The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-02-04
SUPERSTITION HAS II THAT HINDENDURG
 IS A DOOMED MAN
Germans in Their Love Drove Nails in Wooden Statue, Said to Bring
 Bad Luck


 London, January 11.-Fieid Marshal
 Won Hindenburg, the idol of all Ger
 many is doomed-doomed to vio-
 lent and tragic end. and this, all un-
 consciously, by the Germans them
 selves. who worship him as their
 predestined deliverer, little imagining
 him to be, in reality, their predestined
 victim.
 How can this be? Well, it appears
 that in this instance the Germans have
 been misled. For months and months,
 as everybody knows, the Germans have been driving nails into wooden
 statues of von Hindenburg, which ex-
 ist all over Germany. Patriotic Teu-
 tons pay so much for the privilege of
 driving so many nails and thus money
 Is raised for the German Red Cross There are gold and silver nails for
 plutocrats to drive. Czar Ferdinand of
 Bulgaria. for example, when he was in Berlin, drove in golden nails rep resenting a contribution of f500, and many of these wooden effigies of Ger many's silent, strong man are studded
 with nailheads over every square inch of their timber anatomies. The big
 gest of them all, called The Iron
 Hindenburg," stands in front of the
 Reichstag building in the Konigs-
 Piatz, Berlin, and has been nailed"
 by practically everyone of importance
 in the capital. Also by practically ev>
 erybody of uninportance, since the
 mailing business has been most care
 fully organized. Even school children are taken to the statue on holiday
 afternoons to drive nails into Hinden-
 burg. From the provinces mailing ex-
 cursions" are run to Berlin. On Sun days a military band plays in front
 of the effigy to attract crowds and
 money and at night a powerful
 searchlight Is directed on it.
 The idea of thus utilizing effigies
 of the Prussian field marshal is nor rningenious one but unhappily ffrom
 the German standpoint) 1t spells dis aster for Hindenburg himself So, at least, asserts one of the most emil
 nent British authorities on folklore and superstitions-Mr. Edward Lovett who explains that in thus perforat- ing effigies of the renowned field marshal the Germans have done the
 ''unluckiest" thing possible. so far as their hero Is concerned. Mir. Lovett is a prominent member of the British Folklore society, renowned lecturer and writer on subjects connected with superstitious beliefs and an inde- fatigable collector of "charmss and hAiuiCtS, bVilS OL WHICH HS recently e4- hibited. If there is anybody In Eng land specially qualified to discuss "portent," it is undoubtedly he.
 "The belief that driving sharp ob- jects into figure representing an in- dividual worked injury to the orig ina1,' said MT. Lovett, Twas a world wide one in primitive times, and is held in many parts of Europe today In the old days if one had an enemy one went to a man-witch (for it is a delusion that all witches were wom- en) and bought from him figure modelled in wax representing the per- | son upon whom 1t was desired to be avenged. The injured person was then | instructed to stick pins or other sharp instruments into the wax figure, the l belief being that disease would be l bred in the corresponding parts of the body of the original
 l When this had been done the wiz ard generally contrived that 1t should 1 become known to the person upon whom the spell was being worked that
 it was in progress, and this gener- ally preyed on his mind to such an extent that he pined and died, which was the end aimed at. The folklore in regord to this practice is almost end- less and the Germans in disregarding it have over-reached themselves Any thing more fatal, according to all traditions, than driving sharp objects into models of an individual it Is im- possible to conceive, and though am not generally given to superstition myself, I firmly believe that-as a result of tsst this thing-Hindenbur will come to a violent end"