"'Gang of dirty----' ("Bande de sal----")

"Every one called to us to come out of the fire. The fire was spreading

all over the house. I did not want to understand what they were saying.

I went upstairs again where the little girl was, to try to save her

(see still the marks which she received). I succeeded, not without

hurt, in carrying away the little girl out of the flames.

"I had to leave my boy in the flames, and, like a mad person, save

myself with the little girl.

"I have two sons-in-law, of whom one is the father of this little girl

here. Look at her face marked with scars."

"Yes. They burned me," said the tiny girl. She held up her hand to the

scars on her face.

"My other little boy escaped from the fire. He was hidden all one day

in a heap of manure. He did not wish to make me sad by telling how his

brother had cried out to die."

Madame Dujon sobbed quietly and could not go on for a moment. The

little girl put her chin on her little umbrella, and her eyes filled

with tears. The Mayor of Lunéville, Monsieur Keller, said to us:

"Madame has not told you--the Germans finished off the poor child.

Seeing that he was nearly dead, they threw him into the fire and closed

the door."

VIII

MIRMAN AND "MES ENFANTS"

When I went across to France there was one man whom I wished to meet.

It was the Prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle. I wanted to meet him

because he is in charge of the region where German frightfulness

reached its climax. Leon Mirman has maintained a high morale in

that section of France which has suffered most, and which has cause

for despair. Here it was that the Germans found nothing that is

human alien to their hate. When they encountered a nun, a priest,

or a church, they reacted to the sacred thing and to the religious

person with desecration, violation and murder. But that was only

because there were many Roman Catholics in the district. They had no

race or religious prejudice. When they came to Lunéville there was

a synagogue and a rabbi. They burned the synagogue and killed the

rabbi. As the sun falling round a helpless thing, their hate embraced

all grades of weakness in Lorraine. In Nomeny they distinguished

themselves by a fury against women. In some of the villages they

specialized in pillage. Others they burned with zeal. Badonviller,

Nonhigny, Parux, Crevic, Nomeny, Gerbéviller--the list of the villages

of Meurthe-et-Moselle is a tale of the shame of Germany and of the

suffering of France.

But not of suffering only. At no place is France stronger than at this

point of greatest strain. The district is dotted with great names of

the humble--names unknown before the war, and now to be known for as

long as France is France. Here Sister Julie held back the German Army

and saved her wounded from the bayonet. Here the staunch Mayor of

Lunéville and his good wife stayed with their people through the German

occupation.

Leon Mirman is the Prefect of all this region. He was Director of

Public Charities in Paris, but when war broke out he asked to be sent

to the post of danger. So he was sent to the city of Nancy to rule

the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. The Prefect of a Department in

France is the same as the Governor of a State in America. But his

office in peace is as nothing compared to his power in time of war. He

can suspend a Mayor and remove an entire population from one village

to another. The morale of France for that section is dependent on the

reaction he makes to danger and stress.

The answer of the ravaged region to the murder and the burning is

a steadiness of courage, a busy and sane life of normal activity.

Beautiful Nancy still lifts her gates of gold in the Place of

Stanislaus. The lovely light of France falls softly on the white stone

front of the municipal buildings, and from their interior comes a

throbbing energy that spreads through the hurt district. The Prefect's

houses for refugees are admirably conducted. School "keeps" for the

children of Pont-à-Mousson on a quiet country road, while their mothers

still live in cellars in the bombarded town, busy with the sewing

which has made their home famous. They are embroidering table cloths

and napkins, and Americans are buying their work. They are not allowed

any longer to be happy, but they can go on creating beauty. None of

their trouble need escape into the clean white linen and the delicate

needle-work, and the Bridge of Pont-à-Mousson embosses the centerpiece

as proudly as if the town had not been pounded by heavy shells for two

years.

But the parents were agreed on one thing: it was no place for children.

So these and other hundreds of little ones have been brought together.

The Prefect means that these children, some of whom have seen their

homes burned, their mothers hunted by armed men, shall have the evil

memory wiped out. He is working that they shall have a better chance

than if the long peace had continued. The simple homely things are

going on, as if the big guns could not reach in.

I attended the classes of domestic science, where little girls plan

menus for the family meal. Overhead, the aeroplanes spot the sky. Three

times in my days in the district they came and "laid their eggs," in

the phrase of the soldiers. Sometimes a mother is killed, sometimes a

sister, but the peaceful work goes on. The blackboard is scribbled over

with chalk. Piping voices repeat their lesson. I saw the tiny boys at

school. I saw the older boys working at trades. Some of them were busy

at carpentry, remaking the material for their own village, bureaus,

tables and chairs. We talked with boys and girls from Nomeny, where

the slaughter fell on women with peculiar severity. These children had

seen the Germans come in. Wherever I went I met children who had seen

the hand grenades thrown, their homes burning. I visited many hundreds

of these children at school. They are orderly and busy. It will take

more than fire and murder from unjust men to spoil life for the new

generation of France. For that insolence has released a good will in a

greater race than the race that sought to offend these little ones.

And the same care has been put on the older refugees. I saw the

barracks of the famous Twentieth Army Corps--the Iron Divisions--and

of the Eighth Artillery used for this welfare work. Mirman has

taken these poor herds of refugees and restored their community life

in the new temporary quarters. Here they have a hospital, a church

and a cinema. He is turning the evil purpose of the Germans into an

instrument for lifting his people higher than if they had known only

happiness. Beyond the great power and authority of his office he is

loved. The Prefect is a good man, simple and high-minded.

He has given me the statement that follows for the American people.

Let us remember in reading it that it comes from the highest official

in France in charge of the region where systematic atrocity was

practiced in an all-inclusive way. On this chance section of the

world's great area, a supreme and undeserved suffering fell. Monsieur

Mirman makes here the first official statement of the war on the

subject of reprisals. There is something touching in his desire for our

understanding. France hoped we would see her agony with the eyes she

once turned toward us. She still hopes on, and sends this message of

her representative:

"I wish you to understand in what spirit we began the war in France,

and especially in this district. It was our intention to follow the

rules of what you call in English 'Fair Play.' We wished to carry

on the war as we had carried on other wars, to our risk and peril,

with all the loyalties of fighting men. But from the start we have

been faced with men whom we are unable to consider as soldiers, who

have conducted themselves in a section of our Department as veritable

outlaws. You are not going, unfortunately, to Nomeny, which is a town

of this Department where the Germans have committed the worst of their

atrocities. At least you will go to Gerbéviller, where they burned the

houses, one by one, and put to death old men, women and children.

"Mention is often made of these two townships where the inhabitants

suffered the most severely from the invasion of the enemy, but in many

other townships, a long list, the Germans acted in the same way. They

burned the streets, they killed men, women and children without cause.

Always they gave the pretext, to excuse themselves, that the civilian

population had fired on them. On that point, I bring you my personal

testimony: I say to you on my honor that this German allegation is

absolutely false.

"At my request I was appointed the Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle on

August 9, 1914. In all the townships of this Department, on my arrival,

I requested in the most urgent terms that the inhabitants should not

give way to restlessness, and should not resort to a single act which

I called an unruly act, by themselves taking direct part in the war.

I made those requests in perfect agreement with all the population,

approved by the most ardent patriots. I held inquiries, frequent and

detailed, to find out if my instructions had been respected. Not once

have I been able to establish the fact that a civilian fired on the

Germans.

"If isolated instances of that sort did take place, they could not be

admitted as justifying the total of systematic crimes committed by the

Germans, but I have not been able to lay hold of a single instance.

"I will cite two incidents which will mark out for you, in a clear-cut

way, what I believe to be "the French method."

"At the beginning of the war a German aviator threw bombs on a town

near Nancy. The Mayor, revolted, went to the town-hall, where the arms

had been deposited, and took a hunting rifle and fired at the aviator.

It is clear that the German aviator was committing a crime contrary

to all the laws of war, but I held that the Mayor of that town, by

himself firing in that way on a criminal, was disobeying the laws of

his country. I proceeded to disciplinary measures against the Mayor: I

suspended him from office for many weeks.

"Another incident: In the first days of August, 1914, the Germans

entering Badonviller, exasperated perhaps by the resistance which our

soldiers of the rear-guard gave them, or simply wishing to leave a

token of their Kultur, and to terrorize the population, burned part of

the village, and fired on the inhabitants as if they were rabbits.

