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Una ln» ACHES RISN S;. ~ Fb SS, : rugiwag** ’ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from University of Illinois Uroana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/atrocitiesofgermOOhill_ 0 , A A Y vn hte f The Atrocities of Germany Bay LIBERTY BONDS And End Them Forever BY Newell Dwight Hillis ILLUSTRATED WITH CARTOONS BY LOUIS RAEMAEKERS LIBERTY LOAN COMMITTEE SECOND FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICT 112 These selections from Dr. Hillis’ German Atrocities: their Nature and Philosophy, are reprinted through the kindness of the author and his publishers, Fleming H. Revell Com- pany, New Yorkand Chicago. The complete book contains reproductions of affidavits, diarles, scenes, etc. GHO.YO0S H5s9a “Strike him dead. The Day of Judgment | will not ask you for reasons.” HIS is the motto on the aluminum token that the German Gov- ernment gives to every German soldier. 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, and beneath is the motto: “ Strike him dead. The Day of Judgment will not ask you for reasons ’—the motto that gives each soldier his license to slay, pillage, loot, burn, rape, leave his thousands massacred and mutilated where he has passed. Some German-Americans still insist that the alleged German atrocities represent English lies, Belgian hypocrisies, and French de- lusions, 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 ot 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. 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. No one can look at the hundreds of photo- graphs of mutilated bodies without confessing that the sunlight, like a recording angel, has given a damning testimony that cannot be gain- said by the monsters who not only killed men who defended the honor 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. 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 con- fession of deeds committed sometimes by his fellows and sometimes by himself. There is also the testimony of mutilated bodies that have been 3 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 wit- nesses 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. 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. 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. The Number of Atrocities The full extent of the reign of terror and frightfulness in France and Belgium can only be guessed with a shudder. More than one hundred thousand people are simply reported as “missing’’; other multi- tudes were burned or thrown into pits. 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. A Catalogue of Crimes The catalogue of German atrocities, now documented, in legal reports, with the accompanying photographs, preserved in the Depart- ment of Justice of the various nations, makes up the blackest page in human history. Long days and nights spent over the records 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 4 5 i oe x : is Mee ie (ec) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co., N.Y, THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS “We must do everything in good order, so men to the right and women to the left.” recovered by the gentleness, the self-sacrifice, the fortitude, the sympa- thy, 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 these atrocities were begun on practically the same day, August 17th, of 1914, and ended about September rgth, 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. 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 Germans have literally fulfilled the Kaiser’s charge given in 1900 and reproduced in 1914 upon postal 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,” Eitel Anders 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 A ) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co., N. Y. THE SHIELDS OF ROSSELAERE At Rosselaere the German troops forced the Belgian townsfolk to march in front of them. Rata st y ste 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 Malcolm 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 aluminum token and the Kaiser’s charge to his savage Huns had 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 Gerber- viller, too, that officer rode away with a light heart, quite free from the remorse that unseated the reason of Macheth. Plainly the teachings of the Kaiser and his war lords have at last succeeded in prostituting the conscience of all Germany, officers, soldiers and civilians alike. 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 Ger- man 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! 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. 8 Gerberviller the Martyred In August of 1914, when the German army was broken and com- pelled 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 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. The Murder of Hereminel In a little farming village not many miles from Gerberviller 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. 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. ‘ 9 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 hun- dred 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 “Pottsdam gang’ has added a new word to the literature of cowardice. | Documented Atrocities The following are but a few, and these the least sickening, of over a thousand documented atrocities, with the original photographs and affidavits, resting in the archives of France against the day of reckoning. (D. 25, 54.) Withdrawing from Hofstade, im 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. (D. 4, 5.) A Belgian babe, skewered upon the bayonet, driven through his stomach, with his little dead head and hands and legs dan- gling as the German proudly carried it through the street of a village. (Affidavits D. Ttoo-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. (D. ro, 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. (Affidavits in Alcove 867.) The dead body of a young girl nailed’ by her kands to the outside door of a cottage. She was about fourteen or sixteen years of age. 7 At Capelle-au-Bois the Belgian troops found two girls hanging naked from a tree with their breasts cut off. In the same town, German soldiers held a mother down by force while other soldiers in turn violated her daughter in an adjoining room. (Alcove C. 60.) A Mother Superior crucified by bayonets to the door of her school-house 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. 