[Illustration: SPOILS FOR THE VICTORS
“We must despoil Belgium if only to make room for our own culture.”]
If the highly organised enemy with whom we are at grips in a
life-and-death struggle would only play the war game in accordance with
the rules drawn up by civilised peoples, he would, indeed, command our
admiration no less than our respect. Never on this earth was there
such a splendid fighting machine as that “made in Germany.” The armies
against us are the last word in discipline, fitness, and equipment; and
are led by men who, born in barracks, weaned on munitions, have but one
aim and end in view--“World-Dominion or Downfall.”
As a matter of fact, instead of winning our admiration they have drawn
our detestation. Not content with brushing aside all international
laws of warfare, they have trampled upon every law, human and divine,
standing in their way of conquest. Indeed, Germany’s method of fighting
would disgrace the savages of Central Africa.
Prussianised Germany has the monopoly of “frightfulness.” When not
“frightful,” Prussians troopers are not living down to the instructions
of their War-lords to leave the conquered with nothing but eyes to
weep with. Not content to crucify Canadians, murder priests, violate
nuns, mishandle women, and bayonet children, the enemy torpedoes
civilian-carrying liners, and bombs Red Cross hospitals. More, sinning
against posterity as well as antiquity, Germans stand charged before
man and God with reducing to ashes some of the finest artistic output
of Christian civilisation. When accused of crimes such as these,
Germany answers through her generals: “The commonest, ugliest stone
put to mark the burial-place of a German grenadier is a more glorious
and venerable monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together”
(General von Disfurth in _Hamburger Nachrichten_). “Thus is fulfilled
the well-known prophecy of Heine: ‘When once that restraining talisman,
the Cross, is broken ... Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up,
and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic cathedrals’” (_Religion
and Philosophy in Germany in the Nineteenth Century_).
What, I ask, can you do with such people but either crush or civilise
them?
The very stones cry out against them.