"I arrived the next day. The French troops had reentered Badonviller

and had taken some German soldiers prisoner. The prisoners were being

led to the town-hall. The fires had not yet been put out, and the women

whom the Germans had murdered were still unburied.

"The Mayor had seen the terrible spectacle. He had seen his young wife

murdered at his doorstep in front of her little children. He himself

had suffered violence. But he had stuck to his post, and had continued

to carry on the affairs of his town. While the prisoners were being

led along the inhabitants of Badonviller, who had seen these crimes,

recognized the prisoners and surrounded them, threatening them and

crying out against them. The Mayor threw himself resolutely between the

prisoners and his people. This Mayor, who had had his own flesh and

blood murdered and his heart torn, declared with emphasis that those

prisoners, no matter what crimes they had committed, were protected by

the law, and that it was not permitted to any civilian to touch a hair

of their head.

"Because he had called to order some of his people whose anger was

natural enough, because he had respected the law under trying

conditions, I asked that this Mayor should be decorated, and the French

Government decreed for him the cross of the Legion of Honor. He was

rewarded in this way, not for having carried out criminal violence

according to the German method, but on the contrary for preventing, by

coolness and force of will, reprisals made against enemy prisoners.

"By these examples, and I could cite many others, you will be able to

estimate the ideas with which the French began the war.

"The French in more than one instance have run against, not armies,

but veritable bands organized for crime. I say 'organized,' and that

is the significant fact. In a war when individual accidental excesses

are committed, tragic situations, to be sure, arise, but we ought not

to conclude that we have found ourselves face to face with a general

organization of cruelty and destruction.

"In the townships of which I am speaking, it is by the order of the

heads that the crimes have been committed. They are not the crimes of

individuals: there has been a genuine organization of murder. It is

that which will be thrown into the light by the testimony which you

will gather--notably at Gerbéviller.

"Then I call your attention to what the city of Nancy has suffered in

violation of the laws of humanity since the beginning of the war.

"From the beginning of August, 1914, Nancy has been empty of troops,

the numerous barracks have been converted into hospitals; some were

used as asylums for our refugees. Nothing remained at Nancy, nothing

has come since then. You won't find at the present time a single

cannon, a single depot of ammunition, no fortification, no military

work. For a garrison there are some dozens of old territorials, barely

sufficient in number to keep order.

"On the Fourth of September an enemy aviator threw bombs on the square

where the Cathedral stands, killing a little girl and an old man.

"A few days later, knowing that they were not going to be able to enter

Nancy, furious at the thought that they would soon be forced to retire

and that they must give up their cherished dreams, in the night of the

ninth and tenth of September, those unfortunate men advanced two pieces

of artillery under cover of a storm, bombarded our peaceful city, and

ripped to pieces houses in various quarters of the town, murdering

women and children.

"A military point to that bombardment? I challenge any one to state it.

Act of cruelty, simply, an act of outlawry.

"Ever since then acts against Nancy are multiplied. The list is long of

victims stricken in Nancy by the bombs of Zeppelins, of aeroplanes,

and by the shells of the 380, shot for now many months by a long-range

gun. All the victims are civilians, mostly women and children. I repeat

to you that the city of Nancy is empty of soldiers.

"And what I say of Nancy is true of the other towns, particularly at

Lunéville, where a bomb falling in the full market killed 45 persons,

of whom 40 were women.

"Adding childishness to violence, with a craving for the histrionic,

obsessed by the desire to strike the imagination (or let us say more

simply having the souls of 'cabotins'), these outlaws have conceived

the bombardment of Nancy by a 380 cannon on the first of January--New

Year's, the day of gifts--and on the first of July. In that New Year

bombardment they so arranged it that the first shell fell on Nancy at

the last stroke of midnight. I will show the little furnished house

which that shell crushed, killing six persons, of whom four were women.

"For a long while we were content to suffer those crimes, protesting in

the name of law. We did not wish to defend ourselves. We shrink from

the thought of reprisals. But public opinion ended by forcing the hand

of the Government. Unanimously the nation has demanded that, each time

an undefended French town is bombarded by the Germans by aeroplane,

Zeppelin or cannon, a reply shall be made to that violation of the

laws of war and of the rights of humanity by the bombardment of a

German town.

"I wish to say to you, and I beg you to make it known to your noble

nation: it is not with serenity that we see our French soldiers do that

work. It is with profound sadness that we resign ourselves to those

reprisals. Those methods of defense are imposed upon us. Since all

considerations of humanity are to-day alien to the German soul, we are

reduced for the protection of our wives and our children to the policy

of reprisals and to the assassination in our turn of the children and

the women in Germany. The Germans have vociferously rejoiced in the

crimes committed by their soldiers; they have made an illumination for

the day of the _Lusitania_ crime; they have delighted in the thought

that on the first of January the children of Nancy received, as New

Year's presents, shells from a 380 cannon. The acts of reprisal to

which we are forced do not rejoice us in the least; they sadden us. We

speak of them with soberness. And we have here reason for hating Kultur

all the more. We French hate the Germans less for the crimes which they

have committed on us than for the acts of violence contrary to the laws

of war which they have forced us to commit in our turn, and for the

reprisals on their children and their women.

"I thank you for having come here. You will look about you, you will

ask questions, you will easily see the truth. That truth you will make

known to your great and free nation. We shall await with confidence the

judgment of its conscience."

IX

AN APPEAL TO THE SMALLER AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

Burned villages are like ruins of an ancient civilization. To wander

through them was as if I were stepping among the bones of a dead age.

Only the green fields that flowed up to the wrecked cottages and the

handful of sober-faced peasants--only these were living in that belt of

death that cuts across the face of France, like the scar from a whip

on a prisoner's cheek. French soil is sacred to a Frenchman. I saw a

little shop with pottery and earthenware in the window: vases, and

jars, and toilet cases. The sign read:

"La terre de nos Grés--c'est la même terre que défendent nos soldats

dans les tranchées."

("The earth which made these wares is the same earth which our soldiers

defend in the trenches.")

I want the people at home to understand this war. So I am telling of

it in terms that are homely. I asked the authorities to let me wander

through the villages and talk with the inhabitants. What a village

suffers, what a storekeeper suffers, will mean something to my friends

in Iowa and Connecticut. Talk of artillery duels with big guns and

bayonet charges through barbed wire falls strangely on peaceful ears.

But what a druggist's wife has seen, what a school-teacher tells,

will come home to Americans in Eliot, Maine, and down the Mississippi

Valley. What one cares very much to reach is the solid silent public

opinion of the smaller cities, the towns and villages. The local

storekeeper, the village doctor, the farmer, these are the men who make

the real America--the America which responds slowly but irresistibly

to a sound presentation of facts. The alert newspaper editor, the

hustling real-estate man, the booster for a better-planned town, these

citizens shape our public opinion. If once our loyal Middle Westerners

know the wrong that has been done people just like themselves, they

will resent it as each of us resents it that has seen it. This is no

dim distant thing. This is a piece of cold-planned injustice by murder

and fire done to our friends in the sister republic. I should like a

representative committee from South Norwalk, Conn., Emporia, Kansas,

and Sherman, Texas, to see Gerbéviller as I have seen it, to walk past

its 475 burned houses, to talk with its impoverished but spirited

residents. I should like them to catch the spirit of Sermaize, building

its fresh little red-brick homes out of the rubble of the wrecked

place.

I had thought that I had some slight idea of French spirit. I had

thought that five months with their soldiers at Melle, Dixmude, and

Nieuport had given me a hint of France in her hour of greatness. But I

found that not even the cheery first line men, not even the democratic

officers, are the best of France. They are lovable and wonderful.

But the choicest persons in France are the women in the devastated

districts. They can make or break morale. What the people back of the

trenches are feeling, the talk that they make in the village inn--these

are the decisive factors that give heart to an army or that crumble its

resistance. No government, no military staff can continue an unpopular

war. But by these people who have lost their goods by fire, and their

relatives by assassination, the spirit of France is reinforced. The war

is safe in their hands.

The heaviest of all the charges that rests against Germany is that of

preparedness in equipment for incendiary destruction. They had not only

prepared an army for fighting the enemy troops with rifle, machine-gun

and howitzer. They had supplied that army with a full set of incendiary

material for making war on non-combatants. Immediately on crossing the

frontier, they laid waste peaceful villages by fire. And that wholesale

burning was not accomplished by extemporized means. It was done by

instruments "made in Germany" before the war, instruments of no value

for battle, but only for property destruction, house by house. Their

manufacture and distribution to that first German army of invasion show

the premeditation of the destruction visited on the invaded country. On

his arm the soldier carried a rifle, in his sack the stuff for fires.

