Strictlyspeaking, the only man who thoroughly understands the cruelty of the Germans is the German himself. No American or Englishman, no Belgian or Frenchman has the gift of telepathy that enables him to know what is going on in the German mind that guides the German's hand in committing his horrible atrocities. Now and then, in a moment when he is off guard, an occasional German reveals the explanation, and we look in, just as John Bunyan's pilgrim saw the door into Hades opened by a little crack, through which he looked upon the flames. Not otherwise was it with that German in Baltimore, who recently exposed the German mind, and from the German view-point explained the Germans in their hour of brutality.
During a most intimate and personal conversation with a banker, this German, the other day, explained his people's atrocities by saying that what is barbarism and atrocities to England, France or the United States is not barbarism at all to the Germans. In proof of this astounding statement the German gave this personal incident of his boyhood. He said that in his gymnasium there was another boy who had something that he wanted. When the opportunity came, being the stronger, he jumped upon the other boy, beat him up terribly and made him a cripple for life. On reaching his home he showed his parents what he had stolen, and he was patted on the back, praised for his might with his fists, and told that that was the method he was to follow in after life.
He insisted that this sort of thing was drilled into every German boy, and for that reason it never once even occurred to him that he had done wrong. "After I became a man I settled in America, and as I came to understand the spirit of American civilization it grew upon me that I had committed a crime, and now for twenty-two years, as some atonement for my sin, I have beensupporting that crippled man and his widowed mother."
The modern banker has become a sort of confessor, and to the banker many sins are revealed as once to the priest. Nothing is more significant than this German confession and his philosophy of the German atrocity. In his own written letter concerning that crime of his boyhood this German adds: "Had I remained in Germany no one would ever have thought of suggesting to me that I had done wrong, and it would never have entered into my head that I was under any obligation to the man I had maimed. In the light of American civilization I understand the difference, and I am seeking to atone for my sin, but all Germans have been taught, as I was taught. The Germans, therefore, in their campaign of frightfulness, are committing deeds which from the view-point of American civilization are barbarous, but from the view-point of Germans are not crimes at all."
The significance of this frank confession of a German, his story of how America had redeemed his soul out of the spirit of force and cruelty into the spirit of kindness, humanity and justice, reveals more of the real natureof the German beast and the Potsdam gang than a thousand volumes on the philosophy of German atrocities. The simple fact is that the crimes of the Germans are abominable atrocities to us, but that intellectually and morally the German officer and soldier simply do not know what we mean by our horror and the wave of moral indignation that has swept over the earth. Jesse Pomeroy used to pull canary birds apart, and tortured children to death. But the boy was deficient in the nerve of humanity. He simply stared with blank eyes when the judge and the jury condemned him. He was incapable of knowing what the excitement over the dead body was about. On the side of compassion and humanity the German is, as it were, colour blind, is without musical sense, and the nerves of kindness and humanity are atrophied. The ordinary German prisoner when shown the bodies left behind after the flight of the German army simply looks blankly at the mutilated corpse and exclaims: "Well, what of it? Why not? Why shouldn't we?" and shrugs his shoulders, taking it as a matter of course. That is another reason why a great number of American business men, bankers, merchants,manufacturers, scholars, statesmen, have reluctantly been forced to the conviction that the ten millions of German soldiers should be painlessly sterilized, that the German people (saving only the remnant who accept Jesus' idea of compassion and kindness towards God's poor and weak) should be allowed to die out of the world. Re-read, therefore, what this German has said about the teaching of his German parents and the German people in praise of cruelty, and how for twenty years now, redeemed by life in the United States, he has tried to make atonement by supporting the man whom he had crippled, and also his mother. Who shall explain to us the reason why German barbarism is not barbarism to the Germans? Why, this German shall explain it, through his personal experience as a criminal. But the day will come when the Potsdam gang and ten million German soldiers will stand before the judgment seat of God. And what shall be the verdict then pronounced? You will find it in the New Testament: "'Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee,' thou wicked and cruel German!"
For the first time in history a nation has organized lying into a science and taught deceit as an art.
At the very time when the diplomats of the world have refused any form of secrecy and insist upon publishing all international treaties and doing everything in the open, Germany has organized lying into a national science. Even Maximilian Harden, editor ofZukunft, openly acknowledges this in one of his editorials reproduced in the papers of Denmark and Holland.
Harden comes right out in the open. He tells the German people that at the beginning of the war it was necessary to say to the world that Germany was fighting a defensive war, that her back was against the wall, that those wicked enemies named England and France, Russia and Belgium were leaping upon her like wolves.
Of course, says Harden, at first that was good diplomacy, but now that we are successful, "Why say this any longer? Let the Kaiser and his Chancellor tell the world plainly that we decided upon this wartwenty-five years ago; that during all of these years we were preparing cannons and shells; that we drilled ten million men against 'Der Tag'; that we wanted this war, that we planned this war, that we forced this war and that we are proud of it."
With one stroke Harden has torn off the mask. He exhibits the Kaiser as the prince of liars. If his words mean anything, they mean that what has long been surmised is absolutely true, namely, that Germany wished some one would kill the Austrian Prince and Princess so as to start the war, for which Berlin had prepared everything, down to the last buckle on the harness of the horses.
General von Bissing is not less open. Dying men are not apt to tell lies. When he saw that the end was coming the Governor-General of Belgium prepared what he called his "last will and testament."
As a close and intimate friend of the Kaiser, he left a letter with his will asking the German Government carefully to consider his wishes. He says plainly that all of the statements that Berlin never intended to annex Belgium were pure camouflage. He urges the Berlin office to flatly declare its purpose never to give up a foot of the Belgiancoast nor an acre of the conquered territory of north France and Belgium.
"It is of no consequence," he says, "that we have given a solemn pledge not to annex Belgium. Why not tell the world that we will have failed in the one thing for which we set out if we evacuate Belgium? We need Belgium's coast line for our shipping."
He adds that Germany has used twenty-three million tons of Belgian coal and has taken as much more iron ore out of France's basin in Briey. "We cannot live and compete with France and England if we give up the coal and iron mines that we have conquered and the harbours that we have won."
