THE GERMAN HORROR
May 2, 1918
The Hague conferences laid down a number of rules which the signatory powers, including Germany, agreed to observe in order to mitigate the horrors of war. Germany has with equal cynicism and brutality violated every one of these rules. She has waged war as it was waged in the Dark Ages. She has shown revolting cruelty toward soldiers and especially toward non-combatants, including women and children.
At this moment a great cannon is bombarding Paris. Not a soldier has been killed by it; it has not in the smallest degree affected France’s military power, nor was it intended to do so. It was intended to terrorize the French civilian population by the destruction of churches, hospitals, and private buildings and the murder of women and children. OnGood Friday one of the shells wrecked a church and killed a number of the little choir boys and a number of women who were at prayer. Among the killed were three American women whom I knew, who were abroad working for our soldiers. An American friend who saw the horror writes me:
Evidently the Germans do not worry over the fact that their shells descend on women and children kneeling in prayer on a Good Friday, before the crucifix.
Evidently the Germans do not worry over the fact that their shells descend on women and children kneeling in prayer on a Good Friday, before the crucifix.
Another American friend, a Red Cross woman, writes:
One shell burst in a maternity hospital, killing a nurse, a young mother, and a little baby. Several other mothers and new-born babies were injured.
One shell burst in a maternity hospital, killing a nurse, a young mother, and a little baby. Several other mothers and new-born babies were injured.
The Zeppelins and airplanes are continually bombarding undefended English and French cities and have killed women and children by the hundreds. The submarines have waged war with callous mercilessness. Their crews have continually practiced torture on the prisoners they have taken. They leave women and children to drown. They shoot into the lifeboats. At this moment Americans are dying from the poison gas which the Germans, in contemptuous defiance of The Hague rules, have made an ordinary weapon of war. I have just been talking with an American soldier absolutely trustworthy, who himself saw the body of a Canadian whom the Germans had just crucified.
Every violation of the laws of war has been practiced by Germany. By her outrages on humanity she has made herself an outlaw among nations,and unless she pays heavily for her crimes, the whole world will be in danger. It is Germany, and only Germany, who is responsible for the hideous atrocities that have marked this war, atrocities which all civilized men outside of Germany believed to have been eliminated forever from civilized warfare. Germany has habitually and as a matter of policy practiced the torture of men, the rape of women, and the killing of children.
It was deeply to our discredit that during the shameful years of our neutrality we refused to protest against these hideous atrocities. Now at last this Nation has awakened and has gone to war against the enemy of America and of mankind. Let our people now keep steadily in mind just what kind of a foe we are fighting and just what kind of infamy that foe is habitually practicing. Then let us resolve that, come what may, we will fight this war through to a finish until the authors of this hideous infamy have paid in full and have been punished as they deserve. For in no other way can a peace worth having be obtained.