He marched against troops and against non-combatants. His war was a

war of extermination. The army carried a chemical mixture which caught

fire on exposure to the air, by being broken open; another chemical

which fired up from a charge of powder; incendiary bombs which spread

flames when exploded; pellets like lozenges which were charged with

powders, and which slipped easily into the bag. These were thrown by

the handful into the house, after being started by match or the gun.

When the Germans came to a village, where they wished to spread terror,

they burned it house by house. I have seen their chalk-writing on the

doors of unburned houses. One of their phrases which they scribbled on

those friendly doors was "Nicht anzünden." Now "anzünden" does not mean

simply "Do not burn." It means "Do not burn with incendiary methods."

Wherever a spy lived, or a peasant innkeeper friendly with drinks, or

wherever there was a house which an officer chose for his night's rest,

there the Germans wrote the phrase that saved the house. The other

houses to right and left were "burned with incendiary methods." That

phrase is as revealing as if in a village where there were dead bodies

of children with bayonet wounds upon them, you discovered one child

walking around with a tag hung round her neck reading "Do not murder

this little girl by bayonet."

That military hierarchy which extends from the sergeant to the Emperor,

controlling every male in Germany, came down upon Belgium and France,

prepared to crush, not alone the military power, but every spiritual

resource of those nations. I have a bag of German incendiary pastilles

given me by Jules Gaxotte, Mayor of Revigny. On one side is inked

6

----

0.25.

On the other side

6. 10.10.111.

------------

R.12/1,

indicating the company and the regiment and the division. The pellets

are square, the size of a fingernail. They burn with intensity, like

a Fourth of July torch. That little bag has enough bits of lively

flame in it, to burn an ancient church and destroy a village of homes.

Packets like it have seared the northern provinces of France. Not

one of those millions of pellets that came down from Germany was used

against a soldier. Not one was used against a military defense. All

were used against public buildings and homes. All were used against

non-combatants, old men, women and children. The clever chemist had

coöperated with the General Staff in perfecting a novel warfare. The

admirable organization had equipped its men for the new task of a

soldier. In their haste the Germans left these pellets everywhere along

the route. The Mayor of Revigny has a collection. So has the Mayor of

Clermont. Monsieur Georges Payelle, premier president de la Cour des

Comptes, and head of the French Government Inquiry, has a still larger

collection. These three gentlemen have not told me, but have shown me

this evidence. The purpose of the German military can be reconstructed

from that one little bag which I hold.

But not only have the Germans dropped their scraps of evidence as they

went along, as if they were playing hare-and-hounds. They have put into

words what they mean. The German War Book, issued to officers, outlines

their new enlarged warfare.

Madame Dehan of Gerbéviller said to me:

"A high officer arrived this same day (when she was prisoner) and said:

"'It is necessary to put to death the people here. They must be shot.

This nation must disappear.'"

Monsieur Guilley of Nomeny told me how Charles Michel, a boy of

seventeen, was killed. He said: "A patrol of scouts, composed of six

Bavarians, said: 'We are going down there to kill, yes, kill all the

people of Nomeny.'

"Arrived at Nomeny, they asked where the farm was. They then came along

the side of the farm where there was a little door. Three entered

there, the other three came around by the big door. We were ready for

supper, sitting around a table. We heard blows on blows of the bayonets

before the doors, with cries and exclamations in German. They came

into the place where we were sitting to eat, and placed themselves

facing us, with nothing to say. They took all that they wanted from

the table. Five of them left, going by a way in front of the farm. The

sixth stayed there, ruminating and thinking. I believed that he was

meditating to himself a crime, but I thought to myself, 'They wouldn't

kill a man as they would kill a rabbit.'

"We went into the kitchen. The man was always there. I closed the door.

Two men of my farm were eating in the kitchen. Now, from the kitchen

leading into the stable there was a door. The little Michel went out by

this door. He did not see the German who was there. The soldier fired

at him. I heard the rifle shot go. Then I saw the man following the

same way that the others had taken, to rejoin them at a trot."

"How long did he remain there thinking before he accomplished his

crime?" we asked.

"Plenty long, a good quarter of an hour. He was a Bavarian, big and

strong."

I find that strange racial brooding and melancholy in the diary of a

sub-officer of the Landwehr. On September 3, 1914, he writes:

"It is well enough that Germany has the advantage everywhere up to the

present; I am not able to conquer a singular impression, a presentiment

that, in spite of all that, the end will be bad."

In his case it is accompanied by horror at the wrong-doing of his

comrades, a noble pity for wasted France. But in others, that brooding

turned to sudden cruelty. Any act, however savage, is a relief from

that dark inner burden.

Madame Dauger of Gondrecourt-Aix (Meuse) said to me:

"On the night of Christmas, 1914, with fixed bayonets they came to get

us to dance with them--the dances were entirely unseemly. Ten persons

were forced out to dance. We danced from five in the evening till half

past six."

"Were they soldiers or officers?"

"Only officers; and when they were sufficiently drunk, we made the

most of that advantage to save ourselves."

It was Christmas night--the time to dance. So they chose partners,

by the compulsion of the bayonet, with the women of an invaded and

outraged race. The same rich, childlike sentiment floods their eyes

with tears at thought of the mother at home. Cruel, sentimental,

melancholy, methodical, they are a race that needs wise leadership.

And they have not received that. They have been led by men who do not

believe in them. Every evil trait has been played upon, to the betrayal

of the simple rather primitive personality, which in other hands

would have gone gently all its days. But the homely goodness has been

stultified, and we have a race, of our own stock, behaving like savages

under the cool guidance of its masters.

The next piece of testimony was given me by a woman who was within a

few days of giving birth to a child by a German father. I withhold her

name and the name of her village.

"I was maltreated by them, Monsieur. They abused me. Last year in the

month of October, 1915, they arrived. I was learning how to take care

of the cattle, to help my father, who already had enough with what the

Germans required him to do outside in the fields. My father had not

returned; I was entirely alone. I was in the bottom of the barn; my

children were in the house with my mother. They were upon me; I did not

see them. They threw me down and held me. They were the soldiers who

lodged with my parents. I cried out three or four times for some one to

come, but it was finished. I got up from the straw."

"Have you told your parents or any one?"

"No. Never to a person, Monsieur. I am too much ashamed. But I always

think of it. My eldest child is eleven years old, the next seven years,

the third six years, and the last I have had since the war. The one I

wait for now, of course, I do not count on bringing up."

Monsieur Mirman, the Prefect, replied:

"Since you must have him, you will tell me at the time, so that I may

take action and give you assistance."

Through the courtesy of Mrs. Charles Prince, I spent an afternoon with

a French nurse, Marie Louise Vincent, of Launois, in the Ardenne.

The Germans came. She was on the road, one hundred yards away, when she

saw this:

"I saw an old French beggar, whom everybody knew, hobbling down the

road. He passed through our village every week. He was called "Père

Noël" (Father Christmas) because of his big beard. He was seventy-five

years old. It was the 29th of August, about 8 o'clock in the morning.

Officers ordered twelve men to step out from the ranks. They took the

old man and tied him to a tree. An officer ordered the men to shoot.

One or two of the sous-officers fired when the men fired. So they shot

Père Noël. The villagers found thirteen bullet holes in him.

"That day the soldiers burned the first four houses of our village.

They made a big blaze, and if the wind had turned the whole village

would have burned.

"The commander came to our hospital. He patted me on the cheek and said

he had a big daughter at home like me, and she was in Red Cross work

like me."

"He said he was very thirsty. I gave him three glasses of water. I had

good wine in the cellar, but not for him. He talked with the doctor and

me. He asked for the Burgomaster. We said he had gone away. He asked

for those next in authority to the Burgomaster. We said they had gone

away.

"'Why? Why?' asked the commander. 'The Belgians have told you we are

barbarians, that is why. We have done things a little regrettable,

but we were forced to it by the Belgians. The colonel whose place I

took was killed by a little girl, fourteen years old. She fired at him

point-blank. We shot the girl and burned the village.'

"Then the French doctor with me asked the commander why his men had

burned the four farmhouses. They were making a bright blaze with their

barns of hay. We could see it.

"'Why, that--that's nothing,' said the commander. ('Ce n'est rien.

C'est tout petit peu.')