Having affirmed, therefore, that the German Government lied at the beginning in claiming that they entered Belgium fighting a defensive warfare, General von Bissing cast about for some one behind whom he can hide as a screen and who can be used as an authority for lying. He finds his guide and leader in "The Prince," written by Machiavelli. That book has often been called the treatise on the art of lying. Never was such cunning exhibited. Never was the father of lies invoked with such skill as by the German leaders. In their sight truth iscontemptible, kindness is weakness, honour is a figment.
But the individual, the city, or the empire that builds its life on lies builds its house on sand. Soon the rains will descend and the floods come, the winds will blow, and the house will fall, and great will be the fall of it.
The German is like a thirsty man who tries to quench his thirst by drinking scalding water. He is like a hungry man who tries to satisfy his appetite by eating red-hot coals.
Disturbed by many events in their city, the Secret Service men guard very carefully the speakers for the Liberty Loan, the Red Cross or the Y. M. C. A. hut work. Fearing lest some German agent might injure the good name of their town, the Secret Service men of a certain community recently told the following incident, merely as a warning to all public speakers who might, by their words, arouse the enmity of half-balanced German fanatics. Because it was intended to put us all upon our guard, and becauseno interest could possibly be injured, but many persons be benefited, the incident is here set forth in detail. The speaker was a young lawyer, of position, influence and fine education, who was serving his country during the period of the war.
"One morning I received my assignment through a sealed envelope. Experience told me that I was to take up the work of some other Secret Service man and complete the task. Of course, one Secret Service man does not know who else is in the service. Since the war began we go by numbers, rather than by our names. When I opened my envelope I found these directions: 'Go to No. —— ——. Wait until there is no customer in the tobacco store. Then put down on the counter two ten-cent pieces, and say to the woman, "I want that package of green leaf tobacco." When you have left the store, open the package, and you will find full directions therein.' I followed the instructions strictly, and out on the street I opened the package, and found a large key and a small one, with these words written: 'Go to No. so-and-so (mentioning a third-class little apartment house in one of the worst districts in the city). The large keywill open room No. 14. The small key will open a little writing table in the room. In the drawer of that table you will find full directions.'
"I soon found the apartment house, climbed to the second floor, found my large key turning in the lock, and the small key opened the drawer in the desk. In that drawer I found these words: 'The man we want is in the adjoining room. He will come in about seven o'clock, but he may not come until eleven or twelve. It is important that we have his testimony. Don't wound him seriously or kill him. You will find a hole bored through the door between your room and his. That hole is filled with putty, but underneath the putty is wax. Warm the wire in the drawer in the gas jet and melt the wax.'
"I waited until eleven o'clock for the man to come in. For a while he sat on the bed, with his back towards me. He was reading. Finally he lifted his pillow to shake it up, and I caught sight of a big revolver under the pillow. For several reasons I decided to do nothing until he had fallen asleep. I kept my ear glued to that little hole for one hour after he turned out his light. Whenhe was sleeping soundly I went into the hall, with my skeleton key turned the lock in the door, and then with my lantern in the left hand and my revolver in the right made one bound into the room, struck my light and my revolver into his face under the light and shouted: 'Hands up!' Within three minutes I had him handcuffed and within ten had him bound. In that room, when the police came at my call, we found enough chemicals and powerful explosives to have blown up the entire block. In his satchel were found incriminating letters, secret documents, and, with their help, we soon landed the entire crowd. All have now been taken care of. Their flames were stamped out before they were kindled." That one incident was only one of a series of closely-related dramatic events. Outwardly, life in that city is very safe, simple and straightforward, but as to the forces of evil, the anarchists, the I. W. W.'s and German plotters the patriot can only say that but for the Secret Service and the police and the Department of Justice, society could not go on for one single month.
To-day, physicians and surgeons count the cancer man's deadliest enemy. Every year this baffling disease takes large and larger toll of human life. From time to time experts come together to plan its limitation, but meanwhile the terrible disease increases. Addressing a company of experts recently, a great physician exclaimed: "Even if we can stop its growth by radium, it still remains for us to get rid of the growth itself. There seems to be no way to lift the evil cells out save through the knife, after which nature must heal the wound. Science knows no other way." Plainly, no magic can be invoked. No miracle assists the surgeon. His one recourse is to the knife, and after that the healing forces of nature.
Let us confess that the knife has a large place in the extermination of social diseases. Militarism is a cancer on the German body-politic, just as slavery was once a cancer fastened on the fair body of the great South. That disease had fastened itself upon the South many years before the Civil War. Like a cancer, it spread its roots throughoutthe whole social and economic structure of the Southern States. It poisoned trade. Its virus was in the body of law. It destroyed kindness and sympathy for the weak. Slavery debased the poor white working-man. It made the white fathers of mulatto children so cruel that they sold their own flesh and blood. Overseers became brutes. Slave drivers stood up and bid upon their own children in the auction markets. Slowly the disease spread. Men became alarmed. They tried everything excepting the knife held in the hand of war surgeons. Clay recognized the cancer in the body politic. He proposed compromise as a poultice. Garrison and Phillips proposed the amputation of the diseased limb. John Brown tried to put sulphuric acid upon the sore spots and eat it out through the flames of insurrection. Lincoln knew that it was a case of life or death. The Republic could not endure half slave and half free. All measures failed. Finally the god of war went forth and lifted a knife heated red hot and cut the foul cancer out of the body and saved the fair South. When many years had passed nature healed the wound and saved the life of the Republic.
Germany, Austria and Turkey to-day are patients in a world hospital. It is plain that they are stricken with death. The foul cancer of militarism has fastened itself upon Germany. The cancer of autocracy is eating into the vitals of Austria. The cancer of polygamy is enmeshed in the life of Turkey. Of late the disease has been spreading. Now these surgeons, named Foch, Haig and Pershing, have been anointed by the ointment of war black and sulphurous, and, lifting their scalpel, these men have been ordained to cut out the foul growth from the body-politic of Germany. Perchance there is still enough vital force left therein to heal the wound after the disease has been removed. Meanwhile, the sick man of Turkey struggles. The patient hates the knife. The diseased body will not have the only instrument that holds possible cure, and yet, despite all his struggle, the disease must come out. Slowly the surgical process goes on. One root at Verdun was cut, and now another is being sundered in the West. Much blood flows, but the blood is black and foul. Every cell in the German body-politic seems to be diseased. Medicines must be found. The stimulants of soundethics and morals must be invoked—after that it is a question of the recuperative forces of intellect and conscience in the German people. These forces alone can heal the wound left after the foul cancer has been cut away. To-day, men with a large mind, blessed with magnanimity, kindness and good-will must stay their hearts upon history, that shows us that in the past in our own country slavery was a cancer cut out by the surgeons of war, and that after a long time the great South recovered its health, its beauty and its usefulness.
