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  German Atrocities
  Their Nature and Philosophy




  By Newell Dwight Hillis

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  German Atrocities
  Their Nature and Philosophy

  _Studies in Belgium and France
  During July and August of 1917_

  By
  NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS

  [Illustration: Emblem]

  NEW YORK      CHICAGO      TORONTO
  Fleming H. Revell Company
  LONDON AND EDINBURGH




  Copyright, 1918, by
  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

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Foreword


These inquiries into German atrocities were begun in the latter part of
September, 1914. Friends who had escaped from Belgium during the latter
part of August brought stories of German frightfulness that filled all
hearers with horror. Being unwilling to accept their testimony without
further evidence, I began a careful research, collecting letters,
magazine articles, testimony of eye-witnesses, books, photographs,
reports of the various commissions, by former Ambassador Bryce and
Professor Toynbee, with those of the Commissions of Belgium, France,
Poland, Serbia and Armenia. Last May, in the interest of the first
Liberty Loan, Mr. Lawrence Chamberlain and I made a tour of eighteen
states, speaking in some thirty-five cities, and often giving two,
three and even five addresses in a single day. Everywhere during that
tour we found public men raising the question, "What about the German
atrocities? Do they not represent falsehoods invented by the enemy
states?"

In the belief that this question was vital to the success of the second
and all subsequent Liberty Loans, and for the full awakening of the
American people, at the request of several bankers of New York, with
Mr. Chamberlain I sailed for France late in June, and returned to this
country in September. As guests of the British and French governments
we had every opportunity of visiting the devastated regions of Belgium
and France, and those long journeys through the ruined farms, villages
and cities brought the opportunity of conversing with hundreds of
victims of German cruelty, who gave us their testimony on the very
spots where the atrocities had been committed. At the request of Henry
M. and W. C. Leland of Detroit, and Richard H. Edmonds of Baltimore,
I have brought together this simple record of the bare facts that
came under our own personal scrutiny. In the nature of the case, many
atrocities that were carefully studied cannot be presented in this
report because the witnesses reasonably fear that their families, just
behind the German lines, might be made to suffer were their testimony
to become known. It should be added that Mr. Chamberlain will shortly
make his report from the view-point of the financier and investigator
of industrial conditions in Belgium and France.

The first two of the following chapters embody the substance of
addresses given in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
Chicago, Indianapolis, and some thirty other cities during October,
1917, in connection with the Second Liberty Loan. The third
substantially presents views of addresses in Cincinnati, Louisville,
New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City,
Butte, Denver, and thirty other cities during the First Liberty Loan.

N. D. H.
_Brooklyn, N. Y., January, 1918._




Contents


  I.   GERMAN ATROCITIES, THEIR NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY   13
  II.  THE PAN-GERMAN EMPIRE SCHEME, FOR
         WHICH GERMANY LOST HER SOUL                    63
  III. WHAT THE UNITED STATES AND HER
         ALLIES ARE FIGHTING FOR                       101
  IV.  ASTOUNDING CLAIMS AND RECORDS FROM
         GERMAN SOURCES                                141
  V.  ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAYING GERMAN ATROCITIES       161




I

German Atrocities, Their Nature and Philosophy


_Did the Kaiser's Charge Render the Later Atrocities Inevitable?_

  When Charles IX of France was urged to kill Coligny, he finally
  consented, in these words, "Assassinate Admiral Coligny, but
  leave not a Huguenot alive in France to reproach me." That first
  assassination made the later atrocities inevitable. When the Kaiser
  and his War Staff determined to kill, they delayed for a time, but
  once their hands were dripping with blood, the first massacres made
  it necessary to go on, and kill the Belgians and Frenchmen who had
  witnessed the crimes. So came the unspeakable atrocities of the
  Germans.

  "Take heed that ye offend not against one of my little ones. If
  any man offend against one of my little ones, it were better for
  him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
  drowned in the depths of the sea."--_The Gospel of Matthew (Jesus
  Christ)._




I

German Atrocities, Their Nature and Philosophy


All Americans who have journeyed through Belgium and France this year
have returned home permanently saddened men. German cruelty has cut
a bloody gash in the heart, and while there are Dakin solutions that
heal wounds in the arms and legs, there is no medicine that can heal
the wounds in the heart. Some German-Americans still insist that the
alleged German atrocities represent English lies, Belgian hypocrisies
and French delusions, but all possibility of evasion or denial has been
destroyed. Modern courts are satisfied with two forms of testimony,
but the German atrocities are evidenced by five kinds of indubitable
proof. There is the testimony of men and women telling what their own
eyes have seen, and their own ears have heard,--that is a high form
of evidence. There is the testimony of little children, children
too innocent to invent what they are old enough to describe. Legal
authorities tell us that because children are unprejudiced their
testimony is the highest form of proof known to modern courts. Third,
there is the testimony of the photograph,--photographs taken often
before the massacred bodies had grown cold, and immediately after the
German retreat from the town they had pillaged. The sunbeams move
in straight lines; they tell no lies; they cannot be bribed; they
have no prejudice for or against the Germans. No one can look at the
hundreds of photographs of mutilated bodies without confessing that the
sunlight, like a recording angel, has given a damning testimony that
cannot be gainsaid by the monsters who not only killed men who defended
the honour of their wives, but hacked these young husbands into shreds,
mutilating the body in ways that can only be mentioned by men to men
and in whispered tones.


THE GERMANS CONVICT THEMSELVES

Another form of proof is found in the journals and diaries of the
German soldiers. The German has climbed into the witness stand,
and given conclusive testimony against himself. Had his statements
been made by Belgians, French or English, we would have denied or
questioned the words, but when diaries have been taken from the dead
bodies of German soldiers, and when these different journals contain
substantially the same statements as to the atrocities committed at
a given day in a given town, it becomes impossible for an American
student to deny the daily records of German soldiers, with the
confession of deeds committed sometimes by their fellows, sometimes
by themselves. There is also the testimony of mutilated bodies that
have been preserved in certain morgues against the day of judgment
when arbitrators will behold the proof, hear the witnesses, and weigh
the guilt of the Germans. The Day of Judgment is coming when these
witnesses will rise literally from the grave and indict the German
Kaiser and his War Staff for atrocities that are the logical and
inevitable result of the ceaseless drill of their officers and privates
in the science of murder, as a method of breaking down the nervous
resources of the armed soldiers of Belgium and France.


OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE

No horrors in history are so overwhelmingly evidenced as the German
atrocities. The nature, the number, and the extent of their crimes have
been documented more thoroughly than the scalpings of settlers by Sioux
Indians, the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta, or the cruelties
of the Spanish Inquisition. No American to-day can cross the threshold
of Belgium or Northern France, Poland or Serbia, without recalling the
words that Dante saw above the gate of Hell: "Abandon hope, all ye who
enter here." Not since Judas and his fellow conspirators crucified
Jesus has there been a ruler, a War Staff or an army, that has
deliberately revived the cross, as an instrument of torture, to further
the ends of military efficiency. The Germans have literally fulfilled
the Kaiser's charge in 1899, and reproduced in 1914, upon various
cards for the Kaiser's soldiers: "You will take no prisoners; you will
show no mercy; you will give no quarter; you will make yourselves as
terrible as the Huns under Attila." All scholars know that the Kaiser
was referring to Attila's well-known motto, "Where my feet fall, let
grass not grow for a hundred years."


A CATALOGUE OF CRIMES

The catalogue of German atrocities, now documented, in legal reports,
with the accompanying photographs, preserved in the Department of
Justice of the various nations, makes up the blackest page in human
history. Long days and nights spent over the reports in the various
capitals, and in courts of justice, journeys to and fro amid the ruined
villages along a battle front six hundred miles in length, leave the
head sick and the heart faint. The traveller would become utterly
hopeless and broken-hearted, and give himself up to black despair,
were it not that everything that German savagery has done to destroy
one's faith in the divine origin of the human soul has been more than
recovered by the gentleness, the self-sacrifice, the fortitude, the
sympathy, the heroism of the British, the Belgians, and the French.
The Germans have at last compelled all unprejudiced minds to recognize
the atrocity as the German notion of scientific efficiency. It is not
by chance that the first atrocities were begun on practically the same
day, August 17th, of 1914, and ended about September 19th, and along a
line extending from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier, just
as the murders and mutilations, the rapes and the pillaging began and
ended at the same time in Poland, Rumania and Serbia, and are now being
repeated in more malignant forms in Northeastern Italy.


THESE HORRORS DO NOT REPRESENT DRUNKENNESS

Nor were these atrocities committed in moods of drunkenness, hours
of anger, nor by the occasional degenerate, like Jack the Ripper of
Whitechapel Road. Allen White and Arnold Toynbee are doubtless right
in asserting that _most_ of the attacks upon little girls and young
women were made by German officers, nevertheless, all must confess that
the German soldiers were not less culpable, as they pillaged the land,
guided by the deliberate, cold, precise, scientific, ordered policy of
German frightfulness.

The story of German occupancy of Belgium and France is a long, black
story of unspeakable crimes. These brigands broke into banks, looted
factories, pillaged houses, burned the farmers' machinery, chopped down
orchards and vineyards. In the face of their newly-signed treaties
with the Allied nations, pledging the safeguarding of all buildings
dedicated to education and religion, with the lives and property of
non-combatants, the Germans made their treaties mere scraps of paper,
sneered at the most solemn obligations given by men to men, burned
cathedrals, colleges and libraries, mutilated old men and women,
violated little children, nailed a child to a farmer's barn door upon
which they found a calf skin drying in the sun, and beneath wrote the
word "zwei." They crucified Canadian officers and Roman Catholic nuns.
They bombed hospitals and Red Cross buildings. They thrust women and
little children between themselves and the Belgian and French soldiers
defending their native land. The affidavits, photographs, and mutilated
bodies are witnesses that destroy forever the last shred of doubt and
incredulity. For men who are open to testimony, the German atrocities
are more surely established than any of the hideous cruelties recorded
in history. Now, for the first time, wildest savagery has been reduced
to a science, and damned into existence under the name of German
efficiency.


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE GERMAN ATROCITIES

At the beginning of the war the American people questioned all these
alleged horrors, saying that all war is hell, and abuses are common to
all armies. Americans looked upon these alleged abominations as being
intellectually absurd and morally monstrous, and therefore we doubted
the evidence. But at last all alike perceive that the German war-deeds
differ from the usual abuses of war, as a cunning fiend differs from a
drunken man. Germany believes in militarism, in forty-two centimeter
guns, in submarines, in liquid fire and poisoned gases. This republic
and our Allies believe in the manufacture of souls of good quality. We
believe in schools, colleges, libraries, churches, factories, banks,
fruitful fields and a self-sufficing, intelligent and moral manhood.
From the Allied view-point, the very thought of Germany's asking
other nations to produce property while once in a generation, with
her standing army, she goes forth to pillage and loot the wealth that
industrious French or Belgians have created, is for us a monstrous
thought. From the German view-point, however, atrocities represent
military efficiency. Just as the German War Staff perfected in advance
rifles and cannon as legitimate warfare, so they prepared in advance
certain outrages from which they expected the greatest possible
results, in terms of conquered territory.


THE GERMAN HANDBOOK OF MILITARY TACTICS

That their officers and soldiers might understand in advance the use of
the atrocity as a military instrument, the General Staff of the German
army, in 1902, published a handbook of military tactics, entitled "The
Laws of War on Land." This handbook sets forth a deliberate system
of atrocity, and prepares the way for every species of villainy. In
clear and unmistakable language, the War Staff presents principles
that embody the ideas of savages. Witness the statements on page 35:
"By steeping himself in military history an officer will be able to
guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions. It will teach him
that certain severities are indispensable to war. What is permissible
includes _every means_ without which the object of the war cannot be
attained." Witness also the savagery outlined on page 52: "A war
conducted with energy cannot be directed merely against the combatants
of the enemy states and the positions they occupy, but it will and must
in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material
resources of the latter. Humanitarian claims,--such as the protection
of men's lives and their property, can be taken into consideration
only in so far as the nature and object of the war will permit." Their
Handbook of Military Tactics is, therefore, nothing other than the
science of atrocity. With an army steeped in these vicious teachings,
with private soldiers trained by this handbook that teaches crime as
an art, and with the exhortation of their Kaiser to make themselves as
terrible as the Huns under Attila, the rape of Belgium, the crucifixion
of Poland, and the assassination of Northern France were logical and
inevitable results.


THE GERMAN MOTIVE FOR MASSACRE AN OVERWHELMING ONE

To-day, Germans find it difficult to forgive Bethmann-Hollweg for his
confessions when, at the beginning of the war, he acknowledged they
were committing a wrong against Belgium, that their designs made
necessary, by "hacking the way through." We now know that the motive of
the Kaiser and his War Staff for massacring Belgium was an overwhelming
motive. They had staked everything upon a short war. "Brussels in
one week, Paris in two weeks, London in two months,"--that was the
programme. The stubborn opposition of the Belgian army, standing on a
frontier whose sanctity the Kaiser, by the most solemn treaties, had
just pledged himself to safeguard, stalled the German military machine,
made impossible a crushing victory over France, and threatened their
dreams of a series of hurricane victories over England.

Then the German War Staff put into operation the instructions to
"frightfulness" against aged men and women, girls and little children.
Should the average American return home at night to find that his wife
and children had been massacred and mutilated during his absence, he
would not go to the office on the following morning. The horror of "a
great darkness" would fall upon him, the tool would drop from his hand,
and weeks would pass before he could steel his hand to the accustomed
task. Now the German War Staff fully realized the true value of the
atrocity as a military instrument. Their soldiers ran no risk in
killing aged men or raping young girls, but they hoped that when the
news of their crimes reached the armed opponent, the atrocity committed
upon his wife or child would break his nerve, and leave him helpless
to fight. It took only three and a half weeks to spread the black wave
of terror and frightfulness over Belgium, in order to break the nerve
forces of the Belgian army.


THE NUMBER OF ATROCITIES

The full extent of this can never be known. More than one hundred
thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes
were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German
armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns
affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies taken.
The fact that these atrocities all along the battle line began on
practically the same day in August and ended on about the same day in
September does not prove, but does suggest plan and prearrangement.
After the German troops had passed through, it became possible for
the village school-teacher, priest or banker, the aged women and the
children who had escaped to creep out of pits, the caves in the fields,
or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and return to
survey the scene of desolation behind them. In those towns where the
soldiers encountered no opposition by the inhabitants, for the reason
that there were no men left in the village, the Germans speedily
wrought their devastation and departed. Then the French authorities
hurried forward their authorized representatives, inquests were held,
photographs taken of the mutilated bodies, and testimony taken and sent
to the Department of Justice. What took place in those Belgian towns
and cities that are still in German hands will never be known until the
German officers and soldiers stand before the Great Judgment Throne and
give their account unto God.


THE GERMAN WAR STAFF'S REPORT ACKNOWLEDGES THEIR ATROCITIES

The value of the atrocity as a military instrument for sending the
simoom of terror across the land is set forth in scores of diaries
taken from the dead bodies of German soldiers, and also from the
occasional reports of German officers to the War Staff, that were
printed in Berlin and found their way into this country by way of
Denmark, Norway or Sweden.

In the "summarizing report by the General War Staff," published
December 31, 1914, the German chief says in explanation of the Belgian
campaign: "The need of the German army to push through Belgium was
imperative. Our starting point was that the tactical object of the
Twelfth Corps was to cross the Meuse with speed. To at once overcome
the opposition of the inhabitants was a military necessity, and
something to be striven for in every way." And what does "every way"
mean? Let the German Staff themselves answer. "The flourishing town
of Dinant with its suburbs was burnt, and made a heap of ruins, and
a large number of Belgian lives lost." "About 220 inhabitants were
then shot, and the village was burned. Just now, six o'clock in the
afternoon, the crossing of the Meuse begins near Dinant; all the
suburbs, chateaux and houses were burned down during this night. It
was a beautiful sight to see the villages burning all around us in the
distance." "The town appeared to be perfectly peaceful, nevertheless,
for the sake of security, a number of the inhabitants were made
prisoners by the grenadiers." "Later, we decided to assemble all the
male hostages against the garden wall, where we shot them."

Hundreds of witnesses called in one town, after the Germans had passed
on, show that the German officers and soldiers were engaged in one
horrible orgy of pillage, drunkenness, lust and murder. They began
by breaking open all wine cellars and soon the officers went reeling
and staggering through the streets, firing their revolvers into
the windows of houses and stores. They blasted the safes open with
dynamite. They carried goods from the shelves to the freight trains,
and as fast as the town was pillaged, burned the houses. During four
days they looted and burned twelve hundred houses, stores, factories,
schools and churches. They left lying on the ground seven hundred dead
bodies, chiefly women and children. Two trains laden with the men and
women who were strong enough to work were carried off to Germany.
All the manufactories where the artisan class were wont to work were
systematically destroyed. Marching away from towns that were blazing
furnaces, the German soldiers drove in advance a long line of women
and children, with a few aged men, and used them as screens behind
which they could march into the next town that was to be looted.


