In the affairs of the individual and the state, we hear a lot about
"crime" and "criminals"; but it is an idiotic fact that the greatest
of all crimes, those committed by nations on a vast scale, rarely are
spoken of as crimes, and easily are condoned after the fighting stops.
The world calls them either "wars" or "atrocities"; and the men who
instigate them never are spoken of as criminals, and never are punished
as such. Is it not curious?
Still less is the author of an inexcusable war, or a series of brutal
atrocities, hanged, or shot, or even permanently imprisoned for his
crimes. What fools these mortals be!
In our civilization, a wife who ends long years of torture by killing
a brutal husband, always is tried, sentenced, and either imprisoned
for life, or executed. This asinine world is most virtuous in the
punishment of weak individuals; but we notice that it rarely tackles
the job of meting out real justice to the greatest of all criminals.
After this war is over, will any criminal, either at Berlin or
Constantinople, be hanged or shot for the deliberate slaughter of
1,500,000 helpless Armenians, or for any of the hideous crimes
committed in this war? Not on your life. Mushy-hearted individuals will
advise that they be treated "magnanimously," and will urge that we
"become friends."
The world has grown hardened to the habit of lumping the crimes and
atrocities of organized conflicts together under a short and easy
word. "War" is made to cover and gloss over millions of the bloody and
malicious crimes of millions of men who ought to be punished according
to their deserts. I am thinking of the Kaiser, Stenger, Tirpitz and
Hindenberg, and the Young Turks en masse.
The Hague conventions did their utmost to reform the world's war
practices, establish an international code of war ethics, and thereby
reduce the horrors of armed conflict. But with what results?
Closely following those well-meant and humane efforts, two nations,
Germany and Turkey, have given the world a continuous performance of
wholesale murder, rape, burnings, drownings and starvation such as the
world never before saw, even in the bloodiest days of barbarism. The
Turkish crimes in Armenia must be computed in millions, and the wanton
murder of a million Armenians is directly chargeable to the rulers of
Germany, who deliberately permitted it to be done.
And even now, many good people who refuse to concern themselves with
the woes of men and women who are far away, will decry all attempts
to punish the Germans and Turks for their crimes. They will talk
about "magnanimity in peace terms," and a quick return to ante-bellum
friendships. Think of a treaty of friendship with ravishers, and with
the murderers of women and children and prisoners!
All sensible men know that the proper punishment of criminals is
necessary for the protection of society from wolves and dragons, and
for the general welfare of mankind. Unpunished crime always encourages
and produces more crime. The world must not mistake softness of head
for soundness of heart.
It is indeed high time that criminal nations should be punished for
their crimes. Are any nations before the bar of the Court of Nations
charged with deliberate and premeditated crimes against helpless
humanity?
Yes; two. Germany and Turkey are so accused; and =no power on earth can
stop the trial=! Austria comes next.
Let us call first the case of Germany.
In opening the worst of these two cases, we distinctly leave out of our
specifications all those acts which may be put down as chargeable to
the ordinary and inevitable horrors of war. At the same time we must
remember that even the most brutal prize ring has its rules and its
ethics, which are rigidly enforced. Even a fighter whose face is being
beaten to a pulp may not bite, kick, gouge, or strike below the belt;
no, not even when defeat and ruin stare him in the face. The fighting
must be "fair," or the decision is at once given to the recipient of
the "foul" act.
Until Germany invaded Belgium, and Turkey went to work to exterminate
the Armenians, the world supposed that the Christian nations
had reformed, that all civilized nations recognized the latest
international code of ethics in war, and would live up to it. It was
then against the rules of civilized warfare to shoot, stab, burn or
beat to death the civilian populations of captured territory, to starve
prisoners, to kill prisoners and wounded men, to use expanding bullets,
to rape women, to force women to become soldier's prostitutes, to
poison wells, to use poison in any form, to destroy maliciously works
of art, science and literature; to sink merchant ships at sea without
assuring the safety of passengers and crew, and to bombard cities from
the air for the slaughter of their helpless civilian inhabitants.
According to a great mass of official records, all of those barbarous,
cruel, inhumane and wild-animal acts have been done by Germany, on
well-nigh countless occasions. The evidence is thoroughly conclusive.
The German soldiers and sailors, both officers and men, are the most
cruel and brutal criminals of all the world. In Servia the Austrian
record is almost as rotten.
In 1898, Count Goetzen said, regarding the treacherous designs of
Germany on France, England and America: "If you do speak of this, =no
one will believe you=, and everyone will laugh at you!"
To-day, the American people as a mass do not know more than one
one-hundredth part of the crimes of Germany during the past three
years. The reason is that it is impossible to place before them the
great mass of publications and documents, such as that which now lies
before me, that is necessary to convey full knowledge of this ghastly
subject. Without this evidence, or at least a lengthy digest of it,
the utter depravity of the German Germans is, to a clean and humane
American, absolutely incomprehensible. It takes strong nerves to go
through these thousands of pages of printed documents, and scores of
ghastly pictures, without becoming thoroughly shaken.