The unexpected influences of this war upon Germany herself is a striking consideration. Few men anticipated the far-off results of the Kaiser's alliance with the Sultan and his polygamous philosophy. During the past two years the German newspapers, magazines and debates in the Reichstag have been filled with startling suggestions concerning the family. TheBerliner Lokalanzeiger, on March 7, 1916, published a statement urging that "every girl should begiven the right on reaching twenty-five years to have one child born out of wedlock, for which she should receive from the state an annual allowance."
Dr. Krohne, in his address before the House, says: "The decline of the birth rate in Germany has proceeded three times as fast as in the preceding twenty-five years. No civilized nation has hitherto experienced so large a decline in so short a time. Our annual number of births falls already to-day by 560,000 below what we had a right to expect. We should have to-day 2,500,000 more inhabitants than we have." Commenting thereupon, theBerliner Lokalanzeigerdemands that "illegitimate children should be put socially and morally on a level with the legitimate."
When, therefore, the Kaiser cast about for an alliance with some man who could be his bosom friend and could love what he loves, the Kaiser chose the Sultan with his polygamy and the Moslem teaching with its harem. No British or French officer, therefore, was surprised when documents like the following began to be found on the dead bodies of young German officers. This document is a verbatim and absolutely accuratecopy of one of the many now deposited in the various departments of Justice and the War Departments in Havre and Paris:
"Soldiers, a danger assails the Fatherland by reason of its dwindling birth rate. The cradles of Germany are empty to-day; it is your duty to see that they are filled. You bachelors, when your leave comes, marry at once the girl of your choice. Make her your wife without delay. The Fatherland needs healthy children. You married men and your wives should put jealousy from your minds and consider whether you have not also a duty to the Fatherland. You should consider whether you may not honourably contract an alliance with one of the million of bachelor women. See if your wife will not sanction the relation. Remember, all of you, the empty cradles of Germany must be filled.
"Your name has been given us as a capable man, and you are herewith requested to take on this office of honour, and to do your duty in a proper German way. It must here be pointed out that your wife or fiancée will not be able to claim a divorce. It is, in fact, hoped that the women will bear this discomfort heroically for the sake of the war. Youwill be given the district of ——. Should you not feel capable of carrying on the task allotted to you, you will be given three days on which to name some one in your place. On the other hand, if you are prepared to take on a second district as well you will become 'drekoffizier' and receive a pension. An exhibition of photographs of women and maidens in the district allotted to you is to be seen at the office of ——. You are requested to bring this letter with you."
This is an amazing document. Plainly the German family has broken down. But no household can be built on free love in 1918, just as no stone building can be erected on hay, stubble or sand. The German family has gone, and German society is tottering towards its final ruin.
The history of heroism holds nothing finer than the story of Sister Julie, decorated by the French Government with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. She lived in the little village of Gerbéviller, now called "Gerbéviller the Martyred." On August 27th theFrench army broke the line of the German Crown Prince and compelled the Huns' retreat. General Clauss was ordered to go northeast and dig in on the top of the ridge some twelve miles north of Gerbéviller. The Germans reached the village at nine o'clock in the morning, and by half-past twelve they had looted all the houses and were ready to burn the doomed city. The incendiary wagons were filled with the firebrands stamped 1912. Beginning at the southern end of the village, the German officers and soldiers looted every house, shop, store and public building, and then set fire to the town. At last they came to the extreme northern end, where a few houses and the little hospital over which Sister Julie had charge, were still standing.
About noon a German colonel with the blazing firebrand in his right hand stood in front of Sister Julie's house. It has been said that there are flaming swords in the eyes of every good woman. In that terrible hour the face of Sister Julie proved the proverb. She told the German officer that these few houses that were left were filled with wounded French soldiers, with here and there a wounded German. The Hunanswered that his men would remove the Germans who were wounded, but that the buildings must be fired. Behind him were several hundred buildings blazing like one fiery furnace. Sister Julie stood squarely across the path of the Hun. "While I live you shall not enter. You shall not kill these dying men. I swear it by this crucifix! Your hands are already red with blood. God dwells within this house. Look at this figure of Jesus, who said, 'Woe unto him that offends against one of my little ones. These shall go away into everlasting hell.' I myself will bear witness against you. You have murdered our fifteen old men. All their lives long these old men did us good and not evil. Look at the little girls you have slain. God Himself will strike you dead." General Clauss stood dumb. He was embarrassed beyond all words. Fear also got hold upon him. He turned and disappeared into a group of his soldiers. Two or three minutes passed by. A German colonel came to Sister Julie. He told her that the houses used for wounded soldiers would be spared by General Clauss provided Sister Julie would agree to continue her ministrations to the wounded Germanslying in her hospital. As General Clauss already knew that this had already been done, and would be, the Germans marched away, leaving the hospital buildings uninjured. It was a victory of the soul of a noble woman.
One morning last summer Sister Julie showed her decorations. Her face was kind, gentle and motherly. Her atmosphere was peace and serenity. She seemed a tower of strength. It must have been easy for dying French boys in those rooms to have identified Sister Julie with Mary the Mother, who saw her son dying on the cross. Later on we met an aged woman of martyred Gerbéviller. She had been nursing in the hospital and had stood behind Sister Julie when she forbade General Clauss to light the firebrands. "What did Sister Julie say?" we asked the old woman. "Oh, sir, I do not know, and yet I do know. She told them that she would ask God to strike them dead. In that moment I was afraid of her. She seemed to me more to be feared than General Clauss and all his wicked army. I can tell you what our good priest says about Sister Julie." "And what is that?" The old woman could not quote the verse accurately,but from what she said we were soon guided to a chapter in the old Bible, and there was the verse that described Sister Julie, with arms uplifted at the door of her hospital and denying access to General Clauss. The verse was this: "And lo! an angel with a flaming sword stood at the gate and kept the garden."
