All Americans who have journeyed through Belgium and France this year
have returned home permanently saddened men. German cruelty has cut
a bloody gash in the heart, and while there are Dakin solutions that
heal wounds in the arms and legs, there is no medicine that can heal
the wounds in the heart. Some German-Americans still insist that the
alleged German atrocities represent English lies, Belgian hypocrisies
and French delusions, but all possibility of evasion or denial has been
destroyed. Modern courts are satisfied with two forms of testimony,
but the German atrocities are evidenced by five kinds of indubitable
proof. There is the testimony of men and women telling what their own
eyes have seen, and their own ears have heard,--that is a high form
of evidence. There is the testimony of little children, children
too innocent to invent what they are old enough to describe. Legal
authorities tell us that because children are unprejudiced their
testimony is the highest form of proof known to modern courts. Third,
there is the testimony of the photograph,--photographs taken often
before the massacred bodies had grown cold, and immediately after the
German retreat from the town they had pillaged. The sunbeams move
in straight lines; they tell no lies; they cannot be bribed; they
have no prejudice for or against the Germans. No one can look at the
hundreds of photographs of mutilated bodies without confessing that the
sunlight, like a recording angel, has given a damning testimony that
cannot be gainsaid by the monsters who not only killed men who defended
the honour of their wives, but hacked these young husbands into shreds,
mutilating the body in ways that can only be mentioned by men to men
and in whispered tones.