10 (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. This is the German Kultur of which the German philosophers babble, the Kultur of which one writes: “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.” The Diaries of German Soldiers 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. (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 popula- tion looks bitter and scowling.’ August 22d, note-book 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.’’) “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 liquer.”’ John Van der Schoot, 1toth Company, 39th Infantry, 7th Army Corps. “August 19th. Quartered in the University. Boozed through the streets of Liege, lie on straw, booze in plenty, little food, so we must - steal. We live like gods here in Belgium.” Fritz Holman writes before he was killed, “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.” H. W. Heller. August 6th. ‘Friday at 8:30 came the news that the English had landed in Belgium. We smashed everything immedi- ately. One sees only burning houses and heaps of dead people and dead horses every three steps.” | Stephen Luther’s diary. “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.” ° 11 The German War Staff’s Report Here, in the “summarizing report by the General War Staff,” published December 31, 1914, is what the German chief says in explana- tion of the Belgian campaign: “The need of the German army to push through Belgium was imperative. 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 Ger- man 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 BEA hostages against the garden wall, where we shot them.” Hundreds of witnesses called, after the Germans had passed on, show that during four days the German officers and soldiers were en- gaged 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. Why Germany Started the War German barbarism is the natural outgrowth of the arrogant German dream of world empire that since 1870 has festered in the German mind until it has corrupted and debauched a whole people, a race of devils let loose from Hell. This war began in a conference in the Potsdam Palace in 1892. The results of that conference were restated in I9QII by rrofessor Tannemann, a personal friend of the Kaiser. 12 co SNR Sing ce tie ty eee He commmeee % - QU tS ORs pga ORO PORE RERESERTTeY TE SOREN meer very al ae le ote yt { oe 2 SESS ¢ (c) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co., N ERS HUSBANDS AND_FATH Germany. deported to cibly Belgian workmen were for 13 ‘The essence of the 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 the 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 Czsar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of a world empire; they failed. [ am dreaming a dream of a German world empire—and my mailed fist shall succeed.” One of the Pan-German empire pamphlets, and many of the Ger- man 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 show- ing Canada as a German province, with the name “Germania” stamped across South America, Mexico and Central America. That is why the Kaiser told Mr. Gerard: “‘After this war, I shall stand no nonsense from the United States.” At Manila Bay in 1898 the German admiral, who had only been restrained from attacking the American squadron by the presence of the English fleet, said 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.” i Professor Von Stengel, the German authority on International Law, writes: “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 over- lordship all international law would become superfluous, for we of ourselves, and instinctively, will give to each nation its own rights.” “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.” 14 The Morals of the Savage The arguments for war 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.” ‘The rich cities and provinces won from Germany's war upon Austria 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 agricul- tural people into an industrial and manufacturing state as the com- petitor of England for the world’s trade. For more than forty years the chief argument presented in the Reichstag for increased appropria- tions for the army and the navy was the money dividends paid by war. The Treasure Boxes of Europe To Germany the other nations were so many treasure boxes, ready for the 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 Cali- fornia. 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.” | 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 she has shouted, “I can ‘ick anybody in the world,” The Cunning of the Savage 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 15 of every continent his evil plans and plots. Men like von Bernstorff in Washington, and Munsterburg in Boston, von Kopp, 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, manu- facturers, 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 Jésus for thirty pieces of silyer, but would have given ten per cent. off for cash, Will Germany Give Up Belgium ? 