In one group of ruined cellars that was once a splendid French city, there is a beautiful building standing. It is rich with the art and architecture of the sixteenth century. The lines are most graceful and the structure is the fulfillment of Keats' line: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Such a building belongs not to the French nation, but to the whole human race. An architect like the man who planned this noble building is born only once in a thousand years. Every visitor to that ruined town asks himself this question: "Why did the Germans allow this building to remain?" An incident of the story of Bapaume throws a flood of light upon the problem.
One year ago, when the Germans were retreating from Bapaume, they looted every house, burned or dynamited every building save the Hôtel de Ville. That city hall the Germans left standing in all its majesty and beauty. In front of the building they placed a placard containing in substance the statement that they left this building as a monument to Germany's love of art and architecture.
Secretly, however, in the cellar of this noble building the Germans buried several tons of dynamite. To this dynamite they attached a seven-day clock. They set the seven-day clock to explode at eleven o'clock one week after the Germans had retreated. These beasts worked out the theory that the largest possible number of British and French officers and public men would be inspecting the building at that hour of the day.
The plot was successful. Their devilish cunning was rewarded and their hate glutted. The clock struck the detonator, the dynamite exploded, blew the building and the visitors into atoms. Standing in the ruined public square, one sees nothing but that great shell pit where the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed a monument buildedto beauty and grandeur. This other building, therefore, that stands in the city fifty miles to the south of Bapaume is there for the sole reason that the seven-day clock failed to explode the dynamite—not because of any love of architecture that possessed the Germans. It is there to tell us that some part of the mechanism of death failed to connect.
In analyzing the German mind nothing is more certain than the fact that they lack a fine sense of humour and are often quite devoid of imagination.
As for sculpture, nothing can be more hideous than the statues of the fifteen Prussian kings that do not decorate, but simply vulgarize, the avenue leading towards Magdeburg. The vast broad statue of Hindenburg, to which the Germans come to drive nails and scratch their names in lead pencils, reminds one of the occasional public buildings in this country defaced by thoughtless and vulgar boys. Nor is there anything in the world as ugly as the German sculptor's statue of the present Kaiser out at Potsdam Palace, unless it be the statue of an Indian in front of a tobacco store down in Smithville, Indian Territory, though even this isdoubtful. It hardly seems possible that one earth only 7,000 miles in diameter could hold two statues as ugly as that of the Kaiser!
It is this singular lack of imagination and failure to understand the beautiful that explains the systematic destruction by the German army of the glorious cathedrals, the fourteenth century churches, libraries, châteaux and hôtels des villes that were the glory and beauty of France.
"If we cannot have these vineyards and orchards," said the Germans, "Frenchmen shall not have them."
So they turned the land into a desert. Not otherwise the German seems to feel that if he cannot build structures as beautiful as these glorious buildings in France that he will not leave one of them standing.
Next to the Parthenon in Athens and St. Peter's in Rome, perhaps the world's best loved and most admired building was the Cathedral of Rheims. There Joan of Arc crowned Charles IX; there for centuries the noblest men of France had gone to receive their offices and their honours. A building that belonged to the world. What treasures of beauty for the whole human race in the thousand and more statues in thecathedral! How priceless the twelfth-century stained glass! What paintings which have come down from the masters of Italy! Whoever visited the library and the Cardinal's palace without exclaiming: "What beautiful missals! What illuminated manuscripts?"
Fully conscious of the fact that they were impotent to produce such treasures the Germans, unable to get closer to the cathedral than four miles, determined to destroy them. Day after day they bombed the noble cathedral. Gone now, too, the great stone roof! Fallen the flying buttresses, ruined the chapels. Perished all the tapestries, the rugs and the laces. Water stands in puddles on the floor. The cathedral is a blackened shell.
The victim of grievous ingratitude, King Lear, was turned out into the snow and hail by his wicked daughters; and the white-haired old king wandered through the blackness of the night beneath the falling hail. And, lo! the Cathedral of Rheims is a King Lear in architecture—broken, wounded, exposed to the hails of the autumn and the snow of the winter, through the coarseness and vandalism of the Germans.
The German Foreign Minister put it all in one word: "Let the neutrals cease their everlasting chatter about the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues and cathedrals in the world are not so much as one straw to the Germans over against the gaining of our goal and the conquest of their land."
Never was a truer word spoken. The German lacks the imagination and the gift of the love of the beautiful. He would prefer one bologna sausage factory and one brewery to the Parthenon, with St. Peter's and Rheims Cathedral thrown in.
For hundreds of years the French peasants have loved the crucifix. Many a beautiful woman carries a little gold cross with the figure of Jesus fastened thereto, and from time to time draws it out to press the crucifix to her lips. Even in the harvest fields and beside the road, travellers find the carved figure of the Saviour lifted up to draw poor, ignorant and sinful men to His own level.
One of the most glorious pieces of carvingin France was wrought in walnut by a great sculptor and lifted up on a tree in the midst of an estate, where the peasants, resting from their work, could refresh their souls by love and faith and prayer.
One day last summer, during the Teuton advance, a German officer stood beneath that divine figure. Mentally he marked the place. That night when the darkness fell a company of German officers returned to that spot. One of them climbed up on the tree. He found that the carved figure of Jesus was life size.
With the end of a rope a little platform was drawn up level with the foot of the crucifix. Two ropes were fastened to the outstretched arms of the Saviour. Another rope was fastened around the neck of Jesus, until the platform was made safe. Then a German sniper with his gun climbed up on the platform. He laid his rifle upon the shoulders of the Divine Figure, hiding his body behind that of Jesus. The German officer must have chuckled with satisfaction, for he knew that he had found a screen behind which a murderer might hide, and the German villain was quite right in his psychology.
It was true that the French soldiers loved that beautiful figure. To them the crucifix was sacred. So beautiful were their ideals, so lofty their spirit, so pure and high their imagination, that they were incapable of conceiving that a German could use the sacred crucifix as a screen from which to send forth his murderous hail.
The green boughs of that tree hid the little puff of smoke. From time to time a French soldier would fall dead with a hole through his forehead. Once a French officer threw up his hands while the blood streamed from his mouth and he pitched forward dead.
At last the French soldiers understood. There was a sniper behind Christ's cross. The French could have turned their cannon against that tree, but instead they simply kept below the trench until the night fell. Then in the darkness some French boys took their lives in their hands and crawled on hands and knees across No Man's Land. Lying on their backs they cut the wires above their heads.
