The Pittsburgh Press (April 7, 1943)
Germans may quit but never forget, says 1919 prophet
Sudden collapse within two years predicted by correspondent who warned world after World War I ended
By Frank H. Bartholomew, United Press staff writer
Three months after the end of World War I, the Germans were planning to renew the fight, Frank J. Taylor, United Press correspondent, then in Berlin, reported in a dispatch which was widely printed in the United States in 1919. Today, Mr. Taylor, now a magazine writer in California, believes that the collapse of Germany in the present war will parallel that on World War I. Mr. Taylorâs prophetic dispatch was reprinted in The Press last Sunday. Its appearance here and in other papers throughout the country created so much comment that the following interview with the author seemed imperative.
San Francisco, California â
Germany will collapse suddenly within the next two years, in the opinion of Frank J. Taylor, who write in 1919 that defeat in World War I had created no âdeep-seated aversion to militarism among the German people.â He predicted another war would follow.
It is his belief that the present war will end as did the last one, with the Germans suddenly deciding they have had enough, but rationalizing defeat once more as merely an interim between wars.
People were unchanged
Mr. Taylor, now a well-known magazine writer, was sent into Germany after the last war to cover the birth of the new German republic and reorganize the Berlin staff of the United Press. Three months after the armistice, he filed from Berlin a dispatch which said:
Three monthsâ careful study of Germany, following the signing of the armistice, forces the conviction that neither war from without nor revolution from within has worked any psychological metamorphosis of Germany as a nation, or of Germans as individuals. Neither the strength nor the weakness of the German people evidences any transformation. The minds which accept and apply the terms of peace will differ but little from those which steered the successful course of the German Empire up to August 1914.
The revolution has changed the form of government. It has not changed the governed. The war has brought to Germany defeat, disaster and destitution. It has not brought despair nor humiliation. A half-dozen speakers at the National Assembly in Weimar voiced the general feeling of the people when they said, in effect:
We have not been defeated militarily. Hunger and the revolution forced us to quit. We accepted President Wilsonâs 14 points and demobilized voluntarily, according to the provisions of the armistice.
No German making the first pretense at frankness will attempt to create the impression that the disastrous results of 1914-1918 have created any deep-seated aversion to militarism among the German people. Men and women, both in and out of government circles, talk very casually of another war of revenge against France if Alsace-Lorraine is taken from Germany. They refer to this possibility as though it is to be accepted by everyone as a logical matter of fact.
When a clipping of his 24-year-old dispatch was called to his attention today, Mr. Taylor said that he was only reporting the outspoken opinion in Germany.
Bluff is âmaintainedâ
He said:
They viewed the ending of the war merely as an armistice proposed by the American President under advantageous conditions. They felt they simply accepted an offer and voluntarily quit, for the time being. There was nothing sub-rosa about this belief.
His dispatch passed out of Germany, Mr. Taylor said, by diplomatic pouch to Paris.
Mr. Taylor said:
When I arrived in Berlin on the heels of the armistice, I was amazed at the complete exhaustion of the country.
Her food supply was gone. Her railroads were a hopeless tangle. Industry has collapsed. The morale of the people was low. But the bluff had been kept up until the last.
That will happen again, Mr. Taylor said, and again the Germans will not believe they have been licked.