Without stopping to give any serious thought to the matter, some people
assert, "You cannot punish a nation." If not, why not? Ask a student
of history, and he will tell you, without hesitation, "Decidedly, yes.
Ever since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, countless tribes, cities,
states and nations have been soundly punished for their crimes."
To-morrow, or soon after, Germany, the arch-criminal of nations, will
be up before the bar of Christian Civilization for sentence. In courts
of justice it is customary to review the criminal record of the accused
before judgment is pronounced. It is now a case of Germany to the bar,
to face her police record.
Guilty nations are no more immune from punishment for their crimes than
are individuals guilty of high crimes. By their acts the German people
now are heaping up dire punishment for themselves. The world is losing,
with tremendous rapidity, its original and totally erroneous impression
that "the German people" are innocent of the crimes that have been
committed under the German uniform and the black-vulture flag.
The mental attitude of President Wilson as it was expressed in his
message to Congress as late as April 2, 1917, is not the mental
attitude to-day of the American people at large. He said: "We have no
quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but
of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their
government acted in entering upon this war."
All the world outside of Germany now knows full well that Kaiser
Wilhelm, representing the whole German people, is the man who started
the war, who keeps it going, and who brought the war's consequences
upon Germany. He pressed the button, with the united and enthusiastic
approval of "the German people." It is an undeniable fact that from the
very beginning until now the people of Germany have gloried and exulted
in the war, and steadily have acclaimed the ruthless leaders who have
directed it,--Wilhelm, Bissing, Hindenberg, Tirpitz and Zeppelin. In
spite of all their losses and miseries, even to-day the "German people"
are absolutely devoted to the Kaiser, and cheerfully swallow all the
lies that his cabinet and the Reichstag hand out to them. Why should
even one American deceive himself about the millions of Germans who
are at heart as mean and as cruel as Tirpitz and Zeppelin? Remember
that German women hawk and spit in the faces of heroes who happen to be
their prisoners!
* * * * *
There is much idle talk in newspaper correspondence about "unrest in
Germany," and a "demand for a change." All that empty talk is only
an effort to throw dust into the eyes of the world, and deceive the
enemies of Germany. There has been no change of heart at Berlin, and
there never will be.
Beyond a doubt, Arthur S. Draper is absolutely right when he assures
us that the German people are devoted to the Kaiser and kaiserism,
and that under no circumstances will Wilhelm and the Hohenzollerns be
kicked off the throne. Mr. Draper says that even if a change is made,
it will be to a "constitutional monarchy" =under the Kaiser=; which we
know would be no change whatsoever! We know what Germany will be like
under the Chinless Hero (?) of Verdun.
Americans must now be very careful not to fool themselves in measuring
out sympathy for "the German people"; for every particle of it will be
wickedly misplaced. At least let us not make ourselves a laughing-stock
for Hans and Gretchen.
With all due regard for our war President, we respectfully claim that
in the minds of many millions of Americans both his premises and his
conclusions are wrong. Once,--three full years ago,--many Americans
(like ourselves) felt sympathy for "the German people"; but by outrage
upon outrage the fact has been driven home to Americans that all such
sympathy is utterly misplaced. The official publications of the war
have opened our eyes. The great mass of the German people are guilty
of an unprovoked war, and of wholesale and retail murder, rape,
destruction and tortures unparalleled even among the lowest savages of
modern times.
For forty years the swell-headed pan-germanists and the odious Junkers
deliberately have educated the German people into this fearful war of
attempted conquest. The millions of Germany smilingly kow-towed to
the war lords and approved colossal annual expenditures in preparing
for =this very war=! The man who says that the conquest of France and
England was not ardently desired and deliberately planned by "the
German people" is very ignorant of current history. Excepting a few
Socialists, all Germany was ready "to the last gaiter button" on August
1, 1914, and feverishly eager for the war to begin! Was the great Kiel
Canal built for commercial purposes? Not on your life! Every German
knows that it was built as a means for the vanquishment of England on
the sea; and one German friend who claims much inside knowledge has
solemnly assured me that Germany had long intended to strike France and
England just as soon as the Canal was finished.
