moment when it forsook its neutral position its fate was sealed, and the question had to be faced, Is Belgium to be German or Anglo-French? A diplomat may hesitate about the answer; a statesman never." *