"A sous-officer came in to our hospital. He showed us a bottle of

Bordeaux which he had taken from the cellar of one of our houses. He

said:

"'I know it is good wine. I sold it myself to the woman a couple of

months ago. I thought she wouldn't have had time to drink it all up.'

"'You know France?' asked the doctor.

"'I know it better than many Frenchmen,' replied the officer. 'For

eight years I have been a wine agent in the Marne district.'

"'At Rheims?'

"'At Rheims.'

"'For the house of Pommery?'

"'No, no. Not that house.'

"After the fighting of August 27 and 28, some of the peasants began

to come back to their homes. Near us at the little village of

Thin-le-Moutier a few returned. Nine old men and boys came back on the

morning of the 29th. The Germans put them against a wall and shot them.

I saw traces of blood on the wall and bullet marks. The youngest boy

was too frightened to stand quietly against the wall. He struggled.

So they tied him to a signpost. I saw traces of his blood on the

post. The old sacristan of the village church was forced to witness

the shooting. The bodies were guarded by a sentinel for three days. On

the third day, August 31, a German officer ordered an old man and his

wife, of the place, to bring a cart. They carried the bodies to the

graveyard. The officer had the two old people dig one deep hole. The

old man asked permission to take out the bodies, one by one. But the

officer had the cart upturned, and the bodies, all together, dumped

into the hole.

"A few days later a poor woman came along the road, asking every one

she met if anybody had seen her boys. They were among the nine that had

been shot.

"A sous-officer, a Jew named Goldstein, a second lieutenant, came to

our hospital. While our French doctor was held downstairs Lieutenant

Goldstein took out the medical notes about the cases from the pocket

of the doctor's military coat. I protested. I said that it was not

permitted by international law.

"'What do you make of the convention of Geneva?' I asked him.

"'Ah, I laugh at it" he answered. "He was a professor of philosophy at

Darmstadt."

With all the methodical work of murder and destruction the figure of

the officer in command is always in the foreground.

The Curé of Gerbéviller said to me:

"They ordered me to go on my knees before the major. As I did not go

down on the ground, an officer, who was there, quickly gave me a blow

with the bayonet in the groin.

"'Your parishioners are the traitors, the assassins; they have fired

on our soldiers with rifles; they are going to get fire, all of your

people,' the major said to me.

"I replied, No, that was not possible, that at Gerbéviller there were

only old men, women, and children.

"'No, I have seen them; the civilians have fired. Without doubt,

it is not you who have fired, but it is you who have organized

the resistance; it is you who have excited the patriotism of your

parishioners, above all, among your young men. Why have you taught your

young men the use of arms?'

"Without giving me time to respond, they led me away. They took me

to the middle of the street in front of my house, with five of my

poor old ones. A soldier was going to find a tent cord and tie us all

together. They did not permit me to go into my house. They brought out

afterwards before me five other of my parishioners, as well as three

little chasseurs à pied that they were going to make prisoners. We

waited there an hour. I saw passing a group of five of my people tied.

I thought: What is going to happen to them?

"At that moment a captain on horseback arrived in front of us, reined

up his horse in excitement, pulled his foot out of the stirrup and

kicked our chasseurs in the groin. One of my people who was with me

cried out: 'Oh, the pigs....'"

The Great German Staff believe these things are buried deep in burned

cottages and village graves. They believe an early peace will wipe

out the memory of that insolence. They have forgotten the thousands

of eye-witnesses, of whom I have met some dozens, and of whom I am

one. They cannot kill us who live to tell what we have seen them do.

They cannot destroy a thousand diaries of German soldiers that tell

the abominations they committed. This record will become a part of

history. They thought to wipe out their cruelty in success. But the

names of their victims are known, and the circumstance of their death.

Not in China alone have they made their face a horror for a thousand

years, but wherever there is respect for weakness and pity for little

children.

X

THE EVIDENCE

I have told in these chapters of the peasants of Northern France, and

I have given their life in war in their own words. I want to tell here

how this material was gathered, because the power of its appeal rests

on the recognition of its accuracy. A small part of the testimony I

followed in long hand as it was spoken. The rest, three-quarters of

the total testimony, was taken down in short-hand by one or the other

of two stenographers. I have used about one-fifth of the collected

material.

My companions were the well-known American writers, Will Irwin and

Herbert Corey. Other companions have been Lieutenant Louis Madelin,

the distinguished historian, whose work on the French Revolution was

crowned by the French Academy; Lieutenant Jules Basdevant, Professor of

International Law at the University of Grenoble; Lieutenant Monod, once

of Columbia University, and always a friend of our country; Captain

Callet, Professor of Geography at Saint-Cyr, now of the Etat Major of

the Third Army; and the Baron de la Chaise. I don't wish to imply that

the French Army is exclusively composed of scholarly gentlemen with an

established position in the world of letters. But it happened to be the

good pleasure of the French Minister of War and of the Foreign Office

to make of our trips a delightful social experience. Most important,

these men are worthy witnesses of the things I have seen, and the

statements I have recorded.

In the civil world the corroborating witnesses are equally

authoritative. I was accompanied, for much of the territory visited, by

Leon Mirman, Prefect of the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle.

It is no easy job to penetrate the war zone, wander through villages at

leisure, and establish relations of confidence with the peasants. The

whole experience would have been impossible but for the help of Émile

Hovelaque. This distinguished essayist, Director of Public Education,

went with us to all the villages. The success of the visit was due to

him. He understands American public opinion more accurately than any

other man whom I have met abroad. His human sympathy wins the peasants.

A woman brought me her burned granddaughter, five years old. A mother

brought me the cap of her fourteen-year-old son, and the rope with

which the Germans had hanged him. A woman told me how her mother,

seventy-eight years old, was shot before her eyes. I could not have had

their stories, I should not have been permitted to enter these secret

places of their suffering, if it had not been for Monsieur Hovelaque.

The pain it cost them to tell these things I shall not forget. There

was one decent married woman, within a few weeks of the birth of her

child by a German father, who had been outraged by German soldiers. She

had never before told her story, because of the shame of it. She had

not told her parents nor her sister. I cannot forget that she told it

to me. I cannot rest easily till her suffering and the suffering of the

others with whom I have been living for two years means something to

my people at home. I have kept all personal feeling out of my record.

It would have been unforgivable if, in rendering the ruin of Lorraine,

I had given way to anger. But this I have not done. I have only added

many days of detailed work on evidence that was already conclusive. But

this coolness of reporting does not mean that I think these details of

cruelty should leave us detached spectators.

Let us remember these peasants when the Allies advance to the Rhine.

Let us remember them when Belgium is indemnified, when Alsace and

Lorraine are cut loose, when the German military power is crushed, when

the individual officers who ordered these acts are singled out for the

extremity of punishment. We must teach our memory not to forget.

Certain German officers must be executed. General Clauss must be

executed. He has left a trail of blood. The officers in command of the

17th and the 60th Bavarian Regiments, who slaughtered the women, the

children and the old men of Gerbéviller, must be executed. The officers

of the 2nd and 4th Regiments of Bavarian Infantry, who murdered fifty

men, women and children of Nomeny, in a cold, methodical hate, with a

peculiar care for the women, must be executed.

In the closing passages of Browning's "Ring and the Book," the aged

prelate, about to go before his maker, is confronted with the task of

giving judgment. Count Guido, intelligent and powerful, had murdered

Pompilia and her parents. He did it by the aid of four assassins. Pope

Innocent, eighty-six years old, is called on to decide whether the five

guilty men shall be killed for their evil doings. Friends urge him to

be merciful. The aged Pope replies:

How it trips

Silvery o'er the tongue. "Remit the death!

Forgive....

Herein lies the crowning cogency

That in this case the spirit of culture speaks,

Civilization is imperative.

Give thine own better feeling play for once!

Mercy is safe and graceful....

Pronounce, then, for our breath and patience fail."

"I will, sirs: but a voice other than yours

Quickens my spirit. Quis pro Domino?

'Who is upon the Lord's side?'"

So he orders that Count Guido and his henchmen be killed on the morrow.

"Enough, for I may die this very night

And how should I dare die, this man let live?"