THE LOOTING OF LOUVAIN

In justifying the use of the atrocity as a military instrument more
efficient in breaking down the morale of the Belgian army than cannon
and liquid fire could possibly be, a German army officer's letter uses
these words: "The ruthless use of severities upon the civilians has
now succeeded in scattering the wretched Belgian army." But concerning
what atrocity is this officer writing? He wrote these words at the
end of the third day, after the Germans had pillaged Louvain, thus
serving notice on all the Belgian and French cities, rich in historic
monuments, libraries, galleries, cathedrals, and art treasures, that
unless they immediately surrendered, their whole city would be ruined.

And ruined after what manner? Let Cardinal Mercier, the Primate of
Belgium, tell the story. "At Louvain the third part of the city
has been destroyed; one thousand and seventy-four dwellings have
disappeared; in addition, in the suburbs Kesselloo, Herent and
Herberle, one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-eight houses have
been burned. In this dear city of Louvain, ever in my thoughts,
the magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover its former
splendour. The ancient college of St. Ives, the art schools, the
commercial and consular schools of the University; the old markets;
our rich library, with its collections, its unique and unpublished
manuscripts, its archives, its gallery of great portraits of
illustrious rectors, chancellors, professors, dating from the time of
its foundation, which preserved for masters and students alike a noble
tradition, and were an incitement to good work--all this accumulation
of intellectual, historic, and artistic richness, the fruit of the
labours of five centuries, all, all is in ashes."


BREAKING DOWN THE CONSCIENCE OF THEIR MEN

More terrible still the scheme invented by the Kaiser and the War
Staff for breaking down the conscience of the German soldier. The
simple peasants of Bavaria, the artisans of Saxony, until a generation
ago, were reared in the morals of Martin Luther. By common consent
Luther is one of the great men of modern times. At a critical moment
in history he stood forth affirming Paul's statement that every man
must give an account of himself unto God. Since Pope Julius could not
give his account unto God, Martin Luther claimed religious liberty
as to creed and conduct for himself. Since no kaiser could give his
account unto God, Martin Luther claimed the right of self-government,
through political democracy. Since no philosopher could give his
account, Luther demanded liberty of thought and speech. Carrying out
this principle, when three hundred years had passed, the free nations
stood forth clothed with political democracy, educational democracy,
religious democracy, industrial democracy. Just as we trace some
river back to a spring on the mountainside, so we trace these great
institutions of the Reformation back to Martin Luther, who received his
ideas from Paul and John, from Huss and Savonarola, reinforced by John
Calvin and Erasmus.


THE SOLDIER'S TOKEN

But Luther's ethics were the ethics of Moses. For several generations
the German peasants had been taught that it was criminal to kill,
steal, burn, rape and pillage. They knew by heart the words of Jesus,
"Woe unto him who offends against one of my little ones; it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depths of the sea." Plainly the Ten Commandments stood
squarely in the pathway of the Kaiser's ambition. Unless his ambitions
for world rule were to be defeated, some scheme had to be invented
to free the German soldier from conscience, and break the fetters of
divine law.

Therefore the soldier's token was invented. It comes under Jesus'
special condemnation, in that not only the Kaiser and the War Staff
pursued crime, but "taught men so." These tokens are made of stiff
cardboard or of aluminum. At the top is a portrait of Deity as the
Kaiser conceives him to be; in one hand the Kaiser's God holds a
sickle, for the death-harvest. Beneath, the Kaiser and his War Staff
wrote these words, "Strike him dead; the Day of Judgment will not ask
you for reasons."

The soldier might read this: "You can slay, pillage, loot, burn, rape,
leave thousands of bodies massacred and mutilated on the ground, but
remember that your Kaiser and your War Staff will stand between you and
the avenging God, and will see to it that the Judge of all the earth
makes you no trouble on the great day of accounting." The Kaiser's
God, however, is our Devil. For three years the Kaiser has had the
Devil all mixed up with God,--being unable to distinguish between them.
Whenever the Kaiser uses the word "Gott," Americans always substitute
the word "Devil." With one change the soldier's token is quite
accurate,--"Strike them dead,--old men, girls and children,--the Devil
will not ask you for reasons. Hell and damnation are fully satisfied
with all you Germans have done."


EITEL ANDERS

But when the German soldier boy took this token out of his pocket,
and looked at his license to crime, what effect did it have upon him?
Here is the diary of Eitel Anders. It is believed that he belonged to
the 14th Bavarian regiment. The diary was taken from his body upon the
battle-field, and is similar to hundreds of others. "We crossed the
bridge over the Maas at 11:50 in the morning. We then arrived at the
town of Waendre. When we went out of the town, everything was in ruins.
In one house a whole collection of weapons was found [the Mayor had
ordered the women to bring to his house every weapon that they could
find, that the Germans might have no excuse for saying that any one had
struck their soldiers or fired a gun]. All the inhabitants, without
exception, were brought out and shot. This shooting was heart-breaking,
as they all knelt down and prayed, but praying is no ground for mercy.
A few shots rang out, and they fell back into the green grass and
slept forever. It is real sport." But how did Eitel Anders sleep that
night? We know that Macbeth did not sleep after he murdered Duncan
and Banquo. Did the Kaiser succeed in stultifying conscience in Eitel
Anders? The next day the soldier made another entry;--mark the opening
words: "This morning, in happy mood and high spirits, we passed through
Taturages. But before this we cleaned up the suburb of Mons, and burned
the houses. The inhabitants came out of the houses into the open plain.
Here many heart-breaking scenes occurred. It was really terrible to
watch."

Plainly the soldier's token and the Kaiser's scheme succeeded. Having
stated that he had murdered men, young Eitel Anders sleeps well at
night, and the "next morning in happy mood and high spirits" wakened
to plan fresh crimes. Macbeth had no German soldier's token to help
him sleep at night. Conscience became the whisper of God in his soul.
Sleep forsook his eyes, and slumber his eyelids. Shakespeare's murderer
did not dare trust himself out under the stars that blazed with anger,
but Eitel Anders' sleep was not disturbed by the blood upon his hands,
because he really believed the Kaiser would be able to stand between
him and the Great Day of Judgment.

After General Clauss shot fifteen aged men in the streets of
Gerbéviller, too, that officer rode away with a light heart, quite
free from the remorse that unseated the reason of Macbeth. Plainly
the Kaiser's scheme succeeded. It destroyed conscience in many German
officers and soldiers alike. To-day, the men of Germany without moral
sense or any remorse following their crimes are like a sky that holds
an empty socket where once the summer-making sun had shined. They are
like human bodies out of which the intellect has passed, leaving only
gibbering idiots. The German "Laws of War on Land," their Handbook of
Military Tactics, has organized crime into a science, and killed in men
the spiritual optic nerve. Germany to-day is an intellectual machine,
and her officers and her soldiers at last can commit crimes without
remorse, which proves that they are becoming moral idiots.


GERBÉVILLER THE MARTYRED[1]

In August of 1914, when the German army was broken and compelled to
retreat before the French, they passed through many French towns and
villages in which they found no soldiers and no weapons, and where no
battle, no skirmish and no shot took place. During last July and August
we went slowly from one of these ruined towns to another, talking
with the broken-hearted women and children, comparing the photographs
taken immediately after the German retreat and almost before the
mutilated bodies were cold. Slowly we sifted the evidence. On the
ground we compared the full official records made at the time, with the
statements of wretched survivors who live in cellars, where once stood
the beautiful homes, the orchards and vineyards, but where now all is
desolation and anguish.

Among the multitude of events described by witnesses who survived the
martyrdom of their village are the following: When the noise of the
approach of General Clauss' division of twenty thousand soldiers in
full retreat was heard, an aged Frenchman stood in his open door. He
had retired from business, to spend his last days midst the friends of
his childhood and youth. Hearing the noise of the approaching army,
the merchant stepped to his open door. As the first automobile swept
by, the German officers lifted their revolvers and emptied the lead
into the old man's body. He pitched forward down the stone steps, and
in his death struggle worked his way to the wrought iron gate, where
after the German retreat he was found dead. Before touching the body,
official photographers, under the direction of their noble Prefect,
took their photographs from different angles. In the garden behind
the smoking cellar was found the wife, lying dead upon the grass, her
left wrist tied by the clothes-line to the root of an apple tree, the
right wrist tied to a clump of gooseberry bushes. She was dead, but not
through dagger or pistol. Standing beside their graves we studied the
photographs and talked with the families of the fifteen aged men whom
General Clauss ordered shot because there were no young or middle-aged
men in the village whom he could kill.


BURNING OF AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

Most harrowing the testimony given by the mother of a Red Cross
ambulance driver. The day before the Germans came, this man had
returned from the front, bringing an ambulance filled with wounded
soldiers. While the division of twenty thousand Germans were looting
the houses, and carrying away every rug, carpet, table, chair, picture,
tool, art treasure towards the Rhine, German officers entered the house
of Sister Juliet, who was nursing the wounded soldiers. Finding the
young Red Cross man there, they immediately shot him. Later while his
mother was holding his head in her arms and staunching his wounds, a
German officer approached and, seizing her hands, held them behind her
back, while one of the privates poured petrol over her son's head. With
two fingers this soldier ripped the clothes from the breast of the
wounded man and poured oil under his shirt and then set fire to his
garments. Referring to his death struggles and the photograph of the
charred mass that had once been her son lying on the brick pavement,
this mother exclaimed, "If I had only let him bleed to death! If I had
only let him bleed to death! Then they could not have made him die
twice!"


THE MURDER OF HEREMINEL

In a little farming village not many miles from Gerbéviller the
martyred, stands a battered square belfry, into which the Germans
lifted their machine guns, hoping to hold back the pursuit of the
French army, thus giving General Clauss time to retreat and "dig in"
some miles to the northeast. Tying the ropes to the axle of automobile
trucks, the Germans soon lifted their guns into the church tower.
They then drove the French women and children into the church and
used them as a screen, for no German ever exposes himself to danger
if he can possibly find a woman or child behind whom he can hide. One
young mother did not immediately obey, because of certain duties in
connection with her little child. With two other girls this young wife
was stood up against the stone wall of her own little house and shot,
for the purpose of teaching French women to obey instantly when German
savages command.

When all the women and children were packed into the church, a boy
was sent back to tell the French that if they fired upon the guns in
the church belfry, they would kill their own families. Two nights
later when a storm was raging, the women slipped a little boy through
the window, and sent word to the officers of the approaching French
army that their wives wished them to open fire on the German guns. In
blowing these weapons out of the belfry, the French killed twenty of
their own wives and children, who preferred to share death with the
men they loved, rather than suffer nameless indignities from German
brutes. In a hundred years of history where shall you find a record
of soldiers, whether red, black or yellow, save Germans, who were such
sneaking, snivelling cowards that they do not dare play the game fairly
and like men, but in their chattering terror use women and little
children as shields against danger? Of a truth, the "Potsdam gang" has
added a new word to the literature of cowardice.


THE FRENCHMAN'S LOVE OF FRANCE

Terrible also the German assassination of the land itself. All men
love their native land, but the Frenchman's love has a unique quality.
He speaks of La Belle France as Dante spoke of Beatrice, as Petrarch
spoke of Laura, and the name of France lingers upon his lips as music
trembles in the air after the song is sung.

It is love of native land that has made France beautiful just as
through affection the lark, after completing its nest, makes it soft
and warm by pulling the down out of her own bosom. The French people
love France as Millais loved his Gleaners, as Bellini loved the missal
he had illuminated, and as that young architect loved the little Roslyn
chapel, upon whose delicate capitals he had lavished his very soul.
For centuries the enemies of farms, houses, towns and cities have been
fire, flood and earthquake. Witness the city of St. Pierre. An interior
explosion blew off the cap of the mountain and a flood of gas poured
down upon the lovely city, asphyxiated the citizens and left not one
house standing. Witness that mighty convulsion in San Francisco that
brought thousands of brick buildings crashing down in ruins. Witness
the fire in Chicago that turned the great city into piles of twisted
iron and ashes. In New Zealand there is a lake called Avernus, the
birdless lake. Poisonous gases rise from the black flood of water, and
soon the lark with its song, and the eagle with its flight fall into
the poisonous flood.

But all these images are quite inadequate to explain the devastation
of France upon the retreat of the Germans. About forty miles north of
Paris, one strikes the ruined region. Then hour after hour passes,
while with slow movement and breaking heart the investigator journeys
one hundred miles to the north and zigzags one hundred and twenty-five
miles south again, through that ruined region. Centuries ago Julius
Cæsar described it as a wild land, rough, with forests filled with
wolves. Then the Frenchman entered the scene. He subdued all the wild
grasses, drained the valleys and widened the streams into canals. He
enriched the fields, surrounded the meadows with odorous hedges and
filled swamps with perfumed shrubs. Slowly the Frenchman threw arches
of stone across the streams and carved the bridges until they were rich
in art, while everything made for use was carried up to beauty. He gave
to the roof of the barn its lovely lines; the approach to the house
was upon a curved road, the highways were shaded by two rows of noble
trees. The stony hillside was terraced, and there the vines grew purple
in the sun. How simple was his life! What a sanctuary his little home!
With what rich embroidery of wheat he covered all the hills! He was
prudent without being stingy, thrifty without being mean. The French
peasant saves against old age with one hand and distributes to his
children with the other.


WHAT HATE CAN DO

And having lavished all their love upon the little farmhouse, the
granary and the garden, having pruned these grape-vines with their
clusters of white and purple, the time came when each vine seemed like
a friend, dear as that miraculous picture was to Baucis and Philemon.
For these reasons all France was invested with affection and beauty.

The French peasants loved their land and then lost it. One morning the
Hun stood at the gate. The farmers with their pruning knives were no
match for Germans with their machine guns, and down they fell under
the plum trees they were pruning. The devastated regions of France are
like unto a world ruined by devils. The Germans cut down the apples,
the pears, and all the peaches. They did not spare the cherry, the
quince, the gooseberry and currant, or the vineyards. Gone also all the
beautiful bridges--they have been dynamited! Gone all the lovely and
majestic Thirteenth Century churches! Gone all the galleries, for some
of the finest art treasures in the world have perished.

The land has been put back to where it was when Julius Cæsar described
it two thousand years ago--a wild land, and waste, growing up with
thorns and thistles. That proclamation on a wall tells the whole
story. "Let no building stand, no vine or tree. Before retreating see
that the wells and springs are plentifully polluted with corpses and
with creasote." The spirit was this, "Since we Germans cannot have this
land, no one else shall."


PRINCE EITEL'S CRIME

But there is more. One of the historic chateaux is that of Avricourt,
rich in noble associations of history. It was one of the class of
buildings covered by a clause in the international agreements between
Germany, France and the United States and all the civilized nations,
safeguarding historic buildings. For many months it was the home of
Prince Eitel, the Kaiser's second son.

When a judge and jury held inquiry at the ruins of the chateau, the
aged French servant, who understood the electric lighting and had
charge of the gas plant during Eitel's occupancy, stated that he heard
the German officers telling Eitel Frederick that he would disgrace
the German name if he destroyed a building that had no relation to
war, that could be of no aid or comfort to the French army, and that
he would make his own name, and that of his family, a name of shame
and contempt, of obloquy and scorn. But the man would not yield. He
brought in his auto trucks and carried to the freight cars every
historic object in the splendid chateau. Having pledged himself to
leave the building uninjured, the prince stopped his car at the gates
of the exit, ran back to this historic house, filled his firebrand,
spread the flames upon the halls, waited until the flames were well
in progress, and then ordered his men to light the fuse of dynamite
bombs. A few days later inquiry was held and testimony of aged servants
and little children was taken. The degeneracy of this German Prince
as then revealed has not been equalled since the first chapter of
Romans catalogued the unnatural crimes of the men of the ancient world.
Germany has no artistic sense. Her own poet, Heine, predicts that
she will yet pull in pieces her one fine cathedral. The German poet
does not think any beautiful thing is safe so long as it is in German
hands. This gifted Hebrew had the vision that literally saw the German
pounding to pieces the Cathedral at Louvain and Ypres, in Arras, in
Bapaume, in St. Quentin, and Rheims.


RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

One of the atrocities that has horrified the civilized world has
been the ruin of Rheims Cathedral. Germany, of course, was denied by
nature any gift of imagination. The German mind is a hearty, mediocre
mind, that can multiply and exploit the inventions and discoveries
of the other races. The Germans contributed practically nothing to
the invention of the locomotive, the steamboat, the Marconigram, the
automobile, the airplane, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the
reaper, the electric light. Even as to the weapons with which she
fights, Americans invented for Germany her revolver, her machine gun,
her turreted ship, and her submarine. In retrospect it seems absolutely
incredible that Germany could have been so helplessly and hopelessly
unequal to the invention of the tools that have made her rich.