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. Germany now holds Belgium, a part of the rich loot for which she took up the savage’s bludgeon. Is it likely that she will give up Belgium until she is driven back from its borders, from every foot of its soil, by force of arms? Hear what General Von Bissing said in his last testament : “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 1s, 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.” Beautiful France This is the way things stand to-day in Belgium and Northern France. All men love their native land, but the Frenchman’s love has a unique quality. It 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 Frenchman found France a wild land, rough, with forests filled with wolves. He subdued all the wild grasses, drained the valleys 16 Tours I ee (c) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co, N.Y + > EADY TOMORROW ANY GERM ‘OR i IONS KE MUNIT TO MA ER WILL YOU B 17 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 em- broidery 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. And having lavished all his 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. For these reasons all France was invested with affection and beauty. What Hate Can Do To-day no image is adequate to picture the devastation of France. 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. 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! Gor all the lovely and majestic Thirteenth Century churches! Gone all the galleries, for some of the finest art treasures in the world have perished. 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 creosote.’ The spirit was this, “Since we Germans cannot have this land, no one else shall.” Prince Ejitel’s Crime But there is more. One of the historic chateaux is that of Avri- court, rich in noble associations of history. It was one of the class of buildings covered by a clause in the international agreements between 18 DAP siaeiring gions sks Srury ner nie PA PPRRP SE pada: i eiecaa id ichis ae 4 i i 4 Hi sr EM HH ye ia ah paraisblttia (c) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co., N.Y. AFTER A ZEPPELIN RAID “But Mother had done nothing wrong, had she, Daddy?” | 19 inne at te ; 4 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 favorite philosopher Nietzsche says that Germany’s gift is brute force and not intellect. “Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture,” Rheims Cathedral One of the atrocities that has horrified the civilized world has been the ruin of Rheims Cathedral. 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. This destruction served no military purpose. It was not done in the heat of battle. It was the sheer, deliberate, wanton brutality of the Hun venting his black spleen because he could not have his will. It was the act of the barbarian, without imagination and without control. The true emblem of the German intellect is beer, just as the emblem of the English intellect is port wine, the emblem of the French mind champagne, the emblem. of an American intellect like Emerson’s a beaker filled with sunshine—but Germany has a “beer” mind. 20 It is this 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 litera- ture; 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. Ruined Homes and Hopes 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. 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 I915, 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. 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 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. 21 (c) Courtesy of Brown-Robertson Co., N. Y. THE CHILDREN OF BELGIUM The Foul Crime Against Women | Many Americans have looked with horror upon the photographs of the mutilated bodies of women, dead girls, with breasts cut off— and for this reason, every German soldier is examined for syphilis by the surgeon of the regiment and only the healthy ones receive the card giving access to the camp women. If the syphilitic German contami- nates the camp woman his disease is handed on to his brother soldier, and that means he will be shot. This syphilitic soldier, therefore, finds his only chance with the captured French girls, but having contami- nated a girl, he fears that she in turn will contaminate the next German soldier and, therefore, he mutilates her body to warn away Germans. The girl’s life weighs nothing against a German soldier’s lust or the possibility of the brute’s handing his contamination to the next soldier. This is German efficiency. -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 the village of Ham, they carried away with them 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 heen cutting the barbed wire, and in the midst of the German flare had been caught by a bullet. Mistaking the dead boy for 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 understand- ing why the cold hands did not clasp her around in the dear accustomed 23 | 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. Why There Must Be No Inconclusive Peace. Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no inconclu- sive 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. That is what we are fighting for. 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, jus- tice, 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 cave- man. If she succeeds in a return to brute force, her victory will be the. most terrible calamity that ever overwhelmed the earth. » 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.” There is but one answer that America can give, but one answer that the Hun can understand—guns, shells, bayonets. His armies must be beaten, shattered, driven back in overwhelming defeat, until he knows in his heart that he can never hope to Germanize the world, either by the propaganda of his Kultur which is simply a cover for vileness or by his atrocities which are its expression. He must be beaten so over- whelmingly that Kultur will be dead forever. He must be beaten, and America must help. Men and women of America, what will be your share in your country’s answer? It is for you to supply the guns, the shells, the bayonets that mean decisive Victory. Act and act now. Buy Liberty Bonds. Buy more Liberty Bonds—all the Bonds you can. Thunder an answer to Germany that will make her cower in fear. ‘ t 4 : Zz 4 pms! Ole Sale se rr es tye Sr ree eet ow ens ES PET FBS ee he ch i> ree Eecbapset gas indy spassese ae cea vested sees iy eee eden ee eee N SaTE ST peace err g ee een faypriseere esis estore =3r3"5 Re oe eee Sel lety dh peeks oe i 3.0112 03953 Il) ) | | VERSITY OF ILLINO! Le Bi? ei ee eae =—_—__ ———— —S>S==S= ——<—<—— $ ————__] Md 2k ea tee