XI

SISTER JULIE

This is the story of Sister Julie. The Germans entered her village of

Gerbéviller, where she was head of the poor-house and hospital. As

they came southward through the place they burned every house on every

street, 475 houses. In a day they wiped out seven centuries of humble

village history. In her little street they burned Numbers 2, 4, 6, 8,

10, and 12, but they did not burn Number 14, the house where Sister

Julie lived. There they stopped, for she stopped them. And the twenty

houses beyond her hospital still stand, because that August day there

was a great woman in that little village. They killed men, women and

children throughout the village, but they did not kill the thirteen

French wounded soldiers whom she was nursing, nor the five Roman

Catholic sisters whom she directed as Mother Superior. Outside of a

half dozen generals, she is perhaps the most famous character whom the

war has revealed, and one of the greatest personages whom France has

produced: even France in her long history. The last days of Gerbéviller

live in her story. I write her account word for word as she gives it.

Her recital is touched with humor in spite of the horror that lay

heaped around her. She raises the poignard of the German Colonel: you

see it held over her head ready to strike. By pantomime she creates the

old paralytic men, the hobbling women, the man who went "fou."

[Illustration: The first woman of France: the peasant Sister Julie,

wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. She held up the German Army

and saved the wounded French in her hospital.]

Because she remained through the days of fire and blood, and succored

his troops, General Castelnau cited her in an Order of the Day. The

Legion of Honor has placed its scarlet ribbon on the black of her

religious dress. The great of France--the President and the Premier,

senators and poets--have come to see her where she still lives on in

the ruins of the little village.

Amélie Rigard, whose religious name is Sister Julie, is a peasant

woman, sixty-two years old, belonging to the Order of Saint Charles

of Nancy. She is of the solid peasant type, with square chin and

wide brown eyes. Everything about her is compact, deep-centered,

close-growing; the fingers are stubby, the arms held closely to the

body, and when the gesture comes it is a strong pushing out from the

frame, as if pushing away a weight. Whenever she puts out power, she

seems to be delivering a straight blow with the full weight of the

body. With Sister Julie it is not only a genius of simple goodness.

She carries a native shrewdness, with a salient tang. She knows life.

This is no meek person, easily deceived by people, thinking every

one good and harmless. She reads motives. Power is what I feel in

her--direct, sheer power. The wonder is not that she rose to one of the

supreme crises of history, and did a work which has passed into the

consciousness of France. The wonder is that she remained hidden in a

country village for sixty-two years. Her gift of language, her strength

of nature, had vitality enough to burn through obscurity. The person

she made me think of was that great man whom I once knew, Dwight Moody.

Here was the same breadth of beam, the simplicity, the knowledge of

human nature, the same native instinct for the fitting word that comes

from being fed on the greatest literature in the world, and from using

the speech of powerful, uneducated persons. When she entered the room,

the room was filled. When she left, there was a vacancy.

Here follows the account in her own words, of the last days of

Gerbéviller. The phrase that speaks through all her recital is "_feu et

sang_," "fire and blood." The Germans said on entering that they would

give "fire and blood" to the village. The reason was this: A handful of

French chasseurs, about sixty in number, had held up the German Army

for several hours, in order to give the French Army time to retreat.

This battle had taken place at the bridge outside the village. When

at last the Germans broke through, they were irritated by the firm

resistance which had delayed their plans. So they vented their ill-will

by burning the houses and murdering the peasants.

SISTER JULIE'S STORY

The Germans reached the Lunéville road at the entrance of Gerbéviller

at 10 minutes after seven in the morning. They saw the barricades, for

our troops had built a barricade, and they said to a woman, Madame

Barthélemy:

"Madame, remove the barricades." As she waited undecided for a few

seconds, they said:

"You refuse. Then fire and blood."

They then began to set fire to all the houses and they shot six men.

They threw a man into an oven, a baker, Joseph Jacques, a fine fellow

of fifty years of age, married, with children. It was necessary to eat,

even at Gerbéviller, and it was necessary to work out a way to make

bread. The former baker had been mobilized, and his good old papa was

infirm and unable to work. So Monsieur Jacques was busy at this time

with the baking. They killed him when they came. It was about eight

o'clock in the morning. The fires of the oven had already started.

For a long time I did not believe it, but I have had a confirmation

since. You will see how by what follows. When there was an attack in

Champagne, a youth of Gerbéviller, Florentin, whose father was the

gardener at the chateau, found himself in front of certain Germans who

wished to give themselves up as prisoners. He looked at them, and said:

"You are not 'Comrades' ('Kamerade' is the word the German calls out

when he surrenders). You know what you did at Gerbéviller. So don't

call yourselves 'Comrades.'"

A German said to him, "It was I who flung the man into the oven. I was

ordered to do it, or else I should have been 'kaput.'" (This is slang

for a "dead one").

A search was then made, and in the oven was found the thigh bone of the

unfortunate baker.

I have seen many other things. I have seen a man, Barthélemy of

Chanteheux. I have seen that man spread out spitted on the ground by a

bayonet.

Here is what they have done. It was half-past six in the evening. I

heard their fifes. Our little chasseurs had retreated. The Germans

had made fire and blood all the day long. I saw them and watched them

well in this street. I was at the door. Yes, there were six of us at

this door. They put fire to the houses, house by house, shouting as

they burned them. Picture to yourself a human wave, where the bank

has been broken down. They poured into the street precipitately, with

their "lightning conductors," which shone brilliant in the sun (the

point of their helmets). They sat down, seven and eight in front of a

house. They kept going by in great numbers, but these who were ordered

remained behind in front of each house. There these sat before the

houses, while those others went past without a word. They put their

knapsacks on the ground. They took out something that looked like

macaroni. They hurled it into the house. There wasn't a pane of glass

left in our windows, because of the pom-pom of cannon on the Fraimbois

road. I saw them ordered to go on with their work of firing the houses,

when they coolly stopped for a tiny minute to talk. Then, afresh, I saw

them look in their knapsacks, and next I heard a detonation. But it was

not a detonation like that of the report of a rifle or revolver. This

was like the crackle of powder priming, of crackers, if you prefer.

They were incendiary pastilles which they had thrown into the fire to

hasten the destruction. At the end of a few minutes the fire picked up

with greater intensity, and directly the roofs broke in one after the

other with a crash. Many of our people did not see the burning, because

they stayed in the cellars, lying hidden there, frightened, under the

rubbish.

In one of the burning houses a woman was living in her room on the

first floor. Two Germans came to our house and said:

"My sister, come quick and look for a woman who is in the fire."

The woman was Madame Zinius. It is our sisters who went there at their

risk and peril.

The Germans had their destruction organized. In all the well-to-do

houses they began by plundering. They did not burn these as they passed.

A few minutes later we saw five or six vehicles draw up, the

"Guimbardes," vans, for plundering and carrying away the linen and the

clothing. Women came with these vans, young women, well dressed, rich

enough. They were not "bad."

[When the Germans captured a town, their organization of loot was

sometimes carried out by women, who brought up motor lorries, which

the soldiers filled with the plunder from the larger houses, and which

the women then drove away. Sometimes these women were dressed as Red

Cross nurses. I can continue the proof by other witnesses elsewhere

than in Gerbéviller. The organization of murder, arson and pillage is

participated in by German men and women.]

Monsieur Martin had at his place many sewing-machines, with the

trade-mark _Victoria_. The Germans carried them away.

I have told you that they threw persons into the fire. Monsieur Pottier

was forced back into the fire. His wife moaned and called for help.

"Help me get my husband out of the fire," she cried.

"Go die with him," they answered her, and she, too, was pushed into the

flames.

"They" kept coming on, playing the fife. We awaited them at the door.

Only thirteen wounded French soldiers had stayed with us. They had been

scattered through the different rooms. But we put them up in one room

in order to simplify the service and give them a bit of "coddling."

We saw four officers on horseback approach. They dismounted in front of

our town-hall, twenty meters away. They entered the building, and there

they put everything upside down. They tumbled out all the waste paper,

the entire office desk, determined to find the records.

They remounted and rode up in front of our house. They sat there

looking at us for a moment. They had the manner guttural and hard,

which is the German way. They began speaking German. When they showed

signs of listening to my reply, I said to them:

"Speak French. That is the least courtesy you can show me. Speak

French, I beg of you, and I will answer you."

"You have French soldiers hidden in your house with their arms," said

one of them.

And he tramped hither and thither like a madman, and he sputtered and

clattered. (Et il se promenait de long en large comme un fou, et il

bavait et degoisait.)

I answered:

"We have no French soldiers here------"

The German: "You have French soldiers."

"Yes, we have French soldiers, but they are wounded. They have no arms."

One of them, mighty, with a truculent air, pulled out his sword.

"They have their arms," he shouted, and he brandished his sword.