By some strange providence they dropped safely into the German trench and crawled ten yards beyond. Then they climbed into the tree, removed that glorious crucifix withthe carved figure, brought it back in safety and at daybreak turned their cannon on the tree and blew the platform to pieces.
Foul Huns had made a screen of that sacred figure, but the French were not willing to injure their ideals by shooting the crucifix to pieces.
To-day all the world despises the Germans. Nothing is sacred to them. Their souls are dead within them and when the soul dies, everything dies.
The German's body may live on for twenty years, but you might as well pronounce the funeral address to-day, for the soul of Germany is dead. Nothing but a physical fighting machine now remains.
Meanwhile, France lives. Never were her ideals so lofty and pure. That is why the world loves France. She has kept faith with her ideals.
I have in my possession several photographs of a ruined studio. Some twenty or thirty Germans dashed into a little French village one day, and demanded at the point of their automatic pistols the surrender bythe women of their rings, jewelry, money and their varied treasure. At the edge of the village was a simple little summer-house, in which one of the French artists had his studio. He had been in that valley for three months, sketching, and working very hard. Knowing that they had but a little time in which to do their work as vandals, the Huns started to ruin the studio. With big knives they cut the fine canvases into ruins. They knocked down the marbles, and the bronzes; the little bust from the hand of Rodin was smashed with a hammer. The bronze brought from Rome was pounded until the face was ruined. One blow of the hammer smashed the Chinese pottery, another broke the plates and the porcelain into fragments. Then every corner of the room was defiled, and the pigs fled from their filthy stye. Across one of the canvases the German officer wrote the words, "This is my trademark." And every other part of the canvas was cut to ribbons with his knife. No more convincing evidence of the real German character can possibly be found than these photographs of the interior of that ruined studio.
Here we have the reason why the Kaiser himself, who knew the German through andthrough, called his people Huns. Long ago the first Huns entered Italy. They found a city of marble, ivory, and silver. They left it a heap and a ruin. They had no understanding of a palace; they did not know what a picture meant, or a marble; they were irritated by the superiority of the Roman. What they could not understand they determined to destroy. That is one of the reasons why all the marbles and bronzes that we have in Italy are marred and injured. The head of Jupiter is cracked; the Venus di Milo has no arms; Aphrodite has been repaired with plaster; Apollo has lost a part of his neck and one leg. From time to time an old marble is dug up in a field, where some ploughman has chanced upon the treasure. Owners hid their beautiful statues, ivories and bronzes, to save them from the vandals. Unfortunately, the modern Huns rushed into the French towns, riding in automobiles, and sculptors and painters had no time to hide their treasures. The great cathedrals could not be hidden. The Kaiser in one of his recent statements boasted that he had destroyed seventy-three cathedrals in Belgium and France. It is all too true. From the beginning, the Cathedralof Rheims, dear to the whole world, and glorious through the associations of Jeanne d'Arc, was doomed, because the Germans, having no treasure of their own, and incapable of producing such a cathedral, determined that France should not have that treasure. The other day, in Kentucky, a negro jockey came in at the tail end of a race, ten rods behind his rival. That night, the negro bought a pint of whiskey, and determined to have vengeance, so he went out at midnight, and cut the hamstrings of the beautiful horse that had defeated his own beast. Now that is precisely the spirit that animated the German War Staff and the men that have devastated France and Belgium, and every man who has witnessed these German crimes with his own eyes will never be the same person again. His whole attitude towards the Hun is an attitude of horror and revulsion. A certain noble anger burns within him, as burned that noble passion in Dante against those criminals who spoiled Florence of her treasures.
One raw, December day, in 1914, an American gentleman, widely known as travellerand correspondent, was in a hospital in London, recovering from his wound, received in Belgium. He was startled by the appearance of an old Belgian priest, and a young Belgian woman. The American author was travelling in Belgium at the time of the German invasion. Quite unexpectedly he was caught behind the lines, near Louvain. Having heard his statement, the German officer recognized its truthfulness and sincerity, and insisted that this American scholar should be his guest at the Belgian château of which he had just taken possession. The German had already shot the Belgian owner, and one or two of the servants, who defended their master. To the horror and righteous anger of the American, the German officer took his place at the head of the table, waved the American to his seat, and ordered the young Belgian woman to perform her duties as hostess. In that tense moment, it was a matter of life and death to disobey. That German officer had his way, not only with the young Belgian wife, half dazed, half crazed, wholly broken in spirit, but with the American whom he sent forward to Brussels.
Plunged into the midst of many duties inconnection with Americans and refugees who had to be gotten out of Belgium into England, this American author had to put aside temporarily any plan for the release of that young Belgian woman held in bondage. Later, when he was wounded, the American crossed to London for medical help. When the old Belgian priest and that young woman stood at the foot of his bed in the hospital in London, all the events of that terrible hour in the dining-room of the Belgian château returned, and once more he lived through that frightful scene. The purpose of the visit soon became evident. The old Belgian priest stated the problem. He began by saying that God alone could take human life since God alone could give it. He urged that the sorrow of the young woman's present was as nothing in comparison to the loss of her soul should she be guilty of infanticide. It was the plea of a man who lived for the old ideals. His white hair, his gentle face, his pure disinterested spirit lent weight to his words. Then came the statement of the young Belgian woman. She told the American author of the dreadful days and weeks that followed after his departure, that every conceivable agony waswrought upon her, and that now within a few months, she must have a child by that wicked German officer. She cried out that the very babe would be unclean, that it would be born a monster, that it was as if she was bringing into the world an evil thing, doomed in advance to direst hell. That every day and every hour she felt that poison was running through her veins. She turned upon the old priest, saying, "You insist that God alone gives life! Nay, no, no, no! It was a German devil that gave me this life that now throbs within my body! And every moment I feel that that life is pollution. German blood is poisoned blood. German blood is like putrefaction and decay, soiling my innermost life." The young woman wept, prayed, plead, and finally in her desperation cried out, "Then I decide for myself! The responsibility is mine. I alone will bear it." And out of the hospital she swept with the dignity and beauty of the Lady of Sorrows.
A year later, in Paris, the French judge and court cleared the young girl who choked to death with a string the babe of the German officer who had attacked her. But since that time, all France and Belgium andthe lands where there are refugees are discussing the question—Where does the right lie? Has the French mother, cruelly wounded, no right? And this foul thing forced upon her a superior right? Which path for the bewildered girl leads to peace? Where does the Lord of Right stand? What chance has a babe born of a beast, abhorred and despised, when it comes into the world? The women of the world alone can answer this question.
