GERMAN STUPIDITY

It was the same man, Brockdorff-rantzau, who once admitted that the Germans had no knowledge of their enemies’ psychology – and incontinently went on to prove it by his own behaviour. That is the first and the last impression that has been created in Paris by the German counter-proposals. Their intention is patent in every line – stupidly patent – and if they thought that the Allies would be taken in by high talk, they have indeed much to learn before they can hope to make headway in the bitter world they have created for themselves. There is behind them no longer the great army or the great national prestige that once made their way smooth in dealing with other peoples. With Bismarck’s Chancellorship ended their official foresight, brutal, conceited, and unscrupulous, but efficient. There merely remained the rattling sabre and the theatrical Lord of War. Now they have nothing; they have not even the power of understanding their fellow-men. Another common observation here refers to the pettiness of spirit that marks these counter-proposals. If ever there was an occasion in a nation’s history on which it was necessary, before all things, to take a broad and, so far as their mentality permitted, a manly outlook upon a new and entirely altered future, it is the present. Yet the arguments brought forward consist, for the main part, of broad statements or denials, which cannot stand a moment’s scrutiny, or else an accumulation of statistics drawn up with all the one-sided care of an unscrupulous party politician. It is even fair to say that the counter-propositions have disappointed the Allies by their mere arrogant futility. So much of importance might have been written – and in so much less space – that the interminable petty protestations of the Germans have left the Allies under the impression that, even crediting them with the best faith in the world, the Germans can contribute nothing of value to the deliberations of the League of Nations.