"They won't hurt you. Enter," I said.

A Lorraine to say to a German "Enter," that means mischief. (Un

Lorraine dire à un Allemand "Entrez": Que cela fait mal!)

Two of the officers dismounted. Each of them hid a dagger somewhere in

his breast. That thought that they could harm my poor little wounded

men made me turn my look a few seconds on the action. And as they took

out their revolvers at the same time, I did not see where they had

hidden the daggers.

The finger on the trigger, they nodded their head for me to go on in

front of them. I went in front and led the way into this room where

there was nothing but four walls, and no furniture except the thirteen

beds of my wounded. I entered by this door, not knowing in the least

what they wanted to do. Imagine this room with the first bed here, and

then the second here, et cetera, et cetera. I went automatically to

the first and, more involuntarily still, placed my hand on the bed of

wounded Number One, a dragoon wounded by a horse.

See, now, what took place: the imposing one of them walked in with his

dagger in his left hand (son poignard, la gauche); the other man with

his revolver was there, ready. With his dagger in his left hand, the

first man stripped the bed for its full length, lifting the sheet,

the coverlet and the bedclothes. He looked down in a manner evil,

malevolent, ill-natured (méchante, malveillante, mauvaise).

No response from the wounded men.

He did not say anything when he had seen what he wished to see. He

stepped up to the head of the wounded man. I made a half turn toward

him. I was separated from him by our wounded man who was between the

two of us.

He said to my poor unfortunate, with a harsh gesture:

"You and your men, you make our wounded suffer on the battlefield. You

cut off their ears. You put out their eyes. You make them suffer."

Still no response. (Pas réponse encore.)

When I saw the state of mind he was in, I went round at once on the

left side of the wounded, and I said:

"This is a wounded man, and this place is the Red Cross. Here we do

well for all and ill for none, and if you mean well, do not hurt us.

Leave us in peace as you do everywhere else. We will nurse your wounded

and nurse them well."

He had turned around to watch the smoke of the fires which was pouring

into the room through that opening, and he stood there several seconds

with set face.

My little wounded men hardly ventured to breathe. Seeing that calm,

that brooding which did not bode anything good, I exerted myself to

repeat once more:

"If you mean well, do not hurt us. We will nurse your wounded."

And, at last, to help him come out of his speechlessness:

"See, there, everything is on fire over there."

He answered me:

"We are not barbarians. No, we are not barbarians. And if the civilians

had not fired on us with rifles, we should not have had any burning

here."

"Those were not civilians. Those were soldiers."

"Civilians," he said.

"No. No. No. Soldiers."

"Civilians," he repeated; "I know well what I am saying. I saw them."

He made a gesture to show me that men had fired, while he cried in my

ears with all his might "Civilians."

He went in front of me, and stripped the second bed. I feared that he

might speak to my wounded, and I thought I should do well if I placed

myself at the head of each of the beds as he uncovered them. I stepped

between the two beds, and I feared what would come of it all. In this

way I made the round of the room with them, standing at each of the

thirteen points, always placing myself at the pillow of each wounded

man, while "they" advanced bed by bed, and cautiously.

I did not know how they had arranged their weapons, but it seemed to me

that they always had their finger placed on the trigger.

The second man with his revolver held his gun a little low.

I followed them, shutting the door, when they went to the Infirmary of

the old men. They did not say anything and they did not promise that

they would not set fire to us. How should I go about getting that

promise?

A third time I asked them:

"It is clearly understood that we shall nurse your wounded, and that

you will not burn this house."

"They" start to leave, and go toward the door, walking slowly. When the

chief was just leaving, I said again to him:

"It is clearly understood that you will not harm us nor burn our house."

"No, no."

I looked to see if he gave the order to any of his soldiers. I

didn't see that, but I noticed one of our sisters who was drawing a

wheelbarrow with an old man in it, who weighed at least seventy-five

kilos and who was paralyzed.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"Over there; the soldiers tell me that they are coming to set fire to

the hospital," she replied. "One of our old men cried out to me, 'My

sister, do not make us stay here. Let us go and die in peace, since

they are killing everybody here. We would rather leave and die of

hunger in the fields.' So I said, 'Come along, then.'"

For the moment I am all alone in this room with my thirteen wounded

men. I said to myself, "My God, what will become of me all alone in

the midst of fire and blood."

I stood a few seconds in the doorway and then went in to see our little

soldiers.

"My poor children, I ask your forgiveness for bringing in such a

visitation, but I assure you that I thought my last quarter hour had

come. I thought they were going to kill us all."

"My sister, stay with us," they said; "stay with us."

"I will bear the impossible, my children, to save your life."

I remained there a few minutes, and then two German soldiers presented

themselves with fixed bayonets. I stepped down the two stairs; see what

an escort was there for me!

"Why is this house shut up? There are French in it, lying hidden with

their arms."

"The owner has been mobilized, and so has gone away. His wife and

children have gone away."

They kept on insisting: "The French. Hidden. In there."

They indicated the place with a gesture.

I thought to myself, What is happening? What will they do? Here are the

men who will set fire to the house.

"Why will you set fire to this house?" I asked. "Your chiefs don't wish

it. They have promised me that they won't burn here. You want to set

fire here out of excitement (par contagion). Will you put out the fire?"

I said again to them:

"It is wicked to set fire here, because we shall nurse your wounded."

While this was going on, our sisters upstairs were not able to subdue

the poor father Prévost. He is an old man of eighty-eight years, partly

paralyzed in leg and arm. I was at the doorway. I heard him call out:

"They shoved me into the fire. They have gone away and left me. I am

going to fall out of the window."

I climbed to the fourth floor of the house where he was, to try to

attract him away, but he did not wish to come. He was foolish. I knew

that he was fond of white sugar. I went up to him and showed him the

sugar. I took his jacket and put his snowboots on him, so that he could

get away more quickly. You know those boots which fasten by means of

two or three buckles, very primitive, and which are so speedily put on.

At last I led him to the edge of the doorway here.

The Germans saw him and said: "It is a lunatic asylum, don't you see?"

so they said to each other. "They want to kill the sisters. There is no

need of going into that house. It is a lunatic asylum."

That is the reason, I believe, why they didn't come into the house

during the night. They entered the chapel of the hospital.

While I was with the Germans, some of their like had come to our

Infirmary to say:

"You must leave here because we are going to set fire."

They then said to the old people:

"We have orders to burn the Infirmary."

Among the number we had the poor mother André, Monsieur Porté, who

walked hobbling like this; Monsieur Georget, who is hung on only one

wire, and Monsieur Leroy, who isn't hung on any (qui ne tenait qu'à un

fil, Monsieur Leroy qui ne tenait plus non plus).

[Sister Julie limped across the room. She bent her back double. She

went feeble. In swift pantomime she revealed each infirmity of the aged

people. She created the picture of a flock of sick and crippled sheep

driven before wolves.]

At four o'clock they were led away to Maréville. Those of whom I tell

you died in the course of the year. Death came likewise to seven others

who would not have died but for that.

The next morning we had German wounded. No one to care for them. What

to do? I said to a wounded Lieutenant-Colonel:

"You have given us many wounded to tend. Where are your majors?"

See what he answered me. "They have abandoned us."

That evening this Lieutenant-Colonel said to me in a rough voice:

"Some bread, my sister."

"You haven't any bread?" I said. "You have burned our bakery and killed

our baker in it. You have burned our butcher shop with our butcher in

it. And now you have no bread and no meat. Eat potatoes as we have to."

He was hit in the calf of the leg, but the leg bone was not touched,

nor the femur; it was not a severe wound. He unrolled his bandage and

showed me his treatment, assuming an air of pain.

"Aie! Aie!" he cried.

Ah! "They" are more soft (douillets) than our poor little French. I

began to dress his leg.

"It is terrible, my sister, this war. Terrible for you and for us also.

If the French were the least bit intelligent, they would ask for peace

at once. Belgium is ours. In three days we shall be at Paris."

The bandage tightened on his wound. "Ah," he said.

I replied to him: "It is your Kaiser who is the cause of all this."

"Oh, no. Not the Kaiser. The Kaiser. Oh, the Kaiser." As he pronounced

the word "Kaiser," he seemed to be letting something very good come out

of his mouth, as if he were savoring it.

The bandage went round once more. "Ah," he said.

"It is then his son, the Crown Prince, who is responsible?" I continued.

"Not at all. Not at all; it is France."

"France is peace-loving," I replied.