But imagination is not her gift. If Sheffield can give her a model
knife, Germany can reproduce that knife in quantities and undersell
Sheffield. The German people keep step in a regiment, in a factory and
on a ship, and therefore are wholesalers. The French mind is creative.
It stands for individual excellence, and is at the other extreme from
the German temperament. The emblem of the German intellect is beer; the
emblem of the English intellect is port wine; the emblem of the French
mind is champagne; the emblem of an American intellect like Emerson's
is a beaker filled with sunshine--but Germany has a "beer" mind. It
is this lack of imagination that explains Nietzsche's statement that
for two hundred years Germany has been "the enemy of culture" while
Heinrich Heine insists that "the very name of culture is France."

It is this total lack of any appreciation of art and architecture that
explains Germany's destruction of some of the noblest buildings of
the world. She cannot by any chance conceive how the other races look
upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it publicly
in one of her state papers, "Let the neutrals cease chattering about
cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and
churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military
ends." Guizot in his history of civilization presents three tests of a
civilized people: First, they revere their pledges and honour; second,
they reverence and pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture and
literature; third, they exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor,
the weak and the unfortunate.

Now apply those tests to the Kaiser and his War Staff, and you
understand why Rheims Cathedral is a ruin.[2] No building since the
Parthenon was more precious to the world's culture. What majesty and
dignity in the lines! What a wealth of statuary! How wonderful the
Twelfth Century glass! With what lightness did these arches leap into
the air! Now, the great bombs have torn holes through the roof; only
little bits of glass remain; broken are the arches, ruined these
flying buttresses, the altar where Jeanne d'Arc stood at the crowning
of Charles is quite gone. The great library, the bishop's palace, all
the art treasures are in ruins. But ancient and noble buildings do
not belong to a race, they belong to the world. Sacred forever the
threshold of the Parthenon, once pressed by the feet of Socrates and
Plato! Thrice sacred that aisle of Santa Croce in Florence, dear to
Dante and Savonarola. To be treasured forever the solemn beauty of
Westminster Abbey, holding the dust of men of supreme genius.

In front of the wreck of the Cathedral of Rheims, all blackened with
German fire, broken with the German hammer, is the statue of Jeanne
d'Arc. There she stands, immortal forever, guiding the steed of the sun
with the left hand, lifting the banners of peace and liberty with the
right. By some strange chance, no bomb injured that bronze. That figure
seems a beautiful prophecy of a day when the spirit of liberty, riding
in a chariot of the sun, shall guide a greater host made up of all
the peoples who revere the treasures of art and architecture, and law
and liberty, and will ride on to a victory that will be the sublimest
conquest in the annals of time.


THE DEVASTATION OF THE FRENCH HOME

But the ruin of his cathedrals, his galleries, his schoolhouses, his
libraries, his farmhouses, his vineyards and orchards, is the least
of sorrows of the Frenchman. In a little village near Ham dwelt a
man who had saved a fortune for his old age, 100,000 francs. When
the invading army, like a black wave, was approaching, he buried his
treasure beneath the large, flat stones that made the walk from the
road up to the front step of his house. Then, with the other villagers,
the old man fled. Many months passed by, while the Germans bombarded
the village. At last the German wave retreated, and once more the old
man drew near to his little village. There was nothing, nothing left.
After a long time, he located the street, which was on the very edge of
the town, but could not find the cellar of his own house. Great shells
had fallen. Exploding in the cellar, they had blown the bricks away.
Then other shells had fallen hard by and blown dirt that filled up what
once had been a cellar. The very trees in front of his house had been
blown away and replaced by shell pits. In one of his reports Ambassador
Sharp states that the aged man had up to that time failed to locate his
house, much less his buried treasure. But what trifles light as air are
houses in contrast with other forms of desolation!


RUINED HOMES AND HOPES

At the officers' headquarters, one night after returning from
the front, several officers were recounting to us their dramatic
experiences. Many harrowing tales were told. During the winter of 1915,
in the trenches at the foot of Vimy Ridge, several English officers
and a French captain were down in a safety cellar having their pipes
together and recounting the events of the day. Rain was falling and
they delayed their stay. Finally the moment came to return to their
trenches above. At that moment an English sentinel exclaimed: "One
week from to-day and I will be home in England with my wife and baby.
One more week! The next seven days seem to me like seven eternities."
The English captain congratulated the boy, saying, "In two months my
permission will come and I will have eight days home with my family."
Then the English officer noticed the French officer's agitation.
Turning to him, the English captain exclaimed, "And when do you go,
Captain?" "When do I go home," exclaimed the Frenchman bitterly, "when
do I go home? You Englishmen do not understand! Your land has never
been invaded. Go home! To what could I go? The Germans have been in my
land for a year. My little town is gone, quite gone. My little house
is gone, and gone my little shop! My wife is still a young woman! My
little girl,--she is just a little, little girl! Why, I never thought
of her as a woman! And now our priest writes me that my young wife and
my little girl will have babes in two months by these brutes!" And then
the storm broke. The Frenchman beat his head upon the rude table, while
the two Englishmen fled into the rain and night, knowing that the rain
was nothing against those tears of pain, for that man's hopes were dead
forever. That lieutenant's only task was to recover France and then
transfer all his ambitions to God in Heaven.

Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no inconclusive
peace. Unconditional surrender is the only word. Whether this war goes
on one year or five years it must go on until the Hun repents and
makes restitution--so far as possible. Alas, a myriad of these German
outrages are irremediable! Thoughtful men doubt whether the German will
ever learn the wickedness of his own atrocities and the crimes of
militarism until his own land is laid waste, until he sees the horrors
of war with his own eyes, and hears the groans of his own people with
his own ears, sees his own land laid desolate, finds his own heart
crushed under anguish. Yet retribution in kind would be unthinkable for
the Allies!


THE FOUL CRIME AGAINST WOMEN

Many Americans have looked with horror upon the photograph of the
mutilated bodies of women. Sacred forever the bosom of his mother, and
not less sacred the body of every woman. Not content with mutilating
the bodies of Allied officers, of Belgian boys, they lifted the knife
upon the loveliness of woman. The explanation was first given by the
Germans themselves. When the Hun joins the army, he must pass his
medical examination. A few drops of blood are taken from the left arm,
and the Wassermann blood culture is developed. If free from disease,
the soldier receives a card giving him access to the camp women, who
are kept in the rear for the convenience of the German soldier. If,
however, the Wassermann test shows that the German has syphilis, the
soldier bids him report to the commanding officer. The captain tells
him plainly that he must stay away from the camp women upon peril of
his life, and that if he uses one of their girls he will be shot like
a dog. Having syphilis himself, the German will hand it on to the camp
girl, and she in turn will contaminate all the other soldiers, and that
means that the Kaiser would soon have no army. Therefore, the soldier
that has this foul disease must stay away from the camp women on peril
of his life. Under this restriction the syphilitic soldier has but one
chance, namely, to capture a Belgian or French girl; but using this
girl means contaminating her, and she in turn will contaminate the next
German using her. To save his own life, therefore, when the syphilitic
German has used a French or Belgian girl, he cuts off her breast as a
warning to the next German soldier. The girl's life weighs less than
nothing against lust or the possibility of losing his life by being
charged with the contamination of his brother German.


INSANE THROUGH PAIN AND GRIEF

One pathetic and dramatic story ran up and down the trenches upon a
line twenty miles in length. Told by different soldiers, that tragic
story never varies in the essential facts. When the Germans ruined a
village near Ham, they carried away some fifty-four girls and women
between the ages of fourteen and forty. These girls were held behind
the lines among the camp women, kept for the Huns. One chilly morning
last April a French boy, lying on a board on the bottom of his trench,
heard the wild shrieks of a girl. Standing on tiptoe he peeped over
the top to find the French soldiers in the one trench and the Boches
in the other had forgotten the peril of the sniper's bullet, and were
staring at a young girl out in No Man's Land. One week of cruelty had
driven the girl insane. The German soldiers had lifted her out of their
trench, and with their bayonets had pushed her in the direction of the
French lines, and were shouting to her to go over to her friends among
the French.

What the French soldiers saw was a young woman, clothed in a dark
blue skirt, her waist torn, her bosom exposed, her hair loose upon
her shoulders. She was standing bewildered in No Man's Land. Now she
poured forth the pealing laughter of a maniac, and now she seemed to
be talking to herself. Suddenly her eye caught sight of a human body,
wearing the garb of a French soldier. The girl did not know that it was
a French boy who in the darkness had been cutting the barbed wire, and
in the midst of the German flare had been caught by a bullet. Mistaking
the dead boy for that of her young husband, the girl ran forward, fell
upon her knees, and lifted the body that was already cold into her
arms. From time to time she would take an arm grown stiff and try to
put it around her neck and then gaze upon it, not understanding why
the cold hands did not clasp her around in the dear accustomed way.
Suddenly her eyes saw his coat, lying near by; but she did not know
that the boy in his death struggles had torn that coat from his body.
She thought that garment, already stiff with blood, was her own little
babe. Picking up the coat, she dropped upon her knees, lifted it to
her breast, and began to sway to and fro, and soon the French soldiers
heard a lullaby, familiar and dear to every Frenchman whose mother with
that song charmed the fear out of the eyes and the terror from the
heart. So terrible was the scene that for the moment the Frenchman and
German alike forgot all warfare! Finally, a German lifted his rifle to
the shoulder, and as the girl, rising to her feet, flung the bloody
coat away, and screamed, "The Boche! the Boche!" his rifle cracked, and
the young woman sank slowly down. A moment later, all helmets, German
and French alike, disappeared behind the trenches. Silence rested on No
Man's Land, and events went on as before. But for France the world will
never be the same again. German crimes have lighted a flame of sacred
anger that will never burn out until German cruelty has been utterly
consumed. That is why the fire sparkles in the eyes of the Allied
soldiers whenever you suggest peace by negotiation, or a peace without
victory.


A WOUNDED GERMAN COLONEL

Last winter, a German colonel was shot through the spinal cord. His
lower limbs were completely paralyzed, and the paralysis began to
extend to his hands. The wounded man developed the theory that if he
could only be carried back to Germany recovery was possible. Lifted
into an ambulance, he was carried twelve miles to the northeast,
towards the Rhine. Unable to endure the agony of the rough road, he
commanded the ambulance driver to stop in front of the priest's house,
near ----. Two aged French women cared for the wounded man during
January, February and March. Little by little the wings of the angel of
death fanned away the mist before the eyes of the German officer. For
two and a half years he had carried an aluminum token with a portrait
of the German Kaiser's conception of God, and the words, "Strike them
all dead. The Day of Judgment will not ask you for reasons." But at
last a moment had come when he lost confidence in the pledge of the
Kaiser and the War Staff to stand between him and an outraged God.
One morning a little French boy waited after mass to tell the priest
that the German officer wanted him to come at once. The important
message proved to be a warning that the von Hindenburg line was nearly
completed, that the orders for retreat had gone out, that every church,
bank, factory, house, was to be looted and then burned, and the whole
region turned into a desolation. "These two aged women and you yourself
have been very kind to me, and this pass will take you through the
German lines to a place of safety." And then the dying officer advised
the priest to take the two women and go away at once. The news utterly
crushed the kindly man of God. Touched by the grief of the white-haired
priest, and perhaps terrified by memory and remorse, words of righteous
wrath and repentance fell from the lips of the officer. These were
his last words, as that old priest transcribed them from the lips of
this dying German. "Curses upon our army! Curses upon our Kaiser, and
our War Staff! Ten thousand curses upon the Fatherland! Either God is
dead or Germany is doomed!" Going out of the door, the last words the
aged priest heard were the dying curses of an officer, whose soul had
been debauched by his Kaiser and his War Staff, and who upon the brink
of the Day of Judgment realized that for every crime he must give an
account unto God. "Woe unto him who offends one of my little ones; it
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and
that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."

That conscience-smitten dying German packed the genius of the moral
universe into the curse he pronounced upon the Kaiser, the War Staff
and the Fatherland. When the veil was taken away from his eyes he saw
that the stars in their courses were fighting against the Kaiser. In
the awful hour of death he learned at last that God is not dead, but
that because of her atrocities, Germany is doomed.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "In this village, from which the Germans had just retreated, I saw
a proclamation by the German officer, saying that every Frenchman who
refused to work should receive twenty blows of the whip; the women,
fifteen blows, and the boys and girls under fifteen years of age,
ten blows."--_Extract from letter of the American violinist, Albert
Spalding, now a lieutenant serving in France._

[2] During last September and October, at the author's suggestion, the
American etcher--Louis Orr--for eighteen days was in Rheims Cathedral
while under bombardment. Mr. Orr is one of the most distinguished
etchers now living. He has sent to Dr. Hillis 2,400 copies of his three
etchings to be sold for the Red Cross work under official direction.




II

The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul


  "Our motto is 'from Hamburg to the Persian gulf.'"--PROFESSOR
  TANNEMANN.

  "In this Pan-German Empire, Germans alone will govern; they alone
  will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the army
  and navy; they alone will have the right to hold land; and they
  will thus be made to feel that they are a people of rulers, as
  they were in the Middle Ages. They will, however, allow inferior
  tasks to be carried out by the foreign subjects under their
  domination."--"_Gross Deutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr
  1950_," p. 48.

  "Why should we make paltry excuses? Yes, we brought on this war,
  and we are glad of it. We provoked it, because we were sure of
  winning."
    MAXIMILIAN HARDIN,
    In _Zukunft_, Aug. 20, 1914.

  "After this war is over, I will stand no nonsense from the United
  States."--_The Kaiser's threat to Ambassador Gerard._




II

The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul


German apostasy began with German military success. What the Kaiser
offered to Germany in exchange for her soul was the Pan-German empire.
The originator of the world empire scheme was the Kaiser; Nietzsche
was its philosopher; Treitsche its historian; Bernhardi its advocate;
and von Hindenburg its executive. The first conference regarding the
Pan-German empire seems to have been called in 1895, and was held
in the Potsdam Palace. During the next two or three years, a world
organization was brought together by the "Potsdam gang," with the
Kaiser at the center, an inner circle of officers, and politicians,
a larger circle of bankers, manufacturers, and ship owners. Finally
there was a far-flung web of diplomats, spies, commercial travellers,
Pan-German League agents, organizing in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco, in Buenos Ayres and Rio de Janeiro, in Buda Pesth and
Vienna, in Constantinople and Cairo, German Veteran Leagues, German
Commercial Associations, all looking towards the day when the Kaiser
would be the world emperor, and all countries would become provinces
paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. "What about international
law?" asked an American diplomat of Bernhardi. "There will be no
international law," was the answer. "Berlin will decide what laws are
best for the rest of the world."

The Pan-German empire pamphlets, maps, books, magazine articles,
published during the next ten years, were legion, but Professor
Tannemann, a personal friend of the Kaiser, in 1911 restated the
Kaiser's scheme. The essence of Pan-German plan was condensed into a
few sentences: "From Hamburg and the North Sea to the Persian Gulf;
the immediate goal, by 1915, the conquest of 250,000,000 of people;
the ultimate goal, the Germanization of all the nations of the world."
One of the Kaiser's speeches contains the explanation of his dream
of becoming a world conqueror: "From my childhood I have been under
the influence of five men,--Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric II,
Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream
of a world empire; they failed. I am dreaming a dream of a German
world empire--and my mailed fist shall succeed." The Kaiser printed
a map headed, "The Roman Empire; Cæsar Augustus, world emperor."
That map shows the once great states, Athens, Ephesus, Jerusalem,
Alexandria, Carthage, reduced to county seat towns, paying tribute to
the world capital, while their captive kings had walked as slaves in
the triumphal processions along the Appian Way, towards the palace
of the world ruler, Cæsar Augustus. One of the Pan-German empire
pamphlets, and many of the German newspapers contain a revised map
of Europe, showing "Germania" stamped across the continent, with St.
Petersburg, Paris and London become county seat towns, paying tribute
to the world capital, Berlin. Many German newspapers, during this
war, have published maps showing Canada as a German province, with
the name "Germania" stamped across South America, Mexico and Central
America. These many pamphlets and Pan-German empire books explain
Admiral Dewey's report to President McKinley. That report seems to have
been written in the cabin of the flag-ship _Olympia_, in Manila Bay.
Dewey states that the German admiral told him plainly to make a note
of this prophecy that within fifteen years (1899, report of Admiral
Dewey), Germany would crush France and Belgium, seize Holland and
Denmark, utterly destroy England, and take Canada as a German province.
Admiral Dewey added that the German admiral told him that while the
Kaiser intended to seize New York and Washington and hold them for an
indemnity, he did not intend to permanently hold in subjection the
United States, but he did intend to retain Mexico and South America,
and then "dispose of the Monroe Doctrine as he thinks best." This may
explain the Kaiser's word to Mr. Gerard: "After this war I will stand
no nonsense from the United States." So astounding were these claims
that the statesmen and rulers of the world laughed at these threats,
deeming it incredible that Germany was plotting a world war. Two or
three men of remarkable prescience and vision, General Roberts in
London, Chéradame in Paris, and Ex-President Roosevelt, understood and
therefore never ceased warning the nation to prepare and make ready for
a conflict that seemed to them inevitable.