It is not a pleasing task to set forth the details of revolting crimes,
but it now has become very necessary that all Americans, of South
America as well as North, should be shown the true character of the
soldiers and civilians of Germany, and the men in high places who have
=ordered= and =fostered= the high crimes of the past three years. This
is no time to side-step the truth regarding the deadliest foes of human
liberty and the rights of man.
By way of illustration. Consider the character of the German crown
prince,--the hero(?) of Verdun. When in Zabern the highborn German
Captain Forstner beat a lame Alsatian shoemaker with his sword, for
being "short" in love for his German masters. When a great outcry was
raised outside of Germany, the precious crown-princeling telegraphed
the brave and gallant Forstner, "=Fester d'rauf!=" which means "=Hit
him again!=" Forstner was promoted, for gallantry on the field, of
course. (New York _Times_, July 15.)
In making up this all too brief exposition, I shall set down neither
facts nor conclusions save those that are supported by an abundance of
evidence such as might well be offered in any court of law. The most
damaging evidences of German crimes and atrocities are =those that have
been collected from German sources=!
* * * * *
The "peace resolutions" introduced in the German Reichstag say:
"Germany took up arms in defense of its liberty and independence, and
for the integrity of its territories."
All the world now knows that both those statements are brazen lies, and
that the people of Germany started the war as a war of conquest, and
nothing else. But the lying leaders of Germany, including the 70 men
of science who signed and sent out their now famous manifesto late in
1914, have for three long years been injecting that falsehood into the
ignorant masses of Germany, to make them feel like fighting and going
hungry.
No. Germany's whining plea that she is "fighting for her very
existence" is no excuse whatever for her diabolical crimes. No one is,
or has been, seeking to "destroy" Germany, or anything German, save
only her domineering, dangerous and thoroughly accursed military power.
Even in the prize ring all such excuses as that are ruled out; and the
fear of being beaten in a fight is no excuse for crime, nor even for
brutality in method.
One curious psychological fact is to be noted at the very outset. It is
this:
The moment the average German dons a military uniform, and becomes a
soldier, with deadly weapons in his hands, he is at once transformed
as if by magic into a cruel monster. Frequently he becomes a savage
and bloodthirsty dragon; and it would be a gross libel on the lower
animals to call him a beast. He becomes a stranger to the feelings
of the home-loving husband, father, son or churchman. In the name of
"Germany," and "war," he is ready to commit any atrocity and write
it down, exultingly, in his diary. Ah! those soldier diaries! There
is where German efficiency unwittingly provided instruments for the
punishment of German crimes.
* * * * *
But the German in uniform is not the only agent of hate and brutality.
"The people of Germany" are only one short step behind him. Let every
person who doubts this send five cents to the _Saturday Evening Post_,
Philadelphia, for its issue of July 14, 1917, and on page 16 read
"Englander Schwein" ("English Swine") the diary of Corporal Edwards, of
Canada's top regiment, the Princess Patricia's C.L.I., who was captured
by the Germans. Read it, if you have in your heart even one soft spot
for "the people of Germany."
It is a story of revolting filth inflicted upon refined gentlemen, of
three days utterly needless hunger torture inflicted on half-starved
men taken out of their cars three times a day, lined up and compelled
to watch German soldiers stuffed with food by German women, with
"Nein!" "Nein!" to them when they begged for food. It is a story of
horribly neglected wounds, arms rotting off, slow starvation in the
prison camp on food consisting of 200 gallons of water to one small bag
of potatoes, and so forth.
Of the murders and mutilations in the trenches there is not time to
speak. But read this account of the treatment the Canadians received
along the railway from the women of Germany,--even "gentlewomen":
"The mob surged around us, heaping on us insults and blows;
=particularly the women=. They spat on us, with hate in their eyes. We
had to take that, or the bayonet. These were the acts not only of the
rabble, =but also of the people of good appearance and address=. One
very well-dressed woman came rushing up. Under other circumstances I
would have judged her to be a gentlewoman. She was screaming invectives
at us as she forced her way through the crowd. 'Schwein!' she screamed,
and struck at the man next me. =Then, drawing deep from the very bottom
of her lungs, she spat the mass full in his face.="
* * * * *
In essaying to give in one article even an outline sketch of the crimes
of Germany, one is perplexed by the many different kinds of atrocities,
and the great mass of instances and proofs bearing upon them. Out of
it all there thrusts up the ugly fact, like a spear from a pile of
corpses, that many of these crimes were committed intentionally, with
malice aforethought, and often were deliberately =ordered by German
officers, both high and low=. For example:
General Stenger issued a printed order to kill all the wounded;
Bissing was the refined torturer of all Belgium, in many orders;
Manteuffel was the chief murderer at Louvain;
Bulow and Schonmann were the wild beasts of Ardenne;
And it was Bayer at Dinant, Bohn at Sommerfeld and Termonde; Nieher
at Wavre; Wittenstein at Clermont-en-Argonne, and so on until you are
tired.