Asmuch as the German atrocities have done to destroy our confidence in the divine origin of the human soul, the French soldiers have done to vindicate the majesty and beauty of a soul made in the image of God.
I have seen French boys that were so simple, brave and modest in their courage, so beautiful in their spirit, as to make one feel that they were young gods and not men. One day, into one of the camps, came a lawyer from Paris. He brought the news of the revival of the Latin Quarter. For nearly three years a shop near the Beaux Arts had been closed. During all this time the French soldier had been at the front. When the first call came on that August day he put up the wooden shutters, turned thekey in the lock, and marched away to the trenches.
Said the lawyer: "I come from your cousin. The Americans are here in Paris. Your cousin says that if you will give me the keys and authorize her to open the shop she will take your place. She can recover your business, and perhaps have a little store of money for you when you have your 'permission' or come home to rest. She tells me that she is your sole relative." The soldier shook his head, saying: "I never expect to come home. I do not want to come home. France can be freed only by men who are ready to die for her. I do not know where the key is. I do not know what goods are in the shop. For three years I have had no thought of it. I am too busy to make money. There are other things for me—fighting, and perhaps dying. Tell my cousin that she can have the shop." Then the soldier saluted and started back towards his trench. "Wait! Wait!" cried the attorney. Then he stooped down, wrote hurriedly upon his knee, a little paper in which the soldier authorized his cousin to carry on the business, in his name. Scrawling his name to the document, the soldierran towards the place where his heart was—the place of peril, heroism and self-sacrifice.
This was typical of the thousands of soldiers at the front, for French soldiers suffer that the children may never have to wade through this blood and muck. The foul creature that has bathed the world in blood must be slain forever. With the full consent of the intellect, of the heart and the conscience, these glorious French boys have given themselves to God, to freedom, and to France.
One morning in a little restaurant in Paris I was talking with a British army-captain. The young soldier was a typical Englishman, quiet, reserved, but plainly a little excited. He had just been promoted to his captaincy and had received one week's "permission" for a rest in Paris. We had both come down from near Messines Ridge.
"Of course," said the English captain, "the French are the greatest soldiers in the world."
"Why do you say that?" I answered."What could be more wonderful than the heroism, the endurance of the British at Vimy Ridge? They seem to me more like young gods than men."
To which the captain answered: "But you must remember that England has never been invaded. Look at my company! Their equipment is right from helmet to shoe, so perfectly drilled are they that the swing of their right legs is like the swing of one pendulum. I will put my British company against the world. Still I must confess this, that, so far as I know, no English division of fifteen thousand men ever came home at night with more than five thousand prisoners.
"But look at the French boys at Verdun! As for clothes, one had a helmet, another a hat, or a cap, or was bareheaded. One had red trousers, one had gray trousers and one had fought until he had only rags left. When they got within ten rods of the German trench they were so anxious to reach the Boche that they forgot to shoot and lifted up their big bayonets, while they shouted, 'For God and France!'
"That night when that French division came back ten thousand strong they broughtmore than ten thousand German prisoners with them to spend the night inside of barbed wire fences.
"The reason is this: These Frenchmen fought for home and fireside. They fought against an invader who had murdered their daughters and mothers. The Huns will never defeat France. Before that could be done," exclaimed the English captain, "there would not be a man left in France to explain the reason for his defeat."
Human life holds many wonderful hours. Love, marriage, suffering, trouble, are crises full of romance and destiny, but I question whether any man ever passed through an experience more thrilling than the hour in which he stands at the Charing Cross or Waterloo Station in London or in the great station in Paris and watches the hospital trains come in, loaded with wounded soldiers brought in after a great battle.
Often fifty thousand men and women line the streets for blocks, waiting for the trains. Slowly the wounded boys are lifted from the car to the cot. Slowly the cot is carried tothe ambulance. The nurses speak only in whispers. The surgeons lift the hand directing them. You can hear the wings of the Angel of Death rustling in the air.
When the automobile carrying two wounded boys moves down the street, the men and women all uncover while you hear whispered words, "God bless you!" from some father or mother who see their own son in that boy.
Now and then some young girl with streaming eyes timidly drops a flower into the front of the ambulance—pansies for remembrance and love—upon a boy whom she does not know, while she thinks of a boy whom she knows and loves who is somewhere in the trenches of France.
One morning a young nurse in the hospital in Paris received a telegram. It was from a young soldier, saying: "My pal has been grievously wounded. He is on the train that will land this afternoon. He has a young wife and a little child. You will find them at such and such a street. I do not know whether he will live to reach Paris. Can you see that they are at the station to meet him? That was his last whispered request to me."
That afternoon at five o'clock, with her face pressed between the iron bars, a young French woman, with a little boy in her arms, was looking down the long platform. Many, many cots passed by, and still he did not come. At last she saw the nurse. The young wife did not know that her soldier husband had died while they lifted him out of the car.
The young nurse said that she never had undertaken a harder task than that of lifting the boy in her own arms and leading the French girl to that cot, that she might know that henceforth she must look with altered eyes upon an altered world. A few minutes passed by and then a miracle of hope had happened.
"I saw her," said the nurse, "with one hand upon his hair and the other stretched upward as she exclaimed: 'I am only his wife, France is his mother! I am only his wife, France is his mother! I give him to France, the mother that reared him!'"
The two boys were incredibly happy. Two mornings before they had landed inParis. What a reception they had had in the soldiers' club from the splendid French women! How good the hot bath had seemed! Clean linen, a fresh shave, a good breakfast, a soft cot, plenty of blankets, twenty-four hours' sleep, and they had wakened up new men. The first morning they walked along the streets, looking into the shop windows; in the afternoon one of the ladies took them to a moving picture show, and now on the second day here they were, at a little table before the café in one of the best restaurants in the Latin Quarter, with good red wine and black coffee, and plenty of cigarettes, and not even the boom of cannon to disturb their conversation. Strange that in three days they could have passed from the uttermost of hell to the uttermost of safety and peace. "These are good times," said one of the boys, "and we are in them."