Never in the history of the world was any war ever planned and
developed through so long a period, or with such loving pains and
thoroughness, as Germany's present war. Its construction covered thirty
years, and throughout that period German newspapers, lectures, books
and speeches were full of it. It was taught to the children of Germany,
for at least twenty years. For at least ten years the officers of the
German navy had been drinking to "Der Tag,"--"The Day" when they would
attack the British navy and crush it.
* * * * *
Bismarck was a very shrewd statesman, as well as a ruthless
conquestador and a changer of telegrams. But he left Germany in peace
and friendship with England and Russia, while William the Egotist,
hungry to be the boss of all Europe, promptly estranged both. William
alone created the Triple Entente!
Outside the British Army and Navy, there were practically no British
statesmen who realized the real trend of Germany's ambitions. That is
why the outbreak found England without a powerful army.
Let no American think for a moment that the press and the people
of Germany were ignorant of what was coming, or opposed to it. The
whole nation, Socialists and all, had become afflicted with acute
megalomania, and a real elephantiasis of egotism. They thought that by
being sufficiently prepared, and sufficiently treacherous and cruel,
they could bring all Europe under the German heel, to toil forever in
the German yoke. To-day even the German Socialists support Kaiserism;
and while they vociferously are shouting for "peace," remember that
=they wish only a German-made peace that will leave Germany in the
saddle=! Let all other Socialists make due note of this.
The first incident that shocked the American people into a realization
of the true character of "the German people" was the sinking of the
_Lusitania_, and the drowning of its great company of women, children
and other non-combatants. And then, while England and America were
laying their streaming dead in long rows on the dock at Queenstown,
"the people" of Germany were literally dancing with joy! The German
people called it a glorious "victory"! "Were some women and children
lost? Well, they should not have sailed on the _Lusitania_. They were
warned,--=by the German Ambassador himself=!"
And the beautiful city of Frankfort-on-the-Main gave all its school
children A HOLIDAY, in which to indulge in unrestrained rejoicing over
the sinking of the _Lusitania_! In Frankfort, if you were to throw a
banana peel on the street, or in the Palm Garden, you would fiercely be
arrested, and savagely fined 5 marks for the atrocity.
And some of "the people" of Germany struck a joy medal in celebration
of the _Lusitania_ victory. A reproduction shows that it was a charming
and soulful work of German art.
And the submarine reptile who sank the _Lusitania_ =was decorated (with
the "Order Pour la Merite"), and promoted=, by the man whom young
Hagenbeck of Hamburg characterized as "our dear, good, kind Emperor."
Faugh!
"Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten mine imagination!"
Last week it was reported by wounded British prisoners, exchanged
and sent from Germany via Switzerland, that "as we lay in the train,
crowded and helpless, many German women came up to the cars and spit
upon us." I have already cited the story of a Canadian prisoner.
During the past three years I have read every scrap of eye-witness
information that has come before me in print recording observations
in Germany, by war correspondents and others. My reading covers many
newspapers, magazines, books and official publications of various
kinds. Through all this mass I have looked in vain for expressions from
the common people of Germany of some disapproval of German cruelties
and atrocities on land or sea, or of sympathy for the victims of German
cruelty. Find just one, if you can. I can not. Not once have I seen
an expression or sentiment of that kind reported from Germany. The
callousness of the women of Germany toward the ravishment, wounding,
torture and ghastly mutilation of their sisters in Belgium, France,
England, Servia, Poland and Armenia is astounding, beyond belief. But
we are learning a lot these days.
Germany deliberately permitted the atrocious Turks to murder about
1,500,000 helpless Armenians; and so far as we know, not one person
in Germany, high or low, has uttered one little protest against that
colossal crime. Can you beat it! As the world knows very well, Germany
absolutely controls Turkey, and drove her into the war; and Germany is
guilty of complicity in the death of every non-combatant Armenian of
that whole two millions of helpless persons who were slaughtered, or
drowned, or starved on the deserts.
