The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-WarCurtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
History
The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War
Curtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Not so the _Tageblatt_. Theodor Wolff, its editor, has had so much
journalistic experience, outside of Germany, and is, moreover, a
man of such marked ability, that he is striving to be something
more than a sycophantic clerk of the Government. He is not a
grumbler, not a dissatisfied extremist, not unpatriotic, but
possesses a breadth of outlook patriotic in the highest sense. On
the morning after the Liebknecht riots in the Potsdamer Platz, his
paper did not appear. The reason given by the Commandant of the
Mark of Brandenburg was that he had threatened the _Burgfriede_ by
charging certain interests in Germany with attempting to make the
war a profitable institution. But there are those who say that the
police were very watchful in the newspaper offices that night, and
that the _Tageblatt_ did not appear because of its attempt to print
some of the happenings in the Potsdamer Platz.
It has been the custom of Herr Wolff to write a front-page article
every Monday morning signed T. W. On the last Monday morning in
July, 1916, in a brilliantly written article, the first part of
which patted the Government on the back for some things, he
delicately expressed a desire for reform in diplomatic methods
which would render war-making less easy. Then he added that if
some statesman, such as Prince Bulow, had been called as adviser in
July, 1914, a way to avert the war might have been found.
This so angered the Government, which has successfully convinced
its great human sheep-fold that Germany is the innocent victim of
attack, that the _Tageblatt_ was suppressed for nearly a week, and,
like the ex-Socialist paper _Vorwaerts_, was permitted to reappear
only after it promised "to be good." Theodor Wolff was personally
silenced for several months. This was his greatest but not his
only offence. All over Germany the people have been officially
taught to regard this great war time as _die grosse Zeit_. Wolff,
however, sarcastically set the expression in inverted
commas--thereby committing a sacrilege against the State.
Throughout Germany monuments have been reared and nails driven into
emblems marked DIE GROSSE ZEIT. I have often wondered just what
thoughts these monuments will arouse in the German's mind if his
country is finally beaten and all his bloodshed and food
deprivation will have been in vain.
The Press has, of course, been the chief instrument, reinforced by
the schoolmaster, professor and parson, in spreading the doctrine
of scientific hatred. It is not generally known that Deputy Cohn,
speaking in the Reichstag on April 8, 1916, sharply criticised the
method of interning British civilians at Ruhleben. He went on to
say that, "reports of the persecutions of Germans in England were
magnified and to some extent invented by the German Press in order
to stir up war feeling against England."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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