Then they heard a policeman shouting. Looking up, they saw a singular spectacle. Just in front of them was a poor old hearse drawn by two horses, whose black trappings touched the ground. Shabbier hearse never was seen. Strangest of all, there was only a little, thin, black-robed girl walking behindthe hearse. There were no hired mourners as usual. There was no large group of friends walking with heads bared in token of reverence; there was no priest; no carriages followed after. Saddest of all, there was not even a flower. What could these things mean? How strange that when they were so happy this little woman could be so sad.
Suddenly one of the soldier boys arose. He stepped into the street and looked into the hearse. There he saw these words: "A soldier of France." He began to question the woman. Lifting her veil, he saw a frail girl, and while the traffic jam increased she told her story. The soldier had been wounded at the Battle of the Marne. He was one of the first to be brought to Paris. He never walked again. "I am very poor; I have only one franc a day. We have no friends. I borrowed money for the hearse."
The boy returned to his fellows. "Fall in line, boys!" he shouted. "Here is a soldier of France. This little girl has taken care of him for three years on one franc a day. Line up, everybody, and tell the men to swallow their coffee and wine and fall into the procession. Go into the shops and saythat a soldier of France lies here." When that hearse began to move there were twenty men and women walking as mourners behind the body. Two soldier boys walked beside the frail little girl with her heavy crêpe. As the soldiers walked along beside the hearse the procession began to grow. On and on for two long miles this slowly moving company increased in number until one hundred were in line, and when they came into God's Acre they buried the poor boy as if he were a king coming in with trumpets from the battle. For he was a soldier of France.
Among the fascinating pursuits of life we must make a large place for the collection of old books, old paintings, old missals and curios. Certain cities, like Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Madrid, have been for a thousand years like unto the Sargasso Sea in which beautiful things have drifted.
Fifty years ago, men of leisure began to collect these treasures. Some made their way into Egypt and Palestine, and there uncoveredtemples long buried in sands and ruins and all covered with débris. From time to time old missals were found in deserted monasteries, marbles were digged up in buried palaces. Men came back from their journeys with some lovely terra cotta, some ivory or bronze, some painting by an old master, whose beauty had been hidden for centuries under smoke and grime. The enthusiasm of the collectors exceeds the zest of men searching for gold and diamonds amid the sands of South Africa.
Fifty years ago a young scholar of Louvain won high praise because of his skill in dating and naming old pictures and manuscripts. When ten years had passed by, this scholar's name and fame were spread all over Europe. Many museums in different countries competed for his services.
The time came when the heads of galleries in London and Paris and Rome sent for this expert to pass upon some art object. During the fifty years this scholar came to know every beautiful treasure in Europe.
In the old castles of Austria, in a monastery of Bohemia, in the house of an ancient Italian family, in certain second-hand bookstores, in out-of-the-way towns he foundtreasures as precious as pearls and diamonds raked out of the muck-heap.
When death took away his only son and left his little grandchildren dependent upon himself the old book-lover looked forward serenely into the future. He knew that every year his treasures were growing more and more valuable. Living in his home in Louvain he received from time to time visits from experts, who came in from all the cities of the world to see his treasures, and if possible, to buy some rare book.
Then, in August, 1914, came the great catastrophe, as came the explosion of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii under hot ashes and flaming fire.
One morning the old scholar was startled by the noise and confusion in the street. Looking down from his window he saw German soldiers, German horsemen, German cannon. He beheld women and children lined up on the sidewalk. He saw German soldiers assault old men. He saw them carrying the furniture, rugs and carpets out of the houses. He saw the flames coming out of the roofs of houses a block away.
A moment later an old university professorpounded upon his door and called out that they must flee for their lives. There was only time to pick out one satchel and fill it with his precious manuscripts and costly missals. Then the two old scholars fled into the street with the grandchildren. Fortunately a Belgian driving a two-wheeled coal cart was passing by. Into the cart climbed the little grandchildren. Carefully the satchel filled with its treasures was also lifted into place.
At that moment a German shell exploded beside the cart. When the old book-lover recovered consciousness the cart was gone, the grandchildren were dead and of all his art treasures there was left only one little book upon which some scholar of the twelfth century had toiled with loving hands.
Carried forward among the refugees several hours later, Belgian soldiers lifted the old man into a train that was carrying the wounded down to Havre. In his hand the collector held the precious book. Excitement and sorrow had broken his heart. His mind also wandered. He was no longer able to understand the cosmic terror and blackness. A noble officer, himself wounded, put his coat under the old man's head andmade a pillow and bade him forget the German beast, the bomb shells, the blazing city. But all these foul deeds and all dangers now were as naught to the old man.
"See my little book," he said. "How beautiful the lettering! Why, upon this book, as upon a ship, civilization sailed across the dark waters of the Middle Ages. Look at this book of beauty. The ugliness of the tenth century is dead. The cruelty and the slavery of bloody tyrants is dead also. The old cannon are quite rusted away. But look at this! Behold, its beauty is immortal! Everything else dies. Soon all the smoke and blood will go, but beauty and love and liberty will remain."
And then lifting the little book the old collector of Louvain pressed his lips to the vellum page, bright with the blue and crimson and gold of seven hundred years, and in a moment passed to the soul's summer land, where no shriek of German shells rends the air, where wicked Germans have ceased from troubling and where the French and Belgians, worn by the cruelty of the Huns, are now at rest and peace.
To-day everybody knows the story of Gerbéviller, the martyred.
To the northwest is that glorious capital of Lorraine, Nancy. Farther northwest are Verdun and Toul, with our American boys. The region round about the martyred town is a region of rich iron ores.
Some years ago, Germany found herself at bay, by reason of the threatened exhaustion of her iron mines in Alsace-Lorraine. The news that France had uncovered new beds of iron ore stirred Germany to a frenzy of envy and longing.
High grade iron ore meant a new financial era for France. The exhaustion of Germany's iron mines meant industrial depression, and finally a second and third rate position. Rather than lose her place Germany determined to go to war with France and Belgium and grab their iron mines. To break down resistance on the part of the French people, the Germans used atrocities that were fiendish beyond words. The richer the province she wished to steal, the more terrible her cruelties.
At nine o'clock in the morning on August 27, General Clauss and 15,000 soldiers entered Gerbéviller. Ten miles to the south was the remainder of the German army, utterly broken by the French attack. Clauss had been sent north to dig his trenches until the rest of the German army could retreat.