When the Kaiser first announced his Pan-German empire scheme he bribed
his people by appeals to avarice, ambition, and jealousy of England
and Russia. The arguments used by the Potsdam gang were very simple:
Agriculture pays six per cent., trade eight per cent., finance ten per
cent., shipping twelve per cent., but war is an industry that pays
fifty per cent. dividend upon the investment. Germany's war upon little
Denmark, a people without army or navy, paid an enormous dividend upon
the investment, in that it gave Germany one of her richest provinces,
made possible the Kiel Canal, and left Denmark permanently crippled
and exposed. "Denmark and Holland, also, are apples," says a German
author, "that are slowly ripening, and we will pick the fruit at the
proper time." Germany's war of 1864 upon Austria was the attack of a
brigand upon a traveller rich with gold, and the cities and provinces
that Germany wrested away from the ruler of Vienna paid a hundred per
cent. upon the investment. In his Memoirs Bismarck tells the world
plainly that he deliberately fomented a war with France, that he might
seize the iron ore provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, in order to obtain
the hematite iron that would make it possible for Germany to pass from
the agricultural people into an industrial and manufacturing state as
the competitor of England for the world's trade. For more than forty
years the chief argument presented in the Reichstag for increased
appropriations for the army and the navy was the money dividends paid
by war.

In 1911 the Kaiser spread out before his people bribes most alluring.
Just as the Devil led Jesus up into a mountain and showed Him the whole
earth, so the Kaiser and the Potsdam gang led the Germans into a mount
of temptation and showed them how easy it was to make the Kaiser a
world emperor. The argument was very simple; after twenty-five years
of preparation, Germany has nine million soldiers, has cannons, liquid
fire, poisoned gases, battle-ships, aeroplanes, with every wagon and
automobile ready to have the pleasure body removed, and a military
body substituted. "We are ready to the last buckle on the horses'
harness." To the east was Russia, broken by war with Japan; Russia with
her gold mines, her wheat granaries, her vast coal and iron deposits
and forests all undeveloped. To the southeast was Rumania, with her oil
wells, with Constantinople and the silk fields, and the Tigris, the
gateway to the Indian Ocean, and the treasures of the Bagdad railway
country. To the west was unarmed Belgium, rich with twenty billions
of treasure; France, half armed, with her newly discovered iron mines
and coal measures; England, one vast jewel box, a kind of Aladdin's
cave,--"Wait until Germany lifts her mailed fists upon the English
treasure box, there will be enough for everybody in Berlin," is the
gist of Zimmermann's speech of November, 1914. "The people of the
United States call us Huns," writes the editor of the _Localanzeiger_,
"but New York had better remember that the young Huns from the German
forests took only two weeks to cross the Alps and loot the city of
Rome." Other German members of the Reichstag have likened the United
States unto a Croesus, the richest man in the world, living in a golden
house, surrounded with bags, bursting with gems and wedges of gold and
silver, but a Croesus that had no lock on his door and no weapon in his
hand.


THE TREASURE BOXES OF EUROPE

"Belgium is a lamb, France and England are flocks of sheep, feeding and
fattening in the pasture, ready for our shears." All these statements
were sent out through Germany. The other nations are so many treasure
boxes, ready for our military key to unlock them. Boys, farmers' sons,
discussed the coming looting expedition in the hayfields. College boys
talked about the treasures of England and France, Belgium and Holland,
as boys once talked about emptying the newly discovered gold mines of
California. Officers drank to "The Day." Editors added fuel to the
flames of avarice. The statesmen cried, "It is our duty to rule these
countries, and besides, by war we get great gain."

The influence of these incitements to avarice and ambition is found
in the letters taken from the dead bodies of German soldiers. In one
letter, found near Vitrimont, the German lover tells his sweetheart
that he expects soon to be in Paris, and will bring her a handful of
diamond rings, and a pocket full of bracelets and a few Paris gowns.
Another German boy writes his young wife about a little valley in
France with rich pastures and meadows, and beautiful farmhouses, and
how Heinrich, Hans and Diedrich had decided to pick out the four best
farms on which they would live as soon as they had cleaned up Paris.
He adds, however, that Hans thinks it would be much better for them to
wait until England is smashed, and when Canada is a colony, they can
pick farms there two or three miles square, and make their children
great landowners. For this war was to pay Germany a thousand per cent.
dividend on her investment.

And who, even already, can deny that in large part Germany has made
good the bribes offered to German boys? When one thinks how Germany
has looted the states of Europe of her gold and silver, her bonds and
stocks, their pictures, books, furniture, laces, silks, wheat, corn,
wine, it is easy to understand the Kaiser's statement that "war should
be Germany's chief national industry." With the Kaiser crime has
prospered.

Germany wanted this war, planned this war, prepared for this war, and
made treasure houses in which she could store the loot of this war.
Blood went to Germany's head like drugged wine. For years she has been
beside herself with military success. The Kaiser for twenty years has
been rattling his sword and bullying the nations. Standing in the
market-place, like some huge Goliath, in the spirit of the common
braggart he has shouted, "I can lick anybody in the world." In the
nature of the case, one brigand with his revolver is equal to a hundred
business men and manufacturers in a railroad car. In the nature of the
case also, Germany, with her military preparedness, should have been
equal to a score of countries like Belgium and France and Great Britain
and the United States--industrious, hard-working, but unmilitary,
peacefully disposed. The deadly virus of avarice and militarism has
burned like a fever in Germany's soul, even as avarice burned in the
soul of Judas Iscariot, and made him a traitor that crucified not
Belgium, but Jesus upon the cross.


THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND THE KAISER

Little by little under the influence of this Pan-German empire scheme,
the German people began to go to pieces morally. The breakdown of
character is slow. The most virulent disease needs time to destroy the
tissues, and poison the blood. The first to go over to the Potsdam
gang were the officers and the army. Next followed the university
professors, the bankers and the landowners. Last of all came the
manufacturers and the shippers, who for a long time were timid lest
their foreign trade be injured. Finally the state clergy, who received
their salary from the Kaiser's treasury, were whipped into line, and
men like Eucken, Harnack, heard the crack of the slave-driver's scourge
above their heads, and became abject servants.

At last the woven web was spread all over the world through spies.
Could any man have been lifted up above Berlin, and had full power to
survey the whole world, he would have seen a spider's web, with its
center in Berlin, with the Kaiser as the big black spider, sending out
along the sinuous threads into every capital of every country and of
every continent his evil plans and plots. Men like von Bernstorff in
Washington, and Münsterberg in Boston, von Bopp, recently convicted in
San Francisco, Luxburg in Buenos Ayres, with their schemes to blow
up munition factories, planting of bombshells in ships, dynamiting
Parliament buildings, blowing up bridges, organizing sedition in
Mexico, India, and Brazil, the millions and millions of dollars spent
in our own country, the secret decorations of medals given to bankers,
manufacturers, shippers, editors, newspaper boys, stenographers, make
up a story of Machiavellian deviltry and subtle cunning that has no
parallel. The only difference between Judas and the average German
spy is that the modern spy in the United States would not only have
betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but would have given ten
per cent. off for cash. All that Germany won in three hundred years
through the teachings of Martin Luther has been lost in twenty-five
years through the influence of the Kaiser and his militarists. In the
presence of all the world we have seen Germany lose her soul. All that
John Milton taught, as to the fall of Satan as an angel, becoming a
devil, has been literally enacted on the stage before the nations of
the earth. What in 1900 was efficiency, in 1914 became the science of
lying, theft, rape, poison and assassination.


GERMANY CONSTRUCTS A PHILOSOPHY TO JUSTIFY HERSELF

Having entered upon war as her chief national industry, and looking
with greedy eyes upon the steel plants, the looms and factories of
rich Belgium; envying France her unique supremacy as the leader of
the fine arts; tempted by the little states like Holland and Denmark
on the west and Rumania and Poland on the east, states that seemed
like purple clusters, bursting with wine for German lips, it became
necessary for Germany to find a philosophy that would break down the
great convictions of morality inherited from Martin Luther.

All wise men trace deeds back to the thinking of the doer, just as
they trace bitter water back to a poisoned spring. Of the German
teaching of Prussianism we can only say, no grapes from Prussian
thorns, no figs from Prussian thistles. What the Prussians thought in
their hearts, that they became in their lives. What began as sparks
of avarice and ambition has ended in this world conflagration, and
Germany is responsible, not for the sparks, but for the world ruin.
Alcibiades and Catiline and Benedict Arnold all thought in terms of
selfishness, and they all did cruel deeds. The murder of Edith Cavell
and Captain Fryatt, the sinking of women and children on steamers, the
rape of Belgium and Northern France, the assassination of Poland, the
deliberate, cold-blooded plots by the German officers with the Turkish
soldiers to exterminate the Armenians, so that they could settle on the
lands, are the outer exhibition in deeds of the inner philosophy of the
Germans. That is why their favorite philosopher Nietzsche says that
Germany's gift is brute force and not intellect. ("Ecce Homo," page 38,
and page 134: "Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture. I
feel it my duty to tell the Germans that every crime against culture
lies on their conscience.")

A philosophy therefore was concocted, called "Prussianism." This
philosophy is no secret, for Germany has trumpeted it forth, from the
top of the palace in Potsdam and the Dom in Berlin. For fifteen years
it has been the very essence of the teaching in her universities, her
pulpit, her press and her Parliament. This is its substance: Over
against Martin Luther's conception of God as the All-wise and Good
Father, who is righteous Himself, and demands righteousness of His
children, the new philosophy sets up the political State as the be-all
and end-all for the German people. Omnipotence means a Kaiser's arm,
with that of a war staff, carried up to the nth degree of power by
seventy millions of other arms.

"Weakness is the only sin against the Holy Ghost," cries Bernhardi.
Let the individual German soldier be strong enough to trample under
foot the Belgian or French merchant or girl. Let the German navy be
strong enough to sink every _Lusitania_ or _Sussex_. Let the German
army be equal to overrunning, looting, pillaging and dynamiting France
and Belgium. To be beaten is to be contemptible, and therefore to be
sinful. Whatever wins the victory on land or sea is right. The moment
Germany crosses the frontiers all Belgians and Frenchmen lose any right
whatever to either their lives or their property, but from that moment
the invader's life and effects become sacred.


THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF THE PAN-GERMAN SCHEME UPON GERMANY'S
STATESMEN

Most disastrous and disorganizing the reflex influence of Germany's
philosophy of Prussianism, and her plot for a Pan-German empire upon
Germany's statesmen and diplomats. From Phocion to Lincoln high-minded
statesmen have been jealous of their pledges and of their treaties with
other countries. In one of his noblest orations Edmund Burke speaks
of "the peculiar sanctity attaching to an international treaty." Our
own Washington spoke about the importance of consideration and long
deliberation before an ambassador gave his word that, once it is
given, must stand "like the law of God." Business men scoff at the
trickster, who plays fast and loose with his written word given to the
bank or to his creditors. Nor is there a tribe of Indians that, once
they have eaten salt, or exchanged the pipe of peace, but considers
the pledge precious as life itself. All civilized nations, therefore,
have been horrified at the way Germany has broken down on the side of
truthfulness, until it is a proverb in the world to-day that a thing is
as worthless as a written pledge by Germany.


THE SCRAP OF PAPER

Our scholars have long known that Frederick the Great was the first
German to say that international treaties were to be observed so
long as they were useful and served his purpose, and when that time
passed a treaty was to be counted "a scrap of paper." When then the
English Ambassador, on July 1, 1914, told Bethmann-Hollweg plainly
that if Germany invaded Belgium, England would have no other course
than to join her armies to those of Belgium and France, the German
Prime Minister exclaimed, "And declare war for what? For just a scrap
of paper!" We now know that Germany signed treaties for purposes of
diplomatic camouflage, to blind the eyes of other governments while she
was making ready her weapons for attack. Most significant that speech
in the Reichstag on July 31, 1914, that contains this: "We cannot
longer postpone the fulfillment of the pledge given to Austria at the
conference of July 5th." During all those days, between July 30th and
August 4th, when the Kaiser was apparently trying to prevent war,
Germany and Austria were secretly preparing cannon, guns, ammunition,
railway trains, food, and secretly hurrying them to the front, during
three entire weeks, following the agreement between the Kaiser and
the Emperor. Upon eternal brass, therefore, Germany engraved her own
infamy. "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no
law. We were compelled to override the just protest of the Belgian
government. The wrong--I speak openly--that we are committing, we will
endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached.
Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened can have only one
thought, how he is to hack his way through,--how he is to hack his way
through."


CONSUL TO NORWAY

That is why our President, speaking for the republic, has told Germany
plainly that no treaty signed by the Emperor and his government
means anything whatsoever. There is no German in the Fatherland or
in the United States but understands thoroughly that the word of a
German statesman is less than nothing: the shadow of the shade of the
possibility of a cipher. Here is von Bernstorff, given his papers
and sent back to Berlin. Bernstorff gives out a final interview,
stating that he has the full approval of his conscience (a favourite
expression of German spies), in that he was carrying away from the
United States the full consciousness that he had never done one
deed or had one thought save to draw the Fatherland and the great
republic closer together, though all the time his secret agents had
been journeying back and forth between Washington and Mexico, carrying
bribes, organizing sedition, maturing plots, looking towards war
between Mexico and Texas, and pledging Carranza that Germany would
restore to her New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Scarcely less horrible
Luxburg's cipher despatch advising Germany to sink the steamers of
the Argentine Republic, "leaving no trace behind." In Norway the
German Ambassador from Berlin used his trunk, covered with the red
sealing wax of the Foreign Office, to carry bombs, and the cultures
of glanders and anthrax to spread disease among the Norwegian people
and to sink their steamers. In the old days of Cæsar Borgia in Italy,
poisoning was made a fine art. Whenever the Italian prince coveted a
rich man's palace, diamond ring, beautiful wife or young daughter, or
his villa, he invited the owner to dine at the palace, having first
of all poisoned the wine or the meat. Now the world has wakened up to
discover that the Borgias were children in the arts of dissimulation
and hypocrisy, and that Germany is the original inventor of perjury.
The Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg, von Bernstorff, and some pro-Germans in
this country have displayed a form of wickedness so cool, calculated,
and scientific, as to seem the characteristics of fiends, while their
plots to plant bombshells on our steamers, and kill innocent people by
the hundreds represent such hardened forms of fiendishness that even
the worst thief would scarcely dare hint at such crimes to his own
accomplice in devilishness.


GERMANY'S POLICY TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES

Not less striking the influence of Germany's philosophy and her
Pan-German empire scheme upon her diplomats in foreign countries.
We need not take the opinion of the British or Belgian, the French
or American authors. It is enough to ask for the testimony of the
Germans themselves. One of the most important documents bearing
upon this war is a volume of reminiscences published seven years
before the war began, but practically unknown in the United States.
This volume is entitled "Experiences at a German Embassy; ten years
of German-American diplomacy," by Emil Witte, late counsellor of
litigation; Leipzig, 1907. Probably not more than two or three thousand
of the author's friends ever bought a copy of this book, but the volume
spreads out before us like a black map the fact that for ten years von
Holleben and Münsterberg with their German associates were steadily
building up the organization of all German Americans preparatory to a
time when the war between the United States and Germany would partake
the character of a Civil War.

This counsellor of litigation tells us that on the German day, October
6, 1901, Germanism in the United States was organized at Philadelphia.
The diplomat then tells us how, directed by the German Ambassador, he
went up and down the United States organizing in New York, Brooklyn,
Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis the German Soldiers'
Societies of the United States, and wooing the German-Americans over
to the point where they would see that their first allegiance was
to the Fatherland, their second to the United States. The German
foreign office and the Kaiser were constantly sending von Holleben
for German-Americans flags, decorations, gracious letters, medals,
invitations to visit Germany and meet the Royalty--methods that
culminated in the German law that made it possible for pro-Germans
in this country and for their sons despite American citizenship to
keep their German citizenship with all the rights of suffrage in the
Fatherland. Very significant also one sentence in these reminiscences
of this German diplomat: "The relations between Official Germany and
the emigrant subjects of the Emperor, whether they have become citizens
of the Republic or not, may lead to serious complications between
Germany and the United States, and to unforeseen incidents which at any
moment may involve both powers in serious difficulty."

No scholar longer doubts that the German government fully expected
that when war was declared some six or eight thousand German-Americans
belonging to the German Societies in the United States would bring
about something akin to Civil War. This is not to be wondered at in
view of the fact that for years Germany's official representatives had
been receiving from time to time honours and addresses from the Kaiser
and sending back to Berlin cablegrams pledging undying faithfulness and
loyalty, and affirming their purpose to enthrone German culture in the
United States. This diplomat quotes in full the address of the German
Ambassador in behalf of the Kaiser on presenting the German colours to
the German Military Society of Chicago.