"It is Serbia, because the Austrian Archduke was killed by a Serbian."

The 29th or 30th of the month shells fell occasionally over our roof.

My famous wounded German was frightened.

"My sister, I must be carried to the cellar at once."

"There's no danger. The French never fire on the Red Cross," I said to

him.

"I am a poor wounded man. So carry me to the cellar."

I gave in. I carried him to the cellar, and he stayed there some days.

XII

SISTER JULIE--CONTINUED

During the days of fire and blood Sister Julie was acting mayor of

Gerbéviller. It was no light job, for she had to steer an invading

army away from her hospital of wounded men, and she was the source

of courage for the village of peasants, who were being hunted and

tortured. Many months have passed, and nothing is left of those days

but crumbled stone and village graves and an everlasting memory. But

she is still the soul of Gerbéviller. Pilgrims come to her from the

provinces of France, and give her money for her poor and sick. The

village still has need of her. I saw her with the woman whose aged

mother was shot before her eyes, and with the mother whose little boy

was murdered.

She went on with her story:

SISTER JULIE'S STORY

As soon as the Germans came they began their work by taking hostages,

the same number as that of the municipal councilors. They led them

all away to the end of town by the bridge, on the road which leads to

Rambervillers. A German passed, and when he saw them he shouted out:

"See the flock of sheep. They are taking you away to be shot." And he

pointed out to them with his fingers the place of their torment.

In the morning four or five officers arrived to hear testimony from

some of the men. It was Leonard, the grocer, who told me that four

persons were questioned.

"Stand there," They said to them.

"Which is the one who lives next door to the hospital?" an officer

asked.

Leonard stepped forward.

"Is it not true that the Lady Superior of the Hospital organized her

people for the purpose of firing on our wounded with rifles?"

Leonard replied:

"I am sure that it is not so. And even if she were to order it, they

would not obey."

"Do you know what you are in danger of in telling lies? We have

seen the bullets come from the hospital. We are sure. Go write your

deposition."

"I can't do it," answered Leonard.

He was forced to write his deposition. When he had finished it, he

presented it to the chief.

"Sign it, and follow me. I am sure that I saw bullets come from that

part of the street. Certainly men were there who fired on our chiefs."

They also said to him that our chasseurs had fired on them from the

chateau of Madame de Lambertye, and they themselves went to get a

statement at the spot to see if it was possible to hit a man from the

chateau and kill him.

I had seen the turrets of the chateau of Lambertye burning about

half-past nine in the morning and all the upper part. That was by

incendiary bombs. The day after the fires we saw empty cans, about

sixty of them, the kind used for motor-car gasoline, lying about in the

garden of the chateau.

Besides all that, there are still the bodily indignities which must

not be passed over in silence. The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth,

"they" used fire and blood. The following days "they" amused themselves

by teasing everybody. The poor Monsieur Jacob, who makes lemonade,

was struck and thrown to the ground. Then they spit in his face, and

threatened to shoot him, without any reason.

They were drunk with the wine of Gerbéviller, if one is to judge from

their helmets, which had lost their lightning conductors.

The sacred images of the church were not respected. It was the evening

of the twenty-ninth. A soldier-priest, Monsieur the Abbé Bernard, went

to see a tiny bit of what was taking place.

"Do you know, my sister, what has been done to the ciborium (sacred

vessel for the sacrament)?"

I went with him. We came to the church. We entered with difficulty. A

bell blocked us from passing, and shells had broken down the vaulting

in many places. We went on our way, but always with difficulty. We

saw the crucifix which had the feet broken by blow on blow from the

butt-end of rifles. We still went on, and saw the pipes of the organ

lying on the ground. We came in front of the tabernacle (the box which

holds the sacred vessels). There we counted eighteen bullet holes

which had perforated the door around the lock. The displacement of

air produced by the bursting of the bullet had forced the screws to

jump out. "They" had not thought that this little dwelling-place was

a strongbox and that it had flat bolts, both vertical and horizontal.

We were now agitated to see if anything else had taken place in the

tabernacle.

Monsieur, the Abbé Bernard, took a hammer, and as gently as he could he

succeeded in making a little opening just large enough for one to see

that there was something else inside. With the barrel of an unloaded

gun, he then made a full opening. The ciborium, the sacred vessel, was

uncovered and had been projected against the bottom. The cover, fallen

to one side, had a number of bullet marks, as the ciborium itself had.

The bullets in penetrating the front of the tabernacle had made

everywhere little holes, and these holes were in a shape nearly

symmetrical around the lock. At the rear there were many much larger

holes.

Monsieur, the Abbé, took those sacred things and the cover of the altar

and carried them to the chapel.

The 17th and the 60th Bavarian Regiments were the ones that did this

work. One-third at least of these men were protestant, and among them

were many returned convicts.

One of our sisters saw a book of a German officer who was nursed here,

and noticed that he was from Bitsch.

(Bitsch is a Roman Catholic town in Lorraine which long belonged to

France, and which held out against the Germans almost to the end of the

Franco-Prussian War).

"How is this?" she asked. "You are from Bitsch, and yet it is you who

dare to do the things that you have done."

"We are under orders," he answered. "The further we go into France,

the worse we shall do. It is commanded. Otherwise we shall be killed

ourselves."

Let us return to the Germans who were applying fire and blood. They led

away fifteen men, old men, to a shed at about quarter past ten. Later

they made them leave the shed. General Clauss, who was in command of

two regiments, was sitting under the oak tree which you will be able

to see on your return trip. He was in front of a table charged with

champagne, and was drinking, during the time that his soldiers were

arranging the poor unhappy old men, getting them ready to be shot. They

had bound them in groups of five, and they shot them in three batches.

They now lie buried in the same spot.

The General said: "When I have filled my cup and as I raise it to my

lips, give them fire and blood."

* * * * *

We said good-by to Sister Julie. I walked down the street to the

ruins of the chateau of Lambertye. Sister Julie has told of the empty

gasoline cans that were left in the garden of the chateau. They had

served their purpose well: I stepped through the litter that was once a

beautiful home. But there was one work which flaming oil could not do.

I went into the garden, and came to the grotto of the chateau. It is a

lovely secret place, hidden behind a grove, and under the shadow of a

great rock. It glows red from the fundamental stone of its structure,

with jewel-like splinters of many-colored pebbles sunk in the parent

stone. Fire, the favorite German instrument for creating a new world,

could not mar the stout stone and pebbles of the little place, but such

beauty must somehow be obliterated. So the careful soldiers mounted

ladders and chipped to pieces some of the ceiling, painfully with

hammers. The dent of the hammers is visible throughout the vaulting.

The mosaic was too tough even for their patience, and they had to leave

it mutilated but not destroyed.

Several times in Gerbéviller we see this infinite capacity for taking

pains. The thrusting of the baker into his own oven is a touch that a

less thoughtful race could never have devised. When they attacked the

tabernacle containing the sacramental vessel of the Roman Catholic

church, Sister Julie has told how they placed the eighteen bullets

that defiled it in pattern. The honest methodical brain is behind each

atrocity, and the mind of the race leaves its mark even on ruins.

Finally, when they shot the fifteen white-haired old men, the murders

were done in series, in sets of five, with a regular rhythm. I can

produce photographs of the dead bodies of these fifteen old men as

they lay grouped on the meadow. We stood under the oak tree where the

officer sat as he drank his toasts to death. We looked over to the

little spot where the old men were herded together and murdered. Leon

Mirman, Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, said to us as we stood there:

"I, myself, came here at the beginning of September, 1914. Fifteen

old men were here, lying one upon the other, in groups of five. I

saw them, their clothes drooping. One was able to see also by their

attitude that two or three had been smoking their pipes just before

dying. Others held their packets of tobacco in their hands. I saw these

fifteen hostages, fifteen old men, some ten days after they had been

killed; the youngest must have been sixty years of age.

"We shall set up here a commemorative monument which will tell to

future generations the thing that has taken place here."

For centuries the race has lived on a few episodes, short as the turn

of a sunset. The glancing helmet of Hector that frightened one tiny

child, the toothless hound of Ulysses that knew the beggar man--always

it is the little lonely things that shake us. Vast masses of men and

acres of guns blur into unreality. The battle hides itself in thick

clouds, swaying in the night. But the cry that rang through Gerbéviller

does not die away in our ears. Sister Julie has given episodes of a

bitter brevity which the imagination of the race will not shake off. It

is impossible to look out on the world with the same eyes after those

flashes of a new bravery, a new horror. I find this sudden revelation

in the lifting of the cup with the toast that signed the death of the

old men. The officer was drinking a sacrament of death by murder. It is

as if there in that act under the lonely tree in the pleasant fields

of Gerbéviller the new religion of the Germans had perfected its rite.

