The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1918-07-27
GERMANY ANALYZED BY A GERMAN

GERMANY ANALYZED By A GERMAN
Won Muehlon, the Krupp director who resigned his office
and left Germany because he could not endorse the making of a
provoked war and the atrocious manner of conducting that
has given to the Philadelphia Public Ledger a statement
of how the German government prepared the people for the
present years offensive.
He says that last winter the Germans were tired of war,
and they were tired of it largely because they had been disap-
pointed in the results. The vast amounts of loot and the big
indemnities had not been forthcoming. But the war party,
still hoping for better results, went to work to stir up new
hopes, new greed of loot in their dupes. Won Ludendorff and
the others made them believe that if they would make one
more supreme effort they would still win what they sought and
at the same time they aroused in the people the blood lust of
their brutalized natures by promising them the utter annihila-
ton of both the French and the British armies-the Americans
at that time still despised too much to be even men
toned. And what was the result? Let Won Muehlon himself
tell it as follows:
And the Germans, drowning all doubts and pangs of
conscience which years of disappointment and sufferlngs
had finally awakened within them in the brutal expec-
taton of overwhelming their opponents by sheer force
of numbers, have followed Ludendorffs lead like a herd
of rapacious slaves and gone forth once more to STAY
and devastate, driven by the lust of power and gain, 1t
is this that makes us despair of the German people.
The reichstag, where some opposition had appeared, sue
cumbed to both the temptation and the threat, even the social
lists" and the most brutal of the editorials then began to ap-
pear in such papers as the Vorwaerts, and when the offensive
started cowardly assaults on women and children were
called by that socialistic paper GLORIOUS air raids on Paris.
But let us quote further from Won Muehlon, for he tells it so
we'll:
A wave of repulsive materialsm swept over all Ger
many, carrying everyone before it, when Ludendorffs
poison gas shells began to rain upon the French, British
and American trenches. The initial success OF the attack
awakened all the evil impulses of the German people
which had lain dormant during the long period OF dis
appointment since the autumn of 1914.
*+
Won Muehlon also gives us a picture of what will happen
if this offensive can not be carried through, and even before
the present drive that is now a retreat began, Won Muehlon hd
reached the conclusion that the whole Won HlndenDurg-Luuen
dorff-kaiser-crown prince undertaking had been proved a fall
ure. On the demoralizing effects of failure on the Germans he
says this:
Success or the conviction of success rouses all the
brutal appetites which militarism has for years scientific
ally bred in the German people. Only reverse of fortune
can drive the poison out of their system. And the Ger
mans are different in this also from the western nations.
They cannot bear defeat nor long endure the same hor-
rors of war they gleefuly bring upon others. Berlin
would have cried for mercy long ago if it had been
bombed as ruthlessly as Paris and London.
No, the Germans will not stand much beating. They
are DULLES and will give in surprisingly soon once the
fortune of war turns against them.
And in conclusion, on this matter he said that much as he
regretted if. he had to admit, and as a German, that there is no
sense of honor left in Germany to which an appeal can be
made. Brute force must be applied to them to bring them to
their senses. Let us quote him again:
If the German people can be made to understand that
attacks like the present offensive in France will not
bring them wealth, power and prosperity, but, on the con-
trary, more misery, heavier taxes and commercial os-
tracism, even after the war, they will refuse to fight on
any longer. But their mInd is open only TO materldHS-
ic arguments and all idealistic appeals to their conscience
and sense of honor are absolutely vain. 1t is painful for
me to have to say this of my own counrymen, but it is
the truth.
There you have what we have been long saying about the state
of the German mind, and that from a German himself, not a
man who speaks without knowledge or even without authority,
but from one who has been honOred in. his country and who
has saved his manhood by refusing to be a party to such trans
actions. and who is now doing what he can from the outside,
for he is in exile, self-imposed, to bring about sanity among his
own DeODle