The ghastly murder of Edith Cavell, the nurse, and the Apache-like
slaughter of Captain Fryatt "go" in Germany. The forcible abduction and
enslavement of 5,000 young women, boys and men of Lille, Roubaix and
Tourcoing, and all the younger women of Noyon, France, just before the
latter was recaptured by the British, is all right in Germany. In the
New York _Evening World_ of July 27 you will find in an interview with
Louis Raemakers, the Dutch cartoonist nemesis of Germany, a fearful
account of what the German officers do with the girls of France,
Belgium and Servia. There are photographs by the score of dead children
in Servia "upon whom the most frightful crimes had been committed
before they were slashed to death across the body," and "woman after
woman whose breasts had been cut off."
I believe that if the German soldiers were to kill and eat their
prisoners, in the name of "Germany," the German people would accept it
as justified by the "attack" on Germany, and the utterly false formula
that "Germany is fighting for her life."
The military ring has by hard and continuous lying made the German
masses believe that "The Allies wish to destroy Germany"; whereas the
Allies wish to do nothing of the kind. All they wish to do is to secure
the safety of the world against the barbarians of Berlin.
* * * * *
After the war is over, will the men and women of America and England
and France enjoy traveling in Germany, eating in German hotels,
promenading in the Thiergarten of Berlin, and fraternizing with German
army officers fresh from the war? Can they tell the ravishers of
helpless women, and the murderers of children and old men, from the
other men of Germany? No; they can not. The trail of the serpent will
be over them all.
After this war how will Americans relish the sound of the German
language, and the teaching of it in their schools? Will they patronize
German operas as of yore? Of what will the strains of the "Blue Danube"
waltz remind them?
How will American men of science now regard the nation whose scientists
invented poison gas, and sent bacteria of glanders and anthrax for
horses and cattle, into friendly Rumania, =under the privileged seal
of "diplomacy"=? We can give all the details of that episode, from
official sources.
Except by rare flashes of side light, the people of America have
had few opportunities to learn what the Allies really think now
of the German Germans. The catalogue of a dealer in second hand
books ordinarily is the very last place in which one would look for
expressions of opinion of nations and people. But in war, always look
for the unexpected. Book Catalogue No. 767, of Henry Sotheran & Co.,
London, contains this, soberly set forth on page 21:
BENEDEN (Pierre Joseph van: Univ. LOUVAIN, BELGIUM) ANIMAL
PARASITES AND MESSMATES. 18 woodcuts, post 8vo, 2s. (pub. 5s.).
Belgium came to know viler human parasites from German universities
than the filthiest bloodsuckers of the insect world.
And on page 28 this item appears:
HARTMAN (Robert: Univ. BERLIN) ANTHROPOID APES, with 63 woodcuts,
post 8vo, cl. 2s. (pub. 5s.).
These would suggest the University-bred German officers who defiled
with their own filth the French houses in which they were billeted.
We will add that they also suggest the ethics of the wolverine, whose
favorite habit it is systematically to defile all the food in a miner's
cabin which he can neither eat nor carry away.
All the world now knows that the Allies, of whom, thank God, America
at last is one, never will cease fighting the mad-dogs, the wolves
and wolverines of Germany until they are thoroughly whipped. Be the
time long or short, the Allies will outlast the Teuton and the Turk,
and will dictate the terms that both shall accept. America is ready to
throw into the scale one-half of all that she possesses, if need be, to
secure that end.
And then what?
When Germany is thoroughly beaten, as assuredly she will be, what shall
be her punishment for her crimes?
The only sensible and correct policy to pursue toward a dirty-fighting
enemy is to =get him down and keep him down=! No greater mistake
could be made than for the Allies to become "magnanimous" to brutal
Germany when the time comes to hand her what is coming to her in final
settlement. We want no sissies nor weak sisters representing us at the
peace conference, pleading for easy terms for Germany. Any man who
cannot guess how much Germany would be "magnanimous" to the Entente
allies =if she should win=, is a colossal idiot. Think of the size of
the cash indemnities that Germany would exact of America, England and
France if she could win!