Every hour was precious. The Germans remained in the little town from 9a. m.until 12:30p. m.They found in the village thirty-one hundred women, girls and children, fifteen old men (the eldest ninety-two), one priest and one Red Cross ambulance driver. Even the little boys and men under seventy had gone to the front to dig ditches and carry water to the French.
It took the Germans only two and one-half hours to loot all the houses and load upon their trucks the rugs, carpets, chairs, pictures, bedding, with every knife and fork and plate. At half-past eleven General Clauss was in the Mayor's house, when the German colonel came in and reported that everything in the houses had been stripped and that they were ready to begin the firing of the buildings.
The aged wife of the secretary to the Mayor told me this incident:
"We find no weapons in the houses, and we find only these fifteen old men, one Red Cross boy, and this priest," said the colonel.
"Line up the old men then and shoot them," shouted General Clauss. "Take the priest as a prisoner to do work in the trenches."
The old men were lined up on the grass. General Clauss himself gave the signal to fire. Two German soldiers fired bullets into each one of the old men.
One of the heart-broken onlookers was the village priest. The Germans carried him away as prisoner and made him work as a common labourer; through rain and sun, through heat and snow, he toiled on, digging ditches, carrying burdens, working eighteen hours a day, eating spoiled food that the German soldiers would not touch, until finally tuberculosis developed and he was sick unto death. Then the Germans released him as a refugee, so the priest returned to Gerbéviller to die.
Then came the anniversary of the murder of the fifteen old men and of the one hundred and two women, girls and children. On the anniversary day of the martyrdom the noble Governor of the province assembledthe few survivors for a memorial service about the graves of the martyrs.
Knowing that the priest would never see another anniversary of that day the Prefect asked the priest to give the address at the memorial service. No more dramatic scene ever occurred in history. At the beginning the priest told the story of the coming of the Germans, the looting of the houses, the violation of the little girls, the collecting of the dead bodies. Suddenly the priest closed his eyes, and all unconsciously he lived the scene of those three and a half hours.
"I see our fifteen heroes standing on the grass. I see the German soldiers lifting up their rifles. I hear General Clauss cursing and shouting the command to fire.
"I see you, Thomas; a brutal soldier tears your coat back. He puts his rifle against your heart. When you sink down I see your hands come together in prayer.
"I see you, François. I see the two big crutches on which you lean. You are weary with the load of ninety years. I hear your granddaughter when she sobs your name, and I see your smile, as you strive to encourage her.
"I see you, Jean. How happy you werewhen you came back with your wealth to spend your last years in your native town! How kind you were to all our poor. Ah! Jean, you did us good and not evil, all the days of your life with us!
"I see you, little Marie. You were lying upon the grass. I see your two little hands tied by ropes to the two peach trees in your mother's garden. I see the little wisp of black hair stretched out under your head. I see your little body lying dead. With this hand of mine upon that little board, above your grave, I wrote the words, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'
"And yonder in the clouds I see the Son of Man coming in His glory with His angels. I see the Kaiser falling upon Gerbéviller. I see Clauss falling upon our aged Mayor. But I also see God arising to fall upon the Germans. Berlin, with Babylon the Great, is fallen. It has become a nest of unclean things. There serpents dwell. Woe unto them that offend against my little ones. For, lo, a millstone is hanged about their necks and they shall be drowned in the sea with Satan."
The excitement was too much for the priest. That very night he died. Henceforthhe will be numbered among the martyrs of Gerbéviller.
The return of the refugees to Belgium and France holds the essence of a thousand tragedies. From the days of Homer down to those of Longfellow, with his story of Evangeline, literature has recounted the sad lot of lovers torn from one another's arms and all the rest of their lives going every whither in search of the beloved one, only to find the lost and loved when it was too late.
But nothing in literature is so tragic as the events now going on from week to week in the towns on the frontier of Switzerland.
When the Germans raped Belgium and northern France they sent back to the rear trenches the young women and the girls, and now, from time to time, those girls, all broken in health, are released by the Germans, who send them back to their parents or husbands.
Multitudes of these girls have died of abuse and cruelty, but others, broken in body and spirit, are returning for an intervalthat is brief and heart-breaking before the end comes.
Three weeks ago an old friend returned from his Red Cross work in France. By invitation of a Government official he visited a town on the frontier through which the refugees released by Germany were returning to France.
It seemed that during the month of September, 1914, the Germans had carried away a number of girls and young women in a village northeast of Lunéville. When the French officials finished their inquiry as to the poor, broken creatures returning to France they found a French woman, clothed in rags, emaciated and sick unto death. In her arms she held a little babe a few weeks old. Its tiny wrists were scarcely larger than lead pencils. The child moaned incessantly. The mother was too thin and weak to do more than answer the simple questions as to her name, age, parents, and husband.
Moved with the sense of compassion, the French official soon found in his index the name of her husband, the number of his company and telegraphed to the young soldier's superior officer, asking that the boy might be sent forward to the receiving stationto take his wife back to some friend, since the Germans had destroyed his village. By some unfortunate blunder the officials gave no hint of the real facts in the case.
Filled with high hope, burning with enthusiasm, exhaling a happiness that cannot be described, the bronzed farmer-soldier stepped down from the car to find the French official waiting to conduct him to one of the houses of refuge where his young wife was waiting.
My American Red Cross friend witnessed the meeting between the girl and her husband. When the fine young soldier entered the room he saw a poor, broken, spent, miserable creature, too weak to do more than whisper his name. When the young man saw that tiny German babe in his young wife's arms he started as if he had been stung by a scorpion. Lifting his hands above his head, he uttered an exclamation of horror. In utter amazement he started back, overwhelmed with revulsion, anguish and terror.
Gone—the beauty and comeliness of the young wife! Gone her health and allurement! Perished all her loveliness! Her garments were the garments of a scarecrow.Despite all these things the girl was innocent. But she realized her husband's horror and mistook it for disgust. She pitched forward unconscious upon the floor before her husband could reach her.
The history of pain contains no more terrible chapter. That night the dying girl told the French officials and her husband the crimes and indignities to which she had been subjected. Two other babes had been born under German brutality, and both had died, even as this infant would die, and when a few days later her husband buried her he was another man. The iron in him had become steel. The blade of intellect had become a two-edged sword. His strength had become the strength of ten. He decided not to survive this war. Going back to the front, he consecrated his every day to one task—to kill Germans and save other women from the foulest degenerates that have ever cursed the face of the earth.