"Greetings from the German Emperor! That is the cry with which I come
before you. His Majesty, my most gracious master, has ordered me to
hand to you to-day the colour which has been desired by you so strongly
and for so long. The colour is a token of his Majesty's approval with
which the Kaiser remembers in love and friendship those who have served
in the German Army and Navy, and those who have fought and bled for the
Fatherland. This colour is to be the symbol of German faithfulness,
German manliness and German military honour. His Majesty asks you to
accept this colour as a token of that unity which should prevail among
all German soldiers, to act also abroad [Think of that "abroad," in
Chicago!] in accordance with the sentiments of German loyalty and
German sense of duty, and to take for your maxim the word of that great
German, Bismarck: We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.
Now let the colour flutter in the wind. In this moment of enthusiasm
let us all sound the cry that is now on the lips of every old German
soldier; his Majesty, the German Emperor, William II, hurrah, hurrah,
hurrah!"

The history of no country contains plot so astounding! Under cover
of hospitality the German guest was planting bombshells in the home
of his host. With infinite cunning, the German diplomats built a
German kingdom within our kingdom. How thoroughly they alienated many
German-Americans is proven to-day by this fact, that many members of
the German Societies in the United States, the moment any American
comes out against Germany, break with the banker, drop the newspaper,
give up the pew in the church, for while their lips announce that they
are Americans, in their heart they feel that their first loyalty is to
the Kaiser, and not to our government.


GERMAN DIPLOMATS IN THE WESTERN CITIES

These "Reminiscences" also acquaint Americans with many other plans to
organize the German-Americans in the United States preparatory to the
day when Canada and the United States should become German colonies.
Silly as all this seems to Americans it was very serious to von
Holleben, von Bopp, the recently convicted German consul, Münsterberg,
Boy-Ed, von Papen and Bernstorff. In discussing the certainty of war
with England, the author states that Germany is absolutely ready for
such an event as war in America, since this is necessary. He quotes
von Schleinitz as answering: "I know all this and I know more. I have
spoken with officers in high positions in Berlin, and I have heard
surprising things. Germany reckons very strongly upon the support of
Germans living in the western states. We looked at one another. WE
KNEW."

Little did the people of the United States realize that in 1907, buried
in the German language, there was being sold in Germany a volume of
reminiscences by a counsellor of legation at the German Embassy in
Washington, containing these sentences: "Professor Münsterberg had
created a widely spread organization of espionage in the United States.
Münsterberg had been sent to America by direct command of the Emperor,
in order to mislead the public of the United States with regard to
Germany's true policy towards America. He receives five thousand
dollars from Harvard and five thousand dollars from the Berlin foreign
office." Then follows high praise for Münsterberg in view of the fact
that he was sent to the United States as a lecturer, as a camouflage
device to conceal the real fact that he was the new head of the German
spy system in America. Beyond all doubt he was almost the only one that
succeeded in making his camouflage work of lecturing so successful as
to overshadow the more important fact that he was the organizer of the
most efficient system of espionage that the Kaiser has ever had.[3]


GERMAN PHILOSOPHY OF MILITARISM HAS DEBAUCHED GERMANY'S UNIVERSITY
PROFESSORS

Consider how strangely the Pan-German scheme has degraded Germany's
university professors. The glory of every great city and land is its
scholars, with their love of truth, and their stainless lives. We have
had our civilization at the hands of men who loved the truth supremely,
pursued the truth eternally, and cherished the truth above their fear
of hell or hope of heaven. The world has its liberty, its science and
its law at the hands of the heroes who preferred the truth above life.
Concerning the patriots, the reformers and the statesmen, we can only
say they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were crucified in
Jerusalem, poisoned in Athens, tortured in Ephesus, exiled in Florence,
burned at the stake in Oxford, assassinated in London. But the iron
autocracy and militarism of Germany made cowards of her university
men. An address has been issued to the civilized world, signed by
ninety-odd German professors. They receive their salaries from State
endowments. Any hour the Kaiser or the Chancellor can cut off their
income. When the indignation of the civilized world flamed out against
Germany because of the rape of Belgium, the German Government asked
these professors to sign a document, and so degraded were these men
through the German philosophy of militarism and autocracy, that they
obeyed--losing their souls to save their salary. And consider what they
signed!


MORAL COWARDICE OF SCHOLARS

By royal command these ninety-three professors signed a statement
saying: "It is not true that we wronged Belgium." In the Kaiser's
address that he himself published, we read, "Give no quarter, take
no prisoners"; he adds, "Let all who fall into your hands be at your
mercy; make yourself as terrible as the Huns." This address was
circulated on millions of letter cards all over Germany. Realizing the
mistake made by the Kaiser these professors signed a statement saying:
"It is not true that our soldiers ever injured the life of a single
Belgian." Socrates, Savonarola or Lincoln would have died a thousand
deaths upon the rack, rather than have consented to sign their names
to a lie, but the Kaiser and the Chancellor had only to command their
servants to lie, and they lied like slaves. It makes the university
professor ashamed of the German teachers. Think of Harnack and Eucken,
with their moral cowardice and their intellectual subserviency. Plainly
that is what Nietzsche meant when he said (page 134, "Ecce Homo"),
"Every crime against culture that has been committed for a hundred
years rests upon Germany."


GERMANY ORGANIZES A PLAN TO EXTERMINATE CONSCIENCE

When her Kaiser and Germany's War Staff had determined to do evil, to
become world conquerors, and prepared a philosophy that would justify
the crimes necessary to win the goal, Germany then began to get rid
of any vestige of conscience that survived from the faith of Martin
Luther. It was not enough to control the philosophers and scholars, it
became necessary to popularize the new license to lawlessness, lust
and theft. Unfortunately, Germany was complicated by her treaties
with other nations as to the conduct of war. These treaties were a
thousand times more sacred than contracts of the merchant for a note
at his bank. Germany had solemnly covenanted to attack only armies,
and to safeguard and protect hospitals, schools, churches, with the
life and property of non-combatants. The Christian religion, also, as
presented by the German Luther, taught obligations involved in the Ten
Commandments. The new system of militarism, therefore, could enter
the mind of the German soldier only when the old ideas of the Ten
Commandments, duty, God, and the obligations to the weak, as taught by
Jesus, had been cast out. One of the crimes proscribed by civilized
states is the crime of teaching other men to do wickedness. But the
German Kaiser and War Staff have so far lost their souls that they have
deliberately written a text-book teaching men murder as a science.


FINALLY GERMANY ENTHRONED CRUELTY INSTEAD OF CHRIST'S LAW OF
PITY

Having substituted the Prussian theory of the State for Christianity,
having replaced the eternal God with the word Force, spelt with a
capital "F," having gotten the Devil all mixed up with God, until the
Kaiser planned Devil deeds and signed God's name to them, finally
Germany decided to slay humanitarianism, pity, sympathy, and regard for
the poor and weak. Nineteen centuries ago Jesus taught men that God
by His dear Son had identified Himself with the poor and the weak.
Taking a little child, Jesus said, "Take heed that ye offend not one of
my little ones." Christianity is kindness, and pity. Out of Christ's
teachings came the world's hospitals, the emancipation of slaves, homes
for the aged and the invalid, schools for orphans, hospitals for the
sick. Jesus' sympathy has journeyed like an angel of God across the
fields of the world, and God's sweet mercy has fallen like rain from
His heaven to cool men's fevered souls. Just in proportion as men have
gone towards God, they have gone towards pity and compassion. Florence
Nightingale and Augusta Stanley enter the smitten hospitals of the
Crimea; Mother Bickerdyke and all her associates are found on the
battle-fields of our Civil War; John Howard organizes the Prison Relief
movement. Everywhere society climbs upward upon the golden rounds of
sympathy, and philanthropy.

But Germany despises kindness. She now bombs hospitals, sinks passenger
ships, and the malignancy of her cruelties has horrified savages in the
South Sea Islands. Over against the teachings of Jesus therefore put
the German frightfulness. Read the article by that American physician,
who left Germany last summer by way of Switzerland. Note that when a
train of English soldiers passed through the town, a train loaded with
prisoners packed in freight cars, without sanitation, wounded men who
had been without food or drink for three days, men who, with black
lips, begged the German women for water, that these women held water
just out of reach of these English soldiers, and then spilling it on
the ground, spat in the faces of these wounded men!

When Germans were marching into a Belgian village, a German captain
ordered the villagers to go into the church. The houses were then
searched. Unfortunately no weapons were found, and therefore there was
no excuse for looting the town and then burning the buildings. The
diary of a German soldier says that his captain showed him a window
opening into the cellar of a Belgian house, and told him to put a gun
in through the window. A few minutes later the captain "discovered"
the gun, and taking the weapon into the church told all the villagers
that concealed weapons had been found, and they must all be shot and
the village destroyed. The German burglar's life was sacred, but the
honest householder's life and that of his family were as nothing,
losing all rights because the German burglar has broken open the door.

This new philosophy of militarism teaches that crimes become virtues
if they promote the interests of the Fatherland. To accept the
hospitality, to plot arson, bombing and sedition; to play false to
all the higher considerations of honour, through the treachery of
Bernstorff, von Papen, Boy-Ed, is beautiful and glorious for a German.
The blackest deeds become sacred because they promote German interests.
So thoroughly has this philosophy of loyalty to the Fatherland
permeated the German soul in every part of the world, that--despite
multitudes of large-hearted, open-minded American citizens who came
hither from German homes to better their political and industrial
conditions, and who, Germans as they are, gratefully appreciate and are
loyal to the America that has welcomed them--there are also thousands
of German-Americans about us from whose lips you cannot obtain one word
of criticism of the blackest deeds of murder and arson and treachery by
Germany's agents in this country, or of Germany abroad. Whatever is
done for the Fatherland is right, no matter what crime is involved.

It is precisely to this type that Jesus addressed His words about the
light in men that had become darkness, and therefore "how great is that
darkness." By this route Germans have gone downward towards spiritual
apostasy.


GERMANY'S WOLFISH SPIRIT

Germany's inspiration seems to be that of the treacherous wolf.
Intellectually we cannot understand how a shepherd can watch wolves
tearing the throat of the lamb in the Belgian sheepfold and the French
sheepfold, while he stands by and waits until the wolf tears some
lambs and sheep in the American sheepfold. When a brave man has seen
a wolf tear the throat of one lamb he ought to leap from his place of
safety and take his place beside the lamb. Of course, the wolf has many
explanations to offer, but the explanations of the wolf do not interest
some men. There are some foul diseases, like slavery, that have to be
cut out by the surgery of war. Militarism and autocracy are cancers,
and God has anointed the surgeon with ointment, black and sulphurous.
But the surgeon's knife has to be heated red hot, that it may cauterize
the wounds, lest the patient bleed and die.

"We must choose," said Bernhardi, "between Napoleon and Jesus."

The people of the United States have chosen between Militarism and
Jesus. Our fathers chose eighteen centuries ago. They left the law of
the pack behind. They chose to become the sons of God, and lose their
lives that Christ's little ones might survive. Hospitals, reforms,
schoolhouses for children, reform acts, emancipation proclamations,
the Declaration of Independence, justice, and man's redemption are
the results. German militarism is the apotheosis of the law of the
wolf-pack, return to the club and the caveman. If she succeeds in a
return to brute force, her victory will be the most terrible calamity
that overwhelmed the earth since that event that Milton describes in
his story of the rebellion in heaven. Every editor and school-teacher,
every priest and minister, every patriot and parent, should drill into
the minds of children and youth the Kaiser's original charge and the
meaning thereof: "No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken.
Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Make yourselves
more frightful than the Huns under Attila." Strange, therefore, the
Germans feel so terribly because men call them Huns! Who understood
their real nature? The Kaiser. Who branded them on the forehead with a
red-hot iron, "Huns"? Their Kaiser. Whose bloody fingers were lifted
upon their heads when his mildewed lips christened them "Hun"? Their
Kaiser. Who likened the German soldiers to bloodhounds held upon the
leash as they strained forward to tear women and children in Belgium
and France? Their Kaiser. But Jesus said, Woe unto him that offends
against one of My little ones! And out of the whirlwind comes the voice
of an outraged God, saying to the invaders, "Here stay thy bloody
waves! Thus far, and no farther!"

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "On Thursday afternoon in connection with the sentence pronounced
upon von Bopp and the German vice consul and the German attorney for
complicity in the plot to blow up factories the dispatches said much
about 'the man higher up.' One of the references plainly referred to
Münsterberg. On Saturday morning Münsterberg fell dead of apoplexy.
Many Secret Service men associate the two events."--_Extract from
address by Lawrence Chamberlain_.




III

What the United States and Her Allies Are Fighting For

_Statement Made by Admiral Von Goetzen at Manila in 1898, to Admiral
Dewey_

  "About fifteen years from now my country will start a great war.
  She will be in Paris in about two months after the commencement
  of hostilities. Her move on Paris will be but a step to her real
  object--the crushing of England.

  "Some months after we finish our work in Europe we will take New
  York, and probably Washington, and hold them for some time. We will
  put your country in its place with reference to Germany. We do not
  propose to take any of your territory, but we do intend to take a
  billion or so of your dollars from New York and other places.

  "The Monroe Doctrine will be taken charge of by us and we will
  dispose of South America as we wish. Don't forget this about
  fifteen years from now."




III

What the United State and Her Allies Are Fighting For


Not since Fort Sumter was fired upon and Bull Run lost have thoughtful
men been so disturbed as to-day. The breakdown of Russia, the massing
of German troops on the western front, the accumulation of cannon and
munitions against the day of account, make it certain that the coming
inevitable battle is to be the greatest battle of the most terrible
war that ever shook our earth. All the issues vital to democracy,
independence, freedom, and self-government are now at stake. It is a
singular fact that the four liberties won by our fathers during four
wars are now to be nobly won again, or meanly lost in a single struggle
with Germany. In 1776 our fathers won freedom upon the land; in 1812
they fought for the freedom of the seas; in 1846, in their war with
Mexico, they established the sanctity of frontier lines; in 1861 our
fathers safeguarded liberty for white men by extending liberty to
black men. In 1898 the young men of this republic lifted a shield above
the little land of Cuba, in the hour when it was being butchered, just
as little Belgium to-day is being butchered by Germany. Now, strangely
enough, every form of liberty won by these wars is denied to the human
race by the militarism and autocracy of Germany.

Once more these forms of democracy must be reasserted, revindicated and
reëstablished. We expect militarism in folk like the old Macedonians
and Romans, and occasional outbreaks among Indians and the savages of
the South Sea Islands, but we do not expect that a nation industrially
efficient and claiming to be civilized should suddenly revert to
savagery, and revive the methods of the cave man. Society protects
itself against the occasional burglar with his nitroglycerine, dark
lantern, and revolver, by building a jail for the lawbreaker. Civilized
states find that it is impossible to build jails for nine million
Germans who have become thieves, murderers, violators of women and
children. On German terms life is not worth living for the boys and
girls of Belgium, France and Poland. If Germany wins, an eclipse will
pass over the face of the sun. The industrial nations will have to
adopt militarism. The United States will become one vast armed camp.
Every boy will give three or four years to the life of the soldier.
The Atlantic Coast and the Pacific must bristle with forts, and
the harbours be filled with mines. The ploughman in the furrow and
the workman in the factory will have to carry a soldier upon their
shoulders. The whole world must become one vast volcano, with Berlin
as the crater, spouting forth passion and hate like lurid lava. Not
since Judas brought Jesus to the piteous tragedy of His cross has there
been an hour so black as this moment when Germany is trying to crucify
mankind upon a cross of bayonets.


AUTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY INCOMPATIBLE AND MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE

During the past forty years there have been in Germany on the one hand,
and in the Allied states on the other, two incompatible and mutually
destructive principles,--one named Military Autocracy and the other
Democracy. The conflict between the two was irrepressible, and our
entrance into the war inevitable. Lincoln once said that a house
divided against itself could not stand; that the republic could not
endure half slave and half free; that it must become all one thing
or all the other. To-day Europe, and indeed the world, represent a
house divided against itself. It cannot remain half autocratic and
half democratic; it must become all one thing or all the other. Either
Germany must conquer England, France and the United States, and impose
autocracy upon them, and enthrone the Kaiser as the world emperor,
or else the Allies must conquer Germany, and overthrow autocracy and
militarism, until Germany, and Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey become
truly self-governed. On that August day in 1914, therefore, it became
morally obligatory upon every patriot, every city and every nation to
make the choice between autocracy and democracy. In the hour when the
battle lines were set in array, between autocracy and democracy, on
August 4, 1914, neutrality became intellectually absurd and morally
monstrous. Serving both God and Mammon became unthinkable. Even after
our President declared that we must make the world safe for democracy,
a few men tried to be neutral, and stretched out the right hand to
Germany and the left hand to the United States, in the spirit of the
man who declined to choose between hell and heaven, saying he had
friends in both places. The time has fully come to recognize that
civilization and autocracy are deadly antagonists. John Milton defined
a book as the precious life-blood of a master spirit, treasured up
and handed on to the future. "As good almost kill a man as kill a
good book." But the free and democratic institutions are the precious
life-blood of the patriots, the heroes and martyrs, preserved,
and handed forward, as means for winning the Golden Age. Better,
therefore, a thousand times, that the Kaiser should murder mankind than
assassinate the free institutions that manufacture manhood of good
quality, and make human life worth the living.