It would seem that no matter how rapacious or egotistic are Germany's
intentions, always and everywhere there is a garrulous German ready to
blab them out in public. If Germany had the chance, she would utterly
ruin all of the Allies. There is no conceivable insult or injury that
she would not visit upon them, just as she has upon the conquered
districts of Belgium and France. =The United States would be called
upon to pay an indemnity of just about $20,000,000,000; and quickly,
too!= Make no mistake about that!
We have been reading German anticipations of the taking of British East
Africa and the Congo Free State, to join them to the (late lamented)
"German colonies" for the making of a vast African empire under the
"dear, good, kind Kaiser" of Belgian fame. This is well known to the
English; and the answer is that =Germany's lost African colonies are
already lost to Germany forever and a day!= To give back to Germany
any one of those African colonies would be criminal folly, and of a
certainty it would breed no end of future trouble in Africa. Knowing
this, the Boers of South Africa will see Germany in hades before any
influence on earth can persuade, or force them, to hand back one foot
of "German" East Africa,--a colony that was armed to the teeth long
prior to 1914, and that started fighting immediately that war was
declared in August, 1914!
Even if overweening magnanimity should beg that "German" Southwest
Africa be given back, the dictates of humanity would sternly forbid it.
After the brutal murder by Germany of 208 of the leading natives of the
German capital at Walfish Bay for no reason whatever save the innate
German brutality of the new governor, and the poisoning of the wells of
Swakopmund, it would be a high crime against the native population ever
again to place them within the power of any German governor.
No; decidedly not. Germany will not be given back a single foot of any
one of her former African colonies. The close of this war will be no
time for mushy sentiment toward the dirtiest fighters on earth.
The war should not and will not end until Germany has surrendered
every foot of invaded territory now occupied by the Teutonic allies,
and agreed to pay to Belgium an indemnity of about $5,000,000,000 with
another $5,000,000,000 to France, or the equivalent thereof, and the
return of Alsace and Lorraine. The delivery to England of her cowardly
navy as a pledge of future good behavior is really immaterial. The
German navy is chiefly a scuttling navy, great only against unarmed
ships and fishing boats, but never willing to meet any foe on equal
terms.
When the peace terms are written, England should take back Heligoland,
as a German bond to keep the peace. The giving away to her only enemy
of that immensely valuable island was one of the greatest blunders in
statecraft that England ever committed. Now, there is only one way to
redeem it,--make Germany surrender Heligoland before any German ship is
permitted to sail the seas.
All the world now knows that the preservation of a Slavic Balkan
barrier now is absolutely necessary to the peace of Asia.
* * * * *
And what will be the attitude of Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Italians and Russians after the war, toward the mad-dogs and wolves of
Germany? For the sake of "business" and "trade" and "cheap goods" will
we fraternize once more with the red-handed murderers of ten thousand
Belgian and French civilians, the ravishers and enslavers of 100,000
Belgian and French women, the sinkers of the _Lusitania_, and the
murderers of Captain Fryatt and Nurse Cavell? Will we buy goods made
by blood-stained German hands, that have dragged Belgian and French
girls from their screaming mothers? Will we buy and use goods made
on stolen Belgian machines, of materials stolen from France? Will we
patronize the German "science" that produced chlorine gas for British
soldiers, or the German artillery artists who have gleefully pounded
the Cathedral of Rheims into ruins?
Will we not hear with the swan song of _Lohengrin_ the dying shrieks of
the _Lusitania_ women and children as they struggle in the icy waters?
In view of the records of the past three years, what two words are more
loathsome and detestable than "German kultur"?