That rite of the social cup, held aloft in the eyes of comrades, has

been a symbol for good will in all the ages. Brotherhood was being

proclaimed as the host of the feast looked out on a table of comrades.

At last in the fullness of time the rite, always honored, was lifted

into the unassailable realm of poetry, when one greater man came who

went to his death blithely from the cup that he drank with his friends.

There it has remained homely and sacred in the thought of the race.

Suddenly under the oak tree of Gerbéviller the rite has received a

fresh meaning. The cup has been torn from the hands of the Nazarene. By

one gesture the German officer reversed the course of history. He sat

there very lonely, and he drank alone. The cup that he tasted was the

death of men.

It is no longer the lifting of all to a common fellowship. It no longer

means "I who stand here am prepared to die for you": pledge of a union

stronger even than death. It is suddenly made the symbol of a greater

gospel: "I drink to your death. I drink alone."

ADDENDUM

In the month of November, 1915, the "American Hostels for Refugees"

were founded by Mrs. Wharton and a group of American friends in

Paris to provide lodgings and a restaurant for the Belgians and

French streaming in from burning villages and bombarded towns. These

people were destitute, starving, helpless and in need of immediate

aid. The work developed into an organization which cares permanently

for over 4,000 refugees, chiefly French from the invaded regions.

A system of household visiting has been organized, and not even

temporary assistance is now given to any refugee whose case has not

been previously investigated. The refugees on arrival are carefully

registered and visited. Assistance is either in the form of money

toward paying rent, of clothing, medical care, tickets for groceries

and coal, tickets for one of the restaurants of the Hostels, or

lodgings in one of the Model Lodging Houses. Over 6,000 refugees have

been provided with employment.

There are six centers for the work. One house has a restaurant where

500 meals a day are served at a charge of 10 centimes a meal, and

an "Ouvroir" where about 50 women are employed under a dressmaker,

with a day-nursery, an infant-school, a library and recreation room.

Another center is a Rest-house for women and children requiring rest

and careful feeding. Young mothers are received here after the birth

of their children, and children whose mothers are in hospital. Sixty

meals a day are served here with a special diet for invalids. Another

center contains a clothing depot, which has distributed nearly 100,000

garments, including suits of strong working clothes for the men placed

in factories; layettes, and boots. In the same building are Dispensary

and Consultation rooms. Twenty to thirty patients are cared for

daily at the Dispensary. Another house contains the Grocery Depot,

and another the office for coal-tickets. An apartment house, and two

other houses have been made into lodging houses. The apartment lets

out rooms at rents varying from 8 to 15 francs a month. One of the

houses contains free furnished lodgings for very poor women with large

families of young children. These three houses have met the need of

cheap sanitary lodgings in place of damp, dirty rooms at high rents,

where sick and well were herded together, often in one filthy bed.

Such is the work of the "American Hostels for Refugees." The present

cost of maintaining all the branches of this well-organized charity is

about five thousand dollars a month.

Mrs. Wharton has also established "American Convalescent Homes for

Refugees." Many refugees come broken in health, with chronic bronchitis

and incipient tuberculosis and even severer maladies. Seventy-one beds

are provided. There is also a house where 30 children, suffering from

tuberculosis of the bone and of the glands are being cared for. Four

thousand dollars a month should be provided at once for this work.

At the request of the Belgian Government Mrs. Wharton has founded the

"Children of Flanders Rescue Committee." The bombardment of Furnes,

Ypres, Poperinghe and the villages along the Yser drove the inhabitants

south. The Belgian Government asked Mrs. Wharton if she could receive

60 children at 48 hours' notice. The answer was "yes," and a home

established. Soon after, the Belgian Government asked Mrs. Wharton to

receive five or six hundred children. Houses were at once established,

and these houses are under the management of the Flemish Sisters who

brought the children from the cellars of village-homes, from lonely

farmhouses, in two cases from the arms of the father, killed by a

fragment of shell. Lace-schools, sewing and dress-making classes,

agriculture and gardening are carried on. Seven hundred and thirty-five

children are cared for. The monthly expense is 8,000 francs.

One of the most important charities in which Mrs. Wharton, Mrs.

Edward Tuck, and Judge Walter Berry are interested, is that for

"French Tuberculous War Victims," in direct connection with the Health

Department of the French Ministry of War. Nearly 100,000 tuberculous

soldiers have already been sent back from the French front. They must

be shown how to get well and receive the chance to get well. One

hospital is already in operation, and three large sanatoria are nearing

completion, with 100 beds each. The object is not only to cure the

sufferers, but to teach them a trade enabling them to earn their living

in the country. Tuberculous soldiers are coming daily to the offices

of this charity in ever-increasing numbers asking to be taken in. The

answer will depend on American generosity.

A group of Americans, headed by Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, whose

husband is First Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, have

instituted and carried on a "Distributing Service" in France. The name

of the organization is "Service de Distribution Américaine." It was

established on its present basis in December, 1914, and grew out of

personal work done by Mrs. Bliss since the beginning of the war. The

purpose has been to supply hospitals throughout France with whatever

they need. By the end of 1916, the results were these:

Number of towns visited 1,290

Number of hospitals inspected and supplied 3,026

Number of articles distributed 4,839,902

The Director of the organization is Russell Greeley, the secretary of

Geoffrey Dodge. The service has a garage outside the gates of Paris

with ten cars and a lorry. All the staff, except the stenographers and

packers, are volunteers.

This work for the French is connected with the American Distributing

Service for the Serbians, which was begun by sending the late Charles

R. Cross, Jr., to Serbia as a member of the American Sanitary

Commission headed by Dr. R. P. Strong, in the spring of 1915. Mr. Cross

made an investigation of the situation in Serbia at that time from the

point of view of the American Distributing Service.

In January, 1916, Mrs. Charles Henry Hawes of the Greek Red Cross, wife

of Professor Hawes of Dartmouth College, Hanover, being on her way

to Italy and Greece for the purpose of conveying relief into Albania

through Janina, offered her services to the Distributing Service for

the convoying and distribution of supplies. Mrs. Hawes's offer was

accepted and she was furnished with a small fund for the purpose of

supplies. Events forestalled her, but she succeeded in landing and

distributing to the last Serbians leaving San Giovanni di Medua, a

thousand rations. At the same time she took an active part in relief

work at Brindisi, and distributed about a thousand dollars' worth of

supplies to the Serb refugees passing through that port.

Meanwhile the French Army Medical Service had created the "Mission

de Coordination de Secours aux Armées d'Orient" for the purpose of

distributing relief supplies to the Serbian and other Allied armies

in the Balkans. A member of the Distributing Service was appointed

a member of the Mission, and a fund of 100,000 francs placed at the

disposal of the Distributing Service which thenceforward coöperated

actively in the work of the Mission. Urgent representations of the

need of help in Corfou having been made early in February to the

Mission by the French Army Medical Service, Mrs. Hawes, representing

the Distributing Service and the Mission jointly, was sent to

Corfou where she established a soup kitchen and did other valuable

relief work at Vido. She was later joined at Corfou by Countess de

Reinach-Foussemagne, Infirmière Déléguée of the Mission. Through these

two agents the Distributing Service sent to Corfou and distributed 197

cases of foodstuffs, clothing, and various articles needed, 5 cases of

medicines and 40 tins of paraffine. The Service disbursed for similar

purposes through Mrs. Hawes and Countess de Reinach, fifteen thousand

francs in cash. It was also instrumental in erecting a monument at Vido

to the Serbs who died there.

When the crisis at Corfou was at an end the field depot of the Mission

was moved to Solonica. There the Service distributed to Serbians

various shipments of relief and hospital supplies: A total of 454 cases.

The Distributing Service now has ready and is preparing to send forward

for the Serbian Army a laundry outfit, a disinfecting outfit and a

complete field surgical outfit (portable house for operating room

equipment and radiograph plant). A shipment is also going forward

for Monastir where the field depot of the Mission was established on

November 22nd, of 5,000 francs' worth of foodstuffs and other urgently

needed materials, and a larger quantity is being accumulated to be sent

forward without delay.

In addition, the Distributing Service has sent about 2,000 kilos of

hospital supplies to the Serbs in the