THE STRENGTH OF OUR ENEMY

The battle line between a military autocracy and the free government
is now set in array. It is to the last degree important that our
people know the strength of the adversary. Prudent men never
underestimate their opponents. Brave men want to know the worst that
can be said, truthfully. Let us confess that Germany with her nine
million soldiers, ammunition accumulated through twenty-five years of
preparation, has suffered no vital hurt. Three years of battle have
lessened the wealth of the Allied nations, but vastly increased the
treasures of Germany. This war has cost Great Britain thirty billions
of dollars, it has cost France twenty billions, it has cost the United
States ten billions. For these billions expended there has been for the
Allies no financial return. In striking contrast thereto, consider that
if Germany has spent twenty billions upon this war, she has won another
twenty billions, and even claims to have won thirty billions. Thus far,
her armies, like those of ancient Rome, have looted four countries.
She has carried away their gold, silver, copper, iron, steel, stocks,
bonds, she has stolen their locomotives, passenger coaches, freight
cars, wagons, automobiles, with all the goods of merchants. In the face
of her solemn treaties she has stolen the horses, cattle, oxen, sheep;
she has spoiled the granaries of their wheat, rye and barley. She has
looted the Belgian and French factories of their machinery, and carried
away the looms from the mills for cotton, wool and silk. The total
value of the steel mills of Belgium and of France, with all lathes
and stationary engines, is almost incalculable. She looted the iron
and coal mines of Belgium and France and the wells of Rumania for the
oil; she has looted the mines of Poland, Rumania and Serbia of their
bronze, lead, zinc, copper. She has loaded thousands upon thousands of
freight trains with household furniture, agricultural implements, goods
from the merchants' stores, art treasures from public galleries, as
well as from private houses. In every city and town, in every store and
farmer's house, the Germans attack first of all the safety vaults and
the little money chest of rich and poor alike. Germany found Belgium
worth twenty billion of dollars. It is probable that she has spoiled
Belgium of at least eight billions. The national fortunes of the
invaded territories were estimated at fifty billions, and most of this,
after three years, is now in the hands of the Germans. Each attack made
by Germany has been against a rich people whose treasure she could
loot, while every attack made by the Allies has been to recover a land
already devastated, poor and helpless. In choosing Napoleon, therefore,
rather than Jesus, Germany chose the motto of aggressive warfare, and
has made war an investment too profitable to be readily abandoned.

The peril to the Allies is the greater because of the vicious methods
used by Germany. All military experts know that wars are fought
incidentally with guns at the trenches, but in reality with granaries
at the rear. Better a million well-fed men with naked fists than two
million of armed men who are starving, for the starving men will
soon be too weak to lift the guns and the well-fed men will grasp
the weapons. From the view-point of food resources, Germany has from
the beginning occupied a unique position, in that she is rimmed all
around about with little nations unprepared and unarmed, and therefore
impotent to protect their granaries and root cellars, their herds and
flocks, when Germans came in to steal them. Whenever Germany has,
therefore, been short of food, she has organized an expedition and
looted some land like Belgium, as Poland. The next winter she sends an
army out to loot Rumania. Now that the harvests have been gathered in
upon the fields of Italy, Germany is trying to despoil that land.

Whenever she has had to withdraw a million men from the fields to send
them to the front Germany has impressed another million from Belgium,
Poland or Rumania, and forced these slaves to plough her fields, reap
her harvests, and all without wage. Sometimes she has gone through
the form of buying grain from the Balkan States, but she has forced
these peoples to take in return paper currency, which she can grind
out so long as the printing presses hold out and which in the event of
defeat she can easily repudiate. On the other hand, when Turkey and
Bulgaria have turned towards Germany for guns and munitions, since they
had nowhere else to go, Berlin has forced their rulers to pay in gold
and silver. Germany's claim is probably true, that her people are as
well-fed during the fourth winter of the war as they were during the
first winter. These are not pleasant matters to consider, but these
are the facts. Wise men want to know the facts, and then they know
what plans they must make to overcome the worst and turn it into the
best. Better be a wise pessimist than an ignorant optimist. Uninformed
Micawbers always waiting for something to turn up have no place in this
world war.

The query, How goes the battle? involves the statement that Germany is
now fighting this war at the expense of her neighbours. Her great Krupp
factories are using enormous quantities of coal, but it is Belgian
coal. Every week she consumes vast stores of rich iron ore, but it is
French ore. Her motors, trucks, military cars, consume oceans of oil;
this oil comes from Rumania. Each month she burns up human muscles in
field and factory and shop, but these spent men and women are subject
peoples. In a thousand ways events are worked for her interests.
Because she is in the center it is very easy for Germany to transport
her troops from one front to another, while it is very difficult for
the United States to transport munitions and guns and food across an
ocean 3,000 miles in width. It is a conservative statement to say that
it does not cost Germany one-tenth as much to move a cannon from Essen
to Ypres as it costs the United States to move a machine gun from
Bridgeport to Cambrai and Verdun.

Nor must we forget that we are building our iron ships with $6 a day
labour, our wooden ships with $7 a day carpenters, while Germany is
impressing labourers from Belgium and forcing them to work like
slaves. Slowly she is starving them to death, while pretending to pay
them seven cents a day for their eighteen hours of toil. When one group
of men breaks down and dies, Germany simply forces at the point of the
bayonet another group to take their places. Brutality, savagery, have
an enormous advantage over civilized States. One wolf is equal to a
hundred sheep and a thousand lambs. Thus far Germany has not lost one
inch of territory, and this fact must be considered when we raise the
question as to how goes the battle.

Ignorant of the real situation, underestimating the peril that is
upon the United States, many of our citizens refuse to support the
government, discourage enlistment on the one hand, or else carry
about with them an atmosphere of ignorant optimism. They talk loudly
about America winning this war. They never tire of telling about our
one hundred millions of people, our two hundred and fifty billions
of wealth, our possible ten millions of soldiers, and upon the basis
of these considerations they count the war ended, and win battles by
waving perils into thin air. Others say that in a moral universe,
injustice and cruelty cannot be victorious, and that in the nature
of the case Germany must be beaten, quite forgetting that Belgium
has been beaten, and so have Alsace and Lorraine. It is a truism
that what has been may be. A just God permitted the first republic,
Athens, to be ruined by her military neighbour, Macedonia. The story
how the militarism of Macedonia brought about the fall of Athens, and
contributed to dark ages, makes up a black page in the history of
liberty.

The ruthless hand of militarism snuffed out all the torches in the
temples of intellect that once "looked down on Marathon, as Marathon
looks on the sea." What scholar does not thrill with pain at the
very thought of the brutal regiments that destroyed the temples, the
libraries, the statues, the galleries of Athens! Phocion believed,
as did Plato and his pupils, that society had outgrown forever brute
force, wars and savagery. Athens put her emphasis upon the intellect.
She founded schools, and made her sons to be scholars. She became
the mother of the arts, science and philosophy, and prided herself
upon her artists and statesmen. She established foreign colonies,
builded ships and extended her trade to far-off lands in Sicily, Spain,
Gaul and North Africa. Within a century Athens became the center of
eloquence, poetry, philosophy and liberty. One day Prince Philip from
Northern Macedonia visited Athens. He marvelled that the city should
be like a vineyard whose purple clusters were without a fence, whose
treasure boxes were without watchmen. In that hour of avarice and
ambition Philip remembered the soldiers in his father's army at home.
He believed that one soldier could conquer a dozen merchants, bankers,
statesmen and scholars.

Returning to Macedonia, Philip craftily began taking an interest in
Greek affairs--for he was a subtle politician--and at the same time
turned his whole people into one vast fighting machine. His unit was
the Macedonian Phalanx. First came twenty-four men, with short spears;
then came a second twenty-four, with spears of six feet; then a third
twenty-four, with spears of eight feet in length. The last tier of
men in the company had spears twenty feet long, resting upon the
shoulders of the men in the front rank. These bristling spears were
invincible. The terror of the Macedonian Phalanx went out into all
the earth. Demosthenes was the one man who had vision. He called the
people together upon the public square and assembled them in the great
theatre. He mounted the rostrum upon Mars Hill and warned Athens. He
called the attention of the people to the fact that between Athens on
the south and Macedonia on the north were three buffer states. As the
Macedonian army moved southward, these states organized their army
and went forth in defence of their homes and their firesides. But
Demosthenes insisted that these buffer states were fighting not only
their own battles, but also the battles of Athens. If they fall, if
their armies are defeated, then Athens, single-handed, must meet the
entire force of the victorious host. Nevertheless Athens delayed, and
would not be persuaded. The noblest orations of the greatest man of his
time, Demosthenes, were of no avail.

When he crossed his southern frontier, Philip made himself terrible.
The flames of the burning towns at midnight lighted up the land as a
terrible warning. Thirty-two towns that had flourished as commercial
communities vanished from the face of the earth. These border states
above Athens, answering to our modern Belgium, were made into a
desert. Terrorized into submission, the Greeks threw down their arms
and opened the gates of their cities to Philip's soldiers, who brought
with them women and children in fetters that the spirit of Athens might
be utterly broken.

Has there ever been in historic times any parallel quite so striking as
that between the organized militarism of Macedonia with the subsequent
ruin of Athens, and the present systematized militarism of Germany, now
attempting the ruin of Belgium, France and England? Listen to Professor
von Stengel, the German authority on International Law: "There will be
no conference at The Hague when this war is over. The one condition of
prosperous existence for the natives is submission to our [Germany's]
supreme direction. Under our overlordship all international law would
become superfluous, for we of ourselves, and instinctively, will give
to each nation its own rights."


WHAT IT MEANS TO AMERICA

The acuteness of our peril was well set forth in a conversation
that took place last year between an aged German officer of the
Franco-Prussian war and a French officer who won his medal in the same
campaign, both of whom had sought a rest in the village of Vevey upon
the banks of Lake Geneva. For weeks the two old men on their wheeled
chairs had passed each other without recognition. One morning, it is
said, the German officer saluted. After expressing sorrow over the
losses of the war, solely "for the purpose of making conversation,"
as he claimed, the German officer raised a question. First of all he
insisted that he spoke merely as a private citizen who loved his fellow
men, and represented in no sense the rulers in Berlin: "Suppose the
German armies were to withdraw from Belgium and France, and agree to
restore the devastated regions and repay England for her sunken ships.
Do you think the Allies would then return to the conditions of 1914,
granting the Fatherland the trade privileges that then were hers? For,"
added the officer, "it is quite certain that Germany could never raise
the billions of indemnity involved in the restoration of Belgium and
France, and England's ships, unless she was free to buy raw material,
kept her factories intact and also her three thousand and more
passenger ships, freight ships, sailing vessels and her battle-ships
to protect her fleet."

To all of which, it is said, the Frenchman answered, in substance, as
follows: "What you really mean is this,--that if France and England
laid down their arms, and allowed Germany to keep her land uninvaded,
her fleet intact, that so far from raising ten or twenty billions to
restore Belgium and France and recompense England, the Kaiser would
simply load one or two millions of his veterans on the three thousand
of his ships, and sail away to New York, and assess the twenty or
fifty billions on the American people. You must remember," said the
French officer, "that England and France do not betray their friends.
They do not count their treaties 'scraps of paper.' My country will
never consent to hand the United States over to the armies and the
battle-ships of Germany."

The genuineness of this brief discussion is beyond all doubt. The
time has fully come therefore for every American and manufacturer and
merchant, every farmer and financier, to realize that we have _got_
to win this war, otherwise there will be no United States. We are
unprepared for war or even self-defense. After ten months of war
Secretary Baker tells us frankly that thus far we have not one single
machine gun completed, that not until April will there be one rifle,
for each of a little army of a half-million men, while the other
investigations have brought home the fact that it is the French and
British army that stand between us and the Kaiser's troops, and that it
is England's battle-ships that hold the Kaiser's war fleet behind the
Kiel Canal. It is the British bulldog that keeps the German rat in the
Kiel hole. On one side of the American silver dollar we have written
these words, "In God we trust," and on the other we should write these
words, "And in England's battle-ships."


EDMUND BURKE'S WORDS

Burke once spoke of civilization as a contract between three parties,
the noble dead, the living and the unborn. The English statesmen held
that our fathers have a great stake in this republic. It could not be
otherwise. Washington and Hamilton, Webster and Lincoln, who struck
out the free institutions of this country, are vitally interested
in their preservation and their future. The merchant who founds a
great business, the educator who establishes the academy or college,
the architect who rears some capital or cathedral, the patriot and
soldier who gave their life-blood to preserve their institutions, the
parents and teachers who have reproduced themselves in their children
and pupils,--all these have a great stake in society. Of necessity,
each Franklin or Edison follows with solicitude the tools invented
for the redemption of men from drudgery. Are not the Pilgrim Fathers
interested in the outcome of their ideas? Has the great Emancipator
no regard for the black race whom he redeemed? Can the husbandman
lose all interest in the orchard and vineyard he has planted for the
support of succeeding generations? Little wonder that the Gothic legend
represents the fathers drawing near to the battlements of heaven to
watch every assault upon liberty in the plains beneath! From time to
time the illustrious souls, redeemed out of the body, pluck the red
roses from the tree of life, and fling them down upon those who are
struggling on the plains. When the roses fall upon the arms of the
enemies of liberty they turn to coals of fire, that burn the hands of
tyrants and make them drop the sword unsheathed to promote oppression.
When the roses fall upon the gashes of those who fight for humanity
they become medicines that heal all wounds. Our children, and our
children's children to the last generation also have a great stake in
this republic. Our own generation is at best a trustee, whose duty it
is to safeguard the institutions won by our fathers, and then to hand
them forward, unimpaired and greatly enriched, to the generations that
come after us. God weaves the ages upon a loom. Civilization is a solid
texture, that belongs to the noble dead, to the living, but chiefly to
the unborn. Every motive, therefore, of reverence and loyalty to our
fathers, and of affection for our children, bids us dedicate our lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred honour to the overthrow of autocracy and
militarism, and the establishment upon abiding foundations of the
institutions of our fathers.


OUR OBLIGATION TO ENGLAND

Because England has been fighting our battle for two and a half years,
we are now not only fighting our own battle, but trying to repay in
part our immeasurable debt to the motherland. Great Britain has been
the mother of many republics; all the harvest of our liberty came from
seed corn gathered in England's harvest fields. Among Pilgrim Fathers
who founded New England were men educated in Cambridge. We had our
revolt against the autocracy of George the Third from the inspirations
of Oliver Cromwell, John Pym and John Hampden. Boston owes a great debt
to Sir Harry Vane, whose statue stands at the entrance of her Public
Library. We borrowed our freedom of the press from John Milton's noble
argument. Our Declaration and our Constitution are nothing other than
the restatement, in legal form, of the noble visions that pursued the
soul of John Milton all his life long.

And now that England is steadily winning and gaining six battles and
attacks out of seven, during the fourth year of the war, the time has
come for the American people and government to ask themselves this
question,--Shall we not do in the first year of our war the things
that England did in the third year and the fourth?--thus assuring
our winning six times out of seven. At the beginning of this war,
Britain's ammunition was provided by three government factories and a
few auxiliary firms. "The first 100,000 men," sneered at by the Kaiser
as "Kitchener's contemptible little army," were pounded by fifty German
shells for every one shell with which they could reply. Now England has
over 5,000 factories turning out munitions. Her capacity for producing
high explosives in October, 1917, was twenty-five times as great as
in the autumn of 1915, while the expense is one-third. She is now
producing 25,000 tons of projectiles every week, and each new arsenal
factory is built with the thought of turning them over to productive
industrial companies when the war is over. Her cannons are roaring upon
every front in Europe, as well as in the Balkans, in Palestine, in
Persia and in Africa.

She now has 400,000 automobile trucks, or lorries, in France and
Belgium, and will turn out 20,000 airplanes during the next year. Her
fleet has increased from 136,000 sailors to 400,000; and at last,
thanks to the deep-sea bomb, for every slow and old ship Germany
sinks, she has to lose a far more costly submarine. To-day England has
4,000,000 men on six fronts and three continents. She has not simply
mobilized her army, but mobilized the entire nation, and is only
beginning to exert her full power.

The lesson for us, from England's experience, is this: that every
factory in the United States, now turning out luxuries, should be
taken over by the government to turn out munitions; that every loom
and lathe, forge and hammer, every mine and forest and shipyard should
be dedicated to this one task--of winning this war for humanity and
liberty. History will doubtless say that during the first two and a
half years of this war America was like the priest and the Levite who
passed by on the other side, leaving Belgium like the wounded man
lying among thieves, while England was the Good Samaritan, glorious
forever through her service, self-sacrifice and loyalty to her written
pledges. We owe Great Britain and her colonies a debt of service
because she placed her army and her navy between us and our enemy and
preserved us. When, therefore, an occasional pro-German, who does not
dare defend the Kaiser, stands on the street, and in his harangue
vilifies Great Britain, we should remember that the Allied cause has
three armies, Haig's, Petain's and Pershing's. Whoever vilifies one
of the hosts is the enemy of all three. When General Grant found one
of his aids chuckling over the news of a defeat of Sheridan, Grant
court-martialed the man, found him guilty, shot him at daybreak,--an
example to be commended with reference to any man who vilifies Great
Britain or France with his lips or pen. In this crisis there are no
German-Americans,--there are only Americans and traitors. The first
duty of our government is to defend our transports, our soldiers and
sailors, from all spies, American with their lips, but with hearts full
of hatred for our Allies and our country.