The only logical conclusion of Germany's career of crime and dirty
fighting is, at the close of the war, the contempt, the aversion
and the loathing of the civilized world, and =a universal policy
of non-intercourse=. Let Germany go and live with Austria, and the
loathsome Turk, in a hell of their own. Can any American not of German
birth ever again desire to visit and travel in the land of the criminal
Kaiser who started the war, the land of the murderers, ravishers and
traitors whom the war brought to the surface? We cannot conceive it
possible.
And after the war is over, the less we hear in America of the German
language and of German literature, music, art and science, the better
for all concerned. The German idols one and all lie in the mud, in
fragments,--cast down and smashed by the mad-dogs of Germany, =and no
one else=! Americans of German descent may build monuments to their
memory, but never again can they be set up for Americans to worship.
Through her crimes and her dirty fighting, Germany has earned the
contempt and aversion of the world, and it will be paid to her as long
as civilization endures. Whole libraries will be written about the
brutalities of the German Germans, the cowardice of their navy, the
blunders of their alleged statesmen, and the carnival of lies of the
Kaiser and his advisors.
Men who fight honorably take their punishment like men, get over it,
and often become friends again. But not so when one party is "a dirty
fighter," a gouger, and a hitter below the belt. Even the youngest
American schoolboy despises the unfair fighter, and loathes the sight
of him.
After this war is over, no man outside the Teutonic-Turco mad-dog
influence will be so poor or so mean as to look upon a German German
with real respect, much less with admiration. The world will cheerfully
go naked and hungry ere it accepts food and clothes made in Germany.
Americans with self respect will refuse to buy German goods, or to
trade in stores that offer them for sale,--not indeed to "punish"
Germany, but because the source is so loathsome and offensive. Germany,
Austria and Turkey already have the contempt, the scorn and the hatred
of the whole world, and after the war they should be ostracised and
shunned for a thousand years.
It will be only the most sordid and mean-spirited people of America,
England and France who will again buy of Germany because her goods
are cheap. It is now time publicly to declare in America the existing
aversion to Germany, in order that all importers may be made to know
and understand the intentions of the public, and thereby avoid loading
their shelves with goods that they can not sell to Americans. Let signs
go up now reading: "No German goods sold here."
It is now time to drop the German language from every school in
America, finally and forever. It is ludicrous folly to permit the
language of America's only real enemy to be taught in our schools.
Never again will Americans need it. We can well do without the language
of brutality and tyranny.
* * * * *
One of the few good services rendered by this German-made war concerns
South America. It has shown Brazil, Argentina and even Mexico exactly
where they stand with respect to the Monroe doctrine. If Germany should
win this war, then should all the nations of South and Central America
pray to God for deliverance; for with Germany in the saddle, their
peace and prosperity would be gone forever. With perfect clearness of
vision, Brazil now sees this, and has the indomitable courage to act
the part of a great and self-respecting nation, bent upon preserving
the rights of her people.
Argentina sees the light, but hesitates to take up her share of the
white man's burden; and Chili says: "Let George do it!"
If there is now even one Central or South American state which can not
see that the United States,--with the moral support of the British
navy,--has for years stood like a rock between them and the most
rapacious and cruel people on earth, then that state is hopelessly
blind. And for this service the United States has not asked anything
but common friendship,--and sometimes has failed to receive even that!
The Central and South American republics should now set their houses in
order in regard to their future dealings with the German "influence,"
and German commercial aggression. They should take warning from the
condition of Italy before the war, when German capital and German
greed held the banks, railroads, and sea commerce of Italy literally
by the throat. Do Argentina, Chili, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia wish
that condition to obtain with them? After the war, Germany will make a
tremendous push to secure commercial supremacy in South America; and
let South America beware! The time to build dykes is before the floods
come, not after.
* * * * *
Saith the Psalmist with inspiration from the same God whom the German
Kaiser piously and persistently claims as his silent partner,
"=The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget
God.="
And to pan-Germany, Turkey and Austria we transmit that solemn promise
of Holy Writ of what is in store for them, in punishment for their high
crimes against humanity.
After the war, nothing can save them from existence in a hell of
national poverty, and world-wide scorn and aversion, all of their own
making.