WE ARE ALSO FIGHTING TO PAY OUR DEBT TO FRANCE

Fighting to protect the institutions of our fathers and to safeguard
democracy for our children, we are also fighting to expel invaders
from France, as once France helped Washington expel thousands of
German invaders from America. How black the sin of ingratitude! What
if some youth, poor and obscure, coming up to the great city to make
his fortune, should gain his opportunity to climb at the hands of some
noble merchant. And what if this benefactor, taking the orphan into
his home, shares his treasure with the youth, builds manhood in the
poor boy, opens to him the door to fortune and to fame. And what if,
when the poor boy finally has a mansion of his own, with wealth, and
honours, news should come that his now aged benefactor has fallen on
evil days and been attacked by cruel enemies. Can any crime be blacker
than for this strong man to send word to the one upon whose shoulders
he had climbed up to place, saying, "I do not wish to enter into any
entangling alliances with you in your distress, for I have learned
neither to borrow nor to lend"?

In 1781 France, a kingdom rich and powerful, found the handful of
American colonists in the condition of a boy, poor, friendless,
obscure, and threatened by a powerful enemy. Washington had no money,
no guns, no powder, no shoes for his soldiers in the winter. At the
moment when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb, France sent us her
greatest admiral, with a fleet of two battle-ships, three destroyers,
thirty-eight transports, and seven thousand soldiers, with muskets,
powder, shot, shoes, clothing and medical supplies. She sent us
Lafayette, heir to rich estates, with one of the largest private
incomes in Europe, who, with his fellow officers, joined the troops
of Washington. He saw his Frenchmen fall side by side with the troops
of Washington. When at length Cornwallis surrendered his sword to the
Commander of our army, Lafayette shared in the ceremony. What treasure
of lives and fortune France lavished upon this republic more than
one hundred years ago! We owe France our generals, our admirals, our
soldiers and sailors, our munitions, our physicians, our nurses, our
admiration, our love, our lives and our sacred honour.


THE WORLD'S LOVE FOR FRANCE

If Germany is the best hated nation in the world, so France is the
most dearly loved country. From France we have our painting at the
hands of her artists, from France we have our sculpture at the hands
of Rodin. From France we have fine literature and music; from France
we have the beautiful, organized into the clothes the people wear.
But above all, France has given us the enduring things of the spirit.
The whole history of heroism holds nothing finer than the tales of
French soldiers struggling unto blood and death to secure happiness
and liberty for others. Where will you find a more glorious sentiment
than this, that fell from the lips of the poilu in the trenches,--"We
sleep in mud, we bathe in blood, but our souls, they dwell among the
stars." Here is that young French girl, going to the station, the Garde
du Nord, to meet her wounded husband, who had never seen his new-born
babe. But the young fellow died while they lifted him out of the car.
Putting the little babe down to the cheek that was becoming cold, the
girl lifted her eyes unto God, and with streaming eyes exclaimed, "I
am only his wife! France is his mother!" And here is that poilu home
for his eight days' rest, who saw the broken-down hearse, with a poor
little woman hidden under crêpe, marching as the sole mourner; the
soldier sprang up, rushed to the hearse, saw a crippled comrade who had
been killed at the battle of the Somme, and turned to bid all the men
and women on the sidewalk fall into line, because a soldier of France
was sleeping, and all Frenchmen were his lovers, and who carried the
poor man in triumphal procession in the midst of sorrowing hundreds to
his final resting place. The French have added a new chapter to the
history of heroism. The Hun will never conquer France. Should a time
ever come when the butchers have killed all save one French boy and
girl, when the weapon is lifted against them, they will stand against
the wall of the Pyrenees, and the last Frenchman might die, but he will
never be conquered by the Huns.


THE TRIBUTE OF THE BRITISH

Americans oftentimes marvel at the praise that the British and
the French bestow upon the armies of the other. Each insists upon
considering the other superior to himself. One August day, in a Paris
restaurant, a young English captain, quiet, reserved, modest to a
degree, was praising the French soldiers and officers whom he had met.
Having just returned from the front of Ypres and La Bassée he was
so filled with admiration for the fortitude, the endurance, and the
heroism of the French soldiers, that he sought in vain for words bright
enough with which to describe their achievements. Asked for the reason
of his eulogy, and his conviction as to the supremacy of the French,
the British captain answered, "You must remember that the Frenchman is
fighting for his native land, while England has never been invaded
by the Huns." Then the captain went on to praise the British rifles,
machine guns, their military tactics, and the skill of their soldiers.
"When my company march, they are so perfectly drilled that their one
hundred right legs swing like the single stroke of a pendulum. I will
put my men against the soldiers of the world. Still," he said, "so far
as I now recall, no English division ever brought in at one time more
than one fourth their number as prisoners."


A PICTURE OF THE FRENCH FIGHT

"But," added the captain, "look at the French soldiers at Verdun. One
had a helmet, one a hat, some were bareheaded; some had new rifles,
some old rifles, and some only a bayonet and revolver. When they were
within ten rods of the German trench they lifted up their bayonets and
sent out their battle cry, and hearing the hoarse voices, the Germans
flung away their guns, climbed out of their trenches, ran like rabbits
and bellowed like bulls; that night when the French division came
home for supper, they brought ten thousand Germans along with them.
You can't beat the French--they are fighting for their native land."
That is a reason, but it is not _the_ reason. The reason is this--the
Frenchman counts himself dead already. If he survives to-day's battle,
he says, The morrow will give me another chance to die for God and
beautiful France. The Frenchman never knows when he is defeated, and
therefore he cannot be beaten.

One day a lawyer from Paris came to the front to bring Jean a message
from a cousin. "The Americans have come, the Latin Quarter is reviving,
the shops are reopening, and your cousin offers to take down the
shutters that have been up for three years and try to make a little
money to take care of you if you are wounded, and have it ready for you
when you return." Jean shook his head,--he was not interested. He said
that he never expected to return; that his cousin must take the shop,
that everything therein was hers; that he asked only to die for France.
The lawyer could not reason with him, and so the attorney hastily wrote
out a paper, giving the cousin full power to act as if the property
were hers, and then the French soldier hurried back to the trenches,
having no time for even a farewell. If to-day every civilized city and
country looks with contempt upon Germany, and thinks of her as a wild
beast let loose to rend the white flesh of humanity, every country in
the world hails France, and admires and loves her for her chivalry, her
heroism, her fortitude and her faith.


THE NEXT STEP

In this critical hour national unity is become an imperative necessity.
Men who have travelled up and down the country realize the intense
patriotism of one city and section, and the apathy of another section.
Always the explanation is to be found in the fact that some outstanding
newspaper or public man has become the center of enlightenment and
patriotism or the reverse.

As for the papers, the cost of the cablegrams, the expense of
telegraphing news across the country into the South, the West, or
the Pacific Coast cities, the high price of print paper, has all but
destroyed the financial resources of many papers, in towns west of the
Alleghanies. But the flame of enthusiasm is fed by the fuel of ideas.
The men who sacrifice are the men who know. The time, therefore, would
seem to have come for the government, during the period of the war, to
see to it that the people in the villages, rural districts, and remote
towns, should receive the full facts, every morning, so that daily one
hundred millions of people should be assembled in one vast speaking
gallery, and rise to the news of the same victory, and resolve with one
mind and one heart to defend humanity. All the millions must think as
one, and feel as one, and save and serve and sacrifice, and have one
resolve to back up our President in the pledge to make democracy safe
for our earth.


THE MOBILIZING OF THE WOMEN

To win this war our girls and women must join the world movement.
The outstanding lesson of the first two years of the war for Great
Britain and France is that the beginning of their victories came with
the entrance of women into the war. The steel wedge splits the log,
not alone by the sharp edge, but the thick head that crowds forward
the cutting edge. The American army is the cutting edge, but the one
hundred millions of people behind lend driving power to our regiments.
There are three million women in Great Britain either in the munition
factories or industries allied thereto. Every twenty-four hours they
produce more small cartridges than all England did the first year of
the war. Every two days they turn out more large cartridges than all
England did the first year of this war. Every six days, with the help
of expert men, they produce more heavy ordnance and cannon than all
England did the first year of this war. These English women pour the
molten steel, tool the shells, run the lathes, make the aeroplanes,
mix the explosives, and they literally hand the shells to the British
soldiers to aim the cannon. They are driving the munition trucks upon
the streets of England and the road to France, they are sowing the
fields, reaping the wheat, threshing the grain, and performing ten
thousand tasks once given over to men. The daughters of professional
men, bankers, manufacturers, as well as of the business classes, are
helping to equip the soldiers at the front. If our government should
to-morrow commandeer ten thousand luxury-making plants for munition
factories, throw them open to millions of women, by next autumn we
should be doing our part to help win this war.

To-day the clouds are thick, but better days are coming. For a time
it may be our lot to toil on in the wilderness, but soon or late the
pilgrim host will enter the Promised Land and hang out the signals of
victory. Those who war for justice and humanity find that the stars
in their courses fight with them, and their soldiers shall be fed on
angels' bread. Truth is stronger than error, liberty is stronger than
tyranny, justice is the genius of our universe, God is omnipotent,
and at last, love and sympathy must prevail. In this faith we must
strive on for a peace that shall defend frontier lines, vindicate the
rights of little peoples and destroy militarism and autocracy. During
the January snowstorms, that noble surgeon and poet, at the head of a
hospital at Vimy Ridge,--Dr. now Sir Andrew Macphail--wrote me a letter
which stayed my heart as the anchor holds the ship in time of storm.
The ground was deep with snow. Many wounded men had been brought in
from the trench. But at midnight, while the winter's wind flapped his
tent, the physician wrote me thus:

  "This war is of God. To-day it is peace that is hell. The soldier's
  life is a life of poverty, obedience, self-sacrifice; we know what
  the civilian's life is. But for the chastisement of this war,
  Berlin and Vienna, London and Paris would have descended into hell
  within three generations. I once spoke in your Plymouth on the
  blessings of peace; if ever again I have that privilege, I shall
  speak on the blessings of war. I never dreamed that men could be so
  noble. For three months I have slept on the stone; for three months
  before that in a tent; for six months I have not been in a bed; but
  I have never been so happy. I have acquired the fine freedom of
  a dog, and like a dog, I wear a metal tag around my neck so that
  they may know to whom I belong when it happens that I can no longer
  speak. And never was a man engaged in a cause so noble. I have seen
  Belgium; I have seen a lamb torn by the wolf; I am on the side of
  the lamb. I know the explanations the wolf has to offer--they do
  not interest me. I only wish that you were here with me at this
  battle for your own good; for right here at this western front this
  war will be decided, just where all the great wars of history have
  always been decided. It is decided already, but will take the enemy
  some time yet to find it out."


VISION OF A JUST AND LASTING PEACE

What does this noble scholar mean? History makes that meaning plain! No
wine until the purple clusters are crushed. No linen until the flax is
bleeding and broken. No redemption without shedding of blood. No rich
soil for men's bread until the rocks are ploughed with ice glaciers
and subdued with fire billows. Four forms of liberty achieved by our
fathers, for which they paid over three thousand battle-fields, blood
down. This war was not brought by God, but having come, let us believe
that His providence can overrule it for the destruction of all war.
When Germany is beaten to her knees, becomes repentant, offers to make
restitution for her crimes, then and not till then can this war stop.
Autocracy too must go. There is no room left in the world for a kaiser
or a sultan. The hangman's noose awaits the peasant murderer, and
already the hemp is grown to twist into the noose for the royal neck.
At all costs and hazards we must fight this war through to a successful
issue. Our children must not be made to walk through all this blood and
muck. The burden of militarism must be lifted from the shoulders of
God's poor. Any state that will not forever give up war must be shut
out of the world's clearing houses and markets through finance and
trade. Geologists tell us that the harbour of Naples, protected by
islands, was once the crater of a volcano like unto Vesuvius, but that
God depressed that smoking basin until the life-giving waters of the
Mediterranean streamed in and put out that fire. Oh! beautiful emblem
of a new era, when God will depress every battle-field, and every
dreadnought, and bring in the life-giving waters of peace.

When we have so carried on this war as to end all wars, a golden age
will come, and with it the Parliament of Mankind, the Federation of
the World, a little international army policing the land, a little
international navy policing the seas, an international supreme court
deciding disputes between peoples. To this high end let our sons
dedicate themselves. To this goal let all of us as parents, looking
towards our best beloved, say, "My son he is! God's soldier let him
be! I could not wish him to a fairer death." Let all our people say to
the Kaiser and his War Staff, "You shall not skewer babes upon your
bayonets; you shall not crucify officers upon the trees; you shall
not nail young nuns to the doors of the schoolhouses; you shall not
violate the sanctities of infancy and old age; you shall not mutilate
the bodies of little girls and noble women; you shall not call that
unspeakable butcher, the Sultan, a dear friend, and organize his
soldiers for the assassination of the whole Armenian race; you shall
not play fast and loose with your solemn treaties; you shall not
transfix mankind with German bayonets; you shall not crush the hopes of
Gladstone, Lafayette and Lincoln. You shall not grind God's children
beneath the iron heel of despotism. And so help us God, despite all
your atrocities, government of the people, by the people, and for the
people shall not perish from God's earth!"




IV

Astounding Claims and Records from German Sources


_The Butcher's Charge_

  In 1900 addressing his soldiers about to sail for Peking, the
  Kaiser gave them counsel. Later he repeated this in a little
  different language for the soldiers of August, 1914: "When you
  meet the foe you will defeat him. No quarter will be given, no
  prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at
  your mercy. Just as the Huns one thousand years ago under Attila
  gained a reputation, so may the name of Germany become known in
  such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again dare to
  look askance at a German."


_Kitchener's Charge_

  "Be invariably courteous, considerate and kind. Never do anything
  likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting
  as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome, and
  to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that
  trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So
  keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new
  experience you may find temptations in wine and women. You must
  entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women
  with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

  "Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.

  "KITCHENER, _Field-Marshal_."




IV

Astounding Claims and Records from German Sources


Over and over again the German Chancellor and the Kaiser have declared
that Germany is waging a defensive war, and never intended to annex
Belgium. Shortly after the death of the Governor of Belgium a member of
the Reichstag published General von Bissing's memorandum, signed by its
author. This man enjoyed to an unusual degree the Kaiser's confidence.
In his last testament he declares that King Albert must be dethroned,
dictatorship must be established, the properties of all Belgians who
have fled must be confiscated, and a régime of blood and iron imposed,
otherwise Germany has lost the war. "Our frontier must be pushed
forward to the sea. We must retain all Belgium and link it up with the
German sphere of power. The annual Belgian production of 23,000,000
tons of coal has given us a monopoly on the continent which has helped
us to maintain our vitality. If we do not hold Belgium, administer
Belgium, and protect Belgium by force of arms, our trade and industry
will lose the position they have won. Belgium, therefore, must be
seized and held, as it now is, and as it must be in the future. It only
remains for us, therefore, to avoid, during the peace negotiations, all
discussion about the form of the annexation, and to talk only about the
right of conquest. In view of our just and ruthless procedure, the king
of the Belgians will be deposed, and we can read in Machiavelli that he
who desires to take possession of a country will be compelled to remove
the king, even by killing him."

Nothing can be more obvious, since Machiavelli also says the burglar
often must kill the householder, and Annas had to assassinate Jesus;
but other murderers from the day of Socrates to Lincoln have been more
skillful than von Bissing in announcing and defending their crimes.


THE CLAIMS OF THE KAISER'S FAMILY

Some years ago, in 1856, Frederick William IV, a predecessor of the
present reigning "All Highest," became a suitor in the courts of
Missouri seeking to recover from the estate of a deceased postmaster
a sum with which he had absconded to America. The royal plaintiff
thus modestly described his status: "The plaintiff states that he is
absolute monarch of the Kingdom of Prussia, and as king thereof is
the sole government of that country; that he is unrestrained by any
constitution or law, and that his will, expressed in due form, is the
only law of that country, and is the only legal power there known to
exist as law." (_King of Prussia v. Kuepper's Admr., 22 No. 551._) See
Law Notes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here follow a very few out of thousands of thoughts and records
of fact, written by Germans, and still existing--mostly in
print--originally designed to arouse the German war-spirit or to
chronicle its achievements. And--as the old Roman put it--_Litera
scripta manet_: the written record stands. Its revelations are
undeniable.


GERMANY ANNOUNCES HER PLAN TO EXTERMINATE THE BELGIANS

Let us bravely organize great forced migrations of the inferior
peoples. Posterity will be grateful to us. We must coerce them! This
is one of the tasks of war; the means must be superiority of armed
force. Superficially such forced migrations, and the penning up of
inconvenient peoples in narrow "reserves" may appear hard; but it is
the only solution of the race-question that is worthy of humanity....
Thus alone can the over-population of the earth be controlled; the
efficient peoples must secure themselves elbow-room by means of
war, and the inefficient must be hemmed in, and at last driven into
"reserves" where they have no room to grow ... and where, discouraged
and rendered indifferent to the future by the spectacle of the superior
energy of their conquerors, they may crawl slowly towards the peaceful
death of weary and hopeless senility.--_K. Wagner, K., p. 170._


GERMANY ANNOUNCES HER SEMI-SLAVE EMPIRE

[In the All-German Confederation which will comprise most of Europe]
the Germans, being alone entitled to exercise political rights, to
serve in the Army and Navy, and to acquire landed property, will
recover the feeling they had in the Middle Ages of being a people of
masters. They will gladly tolerate the foreigners living among them, to
whom inferior manual services will be entrusted.--_G. U. M., p. 47._


GERMANY PROPOSES TO DISARM OTHER NATIONS, AS THE TURKS DISARMED THE
ARMENIANS

The war must last until we have forced disarmament upon our enemies.
There is a nursery rhyme which runs thus:

  Knife and scissors, fork and candle,
  Little children must not handle.

Since the enemy States behave so childishly as to misuse their arms,
they must be placed under tutelage. Morever, our enemies have acted so
dishonourably that it is only just that rights of citizenship should be
denied them.... When they can no longer bear arms, they cannot make any
new disturbances.--_O. Siemans, W. L. K. D., p. 147._


THE GERMAN AS SUPERMAN

No nation in the world can give us anything worth mentioning in the
field of science or technology, art or literature, which we would have
any trouble in doing without. Let us reflect on the inexhaustible
wealth of the German character, which contains in itself everything
of real value that the Kultur of man can produce. We understand all
foreign nations; no foreign nation understands or can understand
us!--_Prof. Sombart, H. U. H., p. 135._

As the German bird, the eagle, hovers high over all the creatures of
the earth, so also should the German feel that he is raised high above
all other nations who surround him, and whom he sees in the limitless
depth beneath him.--_Prof. W. Sombart, H. U. H., p. 143._

We are indeed entrusted here on earth with a doubly sacred mission; not
only to protect Kultur ... against the narrow-hearted huckster-spirit
of a thoroughly corrupted and inwardly rotten commercialism
(Jobbertum), but also to impart Kultur in its most august purity,
nobility and glory to the whole of humanity, and thereby contribute not
a little to its salvation.--_Ein Deutscher, W. K. B. M., p. 40._

He who does not believe in the Divine mission of Germany had better
hang himself, and rather to-day than to-morrow.--_H. S. Chamberlain, D.
Z., p. 17._


THE TEST OF THE TRUE GERMAN IS THE ABSENCE OF HUMANITARIANISM

Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his
heart the sinking of the _Lusitania_--whoever cannot conquer his sense
of the gigantic cruelty (ungeheure Grausamkeit) to unnumbered perfectly
innocent victims ... and give himself up to honest delight at this
victorious exploit of German defensive power--him we judge to be no
true German.--_D. Baumgarten, D. R. S. Z., No. 24, p. 7._

By steeping himself in military history, a German officer will be able
to guard himself against excessive humanitarianism.--_Laws of War on
Land._

We are not only compelled to accept the war that is forced upon us--but
are even compelled to carry on this war with a cruelty, a ruthlessness,
an employment of every imaginable device, unknown in any previous
war.--_D. Baumgarten, D. R. S. Z., No. 24, p. 7._


FROM THE HYMN OF HATE

  We have all but one hate;
  We love as one, we hate as one;
  We have all but one foe--
  England!
  In the quarter-deck cabin, the banqueting room,
  Ship's officers sat at their friendly feast.
  Like a sabre blow, like the swing of a sail,
  One jerked his glass aloft for a toast.
  Curt and sharp as the catch of an oar,
  Three words he uttered: "To the Day!"

      On whose score was the glass?
      They had all but one hate,
      Whom had they in mind?
      They had all but one foe--
          England!


BERNHARDI BLAMED FOR REVEALING, IN 1911, WAR PLANS OF THE
KAISER

"As I walked out, General von Bernhardi came into the room, an expert
artilleryman, a professor in one of their war colleges. I met him the
next morning and he asked me if I had read his book 'Germany in the
Next War.' I said I had. He answered, 'Do you know, my friends nearly
ran me out of the country for that. They said, "You have let the cat
out of the bag." I replied, "No, I have not, because nobody will
believe it." 'What do you think of it?' I replied, 'General, I did not
believe a word of it when I read it, but I now feel that you did not
tell the whole truth;' and the old General looked actually pleased."

That is why England and the United States were not prepared for this
war. Their leaders and people supposed that Germany was bluffing and
Germany banked upon the fact that nobody would take seriously her
extraordinary claims and plans.


GERMANY'S REVISED CHRISTMAS HYMN

_"War On Earth, and Black Hate Towards All Men"_

England is our worst enemy, and we will fight her till we have
overthrown her! So may it please our Great Ally, who stands behind the
German battalions, behind our ships and U-boats, and behind our blessed
"militarism"!--_E. v. Heyking, D. W. E., p. 23._

The German soul is the world's soul, God and Germany belong to one
another.--_"On the German God," by Pastor W. Lehmann, quoted in H. A.
H., p. 83._


MILK FOR GERMAN BABES

(_A German Song_)

"Oh, Germany, hate! Slaughter thy foes by the millions and of their
reeking corpses build a monument that shall reach the clouds.

"Oh, Germany, hate now! Arm thyself in steel and pierce with thy
bayonet the heart of every foe; no prisoners! Lock all their lips in
silence; turn our neighbours' lands into deserts.

"Oh, Germany, hate! Salvation will come of thy wrath. Beat in their
skulls with rifle-butts and with axes. These bandits are beasts of the
chase, they are not men. Let your clenched fist enforce the judgment of
God.

"Oh, Germany, the time to hate has come. Strike and thrust, true and
hard. Battalions, batteries, squadrons, all to the front! Afterwards
thou wilt stand erect on the ruins of the world, healed forever of
thine ancient madness, of thy love for the alien."


MORE FROM THE HYMN OF HATE

  What do we care for the Russians and French?
  Shot against shot and thrust for thrust!
  We love them not, we hate them not;
  We guard the Vistula and the passes of the Vosges.
    We have but one single hate;
    We love as one, we hate as one;
    We have but one single foe,
  Whom you all know, whom you all know.
  He sits crouched behind the gray flood,
  Full of envy, full of fury, full of craft, full of guile,
  Set apart by waters that are thicker than blood.
  We wish to go before a seat of judgment
  To swear an oath, face to face,
  An oath of metal no wind can blow away,
  An oath for children and children's children.
  Hearken to the word, repeat the word,
  It rolls on through all Germany:
    We will not forbear from our hate.


TESTIMONY OF AFFIDAVITS, AND DIARIES TAKEN FROM THE BODIES OF
GERMAN SOLDIERS, AS TO THE ATROCITIES

(_D. 25-54._) A boy with his hands cut off, mutilated by a German
officer, because he was supposed to have laughed at this drunken brute.

(_D. 4, 5._) A Belgian babe, skewered upon the bayonet, driven through
his stomach, with his little dead head and hands and legs dangling as
the German proudly carried it through the street of a village.

(_Alcove C. 60._) A Mother Superior crucified by bayonets to the door
of her schoolhouse as punishment for scratching the face of an officer
who was violating the person of a young nun. The burning alive of a man
who defended his wife.

(_D. 92-93. Also D. 100-108._) Photographs of an aged priest, staked
down to the ground, and used as a lavatory until he was dead;
photographs and affidavits of young girls with one breast cut off.

(_Affidavits in Alcove 867._) The dead body of a young girl nailed by
her hands to the outside door of a cottage. She was about fourteen or
sixteen years of age.

(_Page 21. Affidavits H-67._) "September 14th. One hundred and eight
inhabitants are stated to have been shot after they had dug their own
graves. Innumerable houses have been destroyed. The population looks
bitter and scowling." August 22nd, notebook of Private Max Thomas. "Our
soldiers are so excited, we are like wild beasts. To-day, destroyed
eight houses, with their inmates. Bayonetted two men with their wives
and a girl of eighteen. The little one almost unnerved me, so innocent
was her expression."

(_D. 10. 45._) In retreating from Laines eight drunken soldiers were
marching through the street. A little child of two years came out and
a soldier skewered the child on his bayonet, and carried it away while
his comrades sang.

Withdrawing from Hofstade, in addition to other atrocities the Germans
cut off both hands of a boy of sixteen. At the inquest affidavits were
taken from twenty-five witnesses, who saw the boy before he died or
just afterwards.

(_Affidavits D. 100-8._) Passing through Haecht, in addition to the
young women whom they violated and killed, a child three years old was
found nailed by its hands and feet to a door.

That all these atrocities were carefully planned in advance for
terrorizing the people is proven by the fact that on the morning of
August 25th the officers who had received great kindness from Madame
Roomans, a notary's wife, warned her to make her escape immediately, as
the looting and killing of all the citizens, men, women and children,
was about to begin.

(_D. 186._) "The captain served a requisition upon all the farmers
hereabouts, taking horses, oxen, wagons, milk and butter. These
people are so ignorant that they did not know when he gave them false
receipts and signed this name--Herr von Koepenick." Other peasants
received receipts stating that in return for the goods that had
been requisitioned by the German officers, the owner was to come to
the German quartermaster and receive his pay in twenty strokes of a
whip-lash. If all the diaries of the Germans now in the hands of the
English, Belgian and French authorities were brought together and
published, they would make a small library, and the title would be
"Confessions of Crime by German Soldiers."

"August 19th. Halted and plundered a villa, as invariably the
surrounding houses were immediately plundered; dined splendidly, drank
eleven bottles of champagne, four bottles of wine and six bottles of
liquor."

John VanderSchoot, 10th Company, 39th Infantry, 7th Army Corps. "August
19th. Quartered in the University. Boozed through the streets of Liège,
lie on straw, booze in plenty, little food, so we must steal. We live
like gods here in Belgium."

K. Bartel--on crimes he had witnessed--as they were committed by his
own officers and fellow privates. "Our men have shrunk morally below
zero. Oct. 7th."

Yager Otto Clepp, August 22nd, in Liège makes this entry: "Two of our
regiments shot at each other; nine dead and fifty wounded. Reason for
mistake not yet ascertained."

There is a striking commentary on the German War Staff's Commission's
statement that they shot the old men and women in Liège because of an
attack by the people. This German officer's entry illustrates what
doubtless happened many times. When the Germans were drunk, terrified
by the sense of their own crimes and expecting the people to resist the
cruelties, one German company turned and fired upon another.

H. W. Heller. August 6th. "Friday at 8:30 came the news that the
English had landed in Belgium. We smashed everything immediately. One
sees only burning houses and heaps of dead people and dead horses every
three steps."

Fritz Holman writes: "We are never thirsty here in France. We drink
five and six bottles of champagne a day, and as to under linen, we
simply loot a house and change. God only knows what will happen unto us
later on."

Stephen Luther's diary. "Monday the 10th. Marching via Laden. Villages
friendly disposed, one of them bombarded in error. Misunderstandings
occurred because our officers understand no French. There was terrible
destruction; in a farmhouse saw a woman who had been completely
stripped and who lay on burnt beams. How savage! Terrible conditions
in the destroyed houses." "August 24, 1914. In Ermiton we took about a
thousand prisoners. At least five hundred were shot."

       *       *       *       *       *

Let this series be closed by a few trenchant words from two of
Germany's most famous poets, characterizing the Prussian nature that
to-day controls all Germany (and neighbour Austria besides). The great
Goethe was from Weimar, but the satiric Heine, from Düsseldorf--a
Prussian, born.


PRUSSIANISM

"The Prussians are cruel by nature; civilization will make them
ferocious."--_Goethe._

"The Prussians ... Nature made them stupid, science has made them
wicked."--_Heinrich Heine._

"Christianity has to a certain extent softened this brutal, belligerent
ardour of the Teutons, but it has not been able to destroy it; and
when the Cross--the talisman that fetters it--shall be broken, then
the ferocity of the old-time fighters, the frenzied exultation of the
Berserkers, whose praises are still sung by the poets of the North,
will again burst forth. Then--and alas! this day will surely come--the
old war gods will arise from their legendary tombs and wipe the dust
of ages from their eyes; Thor will arise with his gigantic hammer and
demolish the Gothic Cathedral."--_Heinrich Heine._

       *       *       *       *       *

After the mephitic horrors of the German war-spirit, let us be
refreshed by a breeze from the shores of America, and gratefully
recognize a characteristic American flavour in the following address
from Major-General Pershing to his troops in France. The report is from
a French paper, and while, through its double translation, it may not
be verbally exact, its fine spirit is evident.

"You are now in France, to expel an enemy that has invaded this
beautiful land. Your first duty is to fight against this foe, and
protect our Ally. You are here also to lift a shield above the poor
and weak. You will be kind, therefore, to the aged and the invalid.
You will be courteous to all women, and never have so much as an evil
thought in your mind. You will be very tender and gentle with little
children. You will do well, therefore, to forswear the use of all
liquors. You will do your duty like brave men. Fear God. Honour your
country. Defend liberty. God have you in His keeping."




V

ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAYING GERMAN ATROCITIES


[Illustration: GERMAN SOLDIER'S TOKEN
"Strike him dead! The Day of Judgment will not ask your reasons!"]


CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS AFLAME


Imagination is not Germany's gift.... She cannot by any chance conceive
how other races look upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary
expressed it: "Let the neutrals cease chattering about cathedrals.
Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and churches in
the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military ends."--Pp.
48, 50.

       *       *       *       *       *

_N. B.--The cathedral of Rheims was never used by the French soldiers
for any military purpose whatsoever._


[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._]


GERMAN MILITARY TACTICS

The official Handbook for instruction and guidance says: "By steeping
himself in military history, an officer will be able to guard himself
against excessive humanitarian notions."--These four citizens were
murdered because they would not betray the guardianship of their
bank.--Page 23.


A GUILTY HOME GUARD

This man defended his home and the honour of his young wife against
two German officers. They literally carved his limbs into bits,
and mutilated his body in ways that men only speak of, and then in
whispers. When the German marauder breaks into the French or Belgian
home, its owner of course loses his rights: All belong to the brave
conquerors.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


A PRINCELY WEAPON

The German firebrand is a perforated iron bulb, filled with asbestos
cloth absorbing about a teacupful of petrol. Mounted on a wooden handle
it is fired, and hurled into a building for conflagration. With this
Prince Eitel Frederick, after looting, personally burned the Chateau of
Avricourt, where he had quartered for months.--Page 45.


DIARY OF EITEL ANDERS

"We arrived at the town of Wandre. The inhabitants without exception
were brought out and shot. They all knelt down and prayed, but that was
no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the
green grass and slept forever. It is real sport."--Page 34.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


RUINS OF GERBÉVILLER

This once lovely village of Gerbéviller, is now called Gerbéviller the
Martyred. In a rage of fury because of his enforced retreat before a
French army, of two-thirds in number of his own troops, General Clauss
looted this little city and massacred about one hundred of its people.
Among the slain were fifteen very aged men, including the Mayor and
his secretary, there being no young or middle-aged men left in the
town who could be killed. Out of 475 houses, twenty at most were left
habitable.--Page 37.

[Illustration]


PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WRECKINGS

Two examples of wanton, unmilitary destruction. Above, a scene in
Nomeny (Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle), and below, the splendid
great Cloth Hall of Ypres. The former was simply the hell-blast of
German passage; the latter, a distinct intention to destroy by fire a
famous and beautiful edifice, made a target for the heaviest guns, with
no remotest military reason--except "frightfulness."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


MUTE WITNESSES

The full extent of the German atrocities committed on a battle line
six hundred miles in length, and extending from the English Channel
to the Swiss frontier, can never be known. More than one hundred
thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes
were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German
armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns
affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies
taken. After the German troops had passed out of the village or city,
it became possible for the village school-teacher, priest or banker,
the aged women and the children to creep out of pits, the caves in
the fields, or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and
return to survey the scene of desolation behind them. The opposite
page shows victims in the little town of Andenne, where more than 300
civilians were massacred.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARTIN

The city of Ypres, in the intensest zone of conflict, has suffered
much. The ancient Cathedral, of the XIII Century, on the site of an
edifice of the XI, stately and impressive with its magnificent rose
window in the choir, is now unroofed and its fine interior a heap of
stones mournfully guarded by the remaining pillars and broken walls.
The great altarpiece of St. Martin on his white steed still presides
over the ruins of the high altar. It is a ghastly scene.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: GOD'S ACRE.
A typical scene along the gruesome six hundred miles of the German
"battle-front," amid the unarmed! If devils scatter this seed, it is
still on God's Acre, and He will care for the harvest.]




Transcriber's Notes


Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

P. 66: Rio Janeiro -> Rio de Janeiro.





End of Project Gutenberg's German Atrocities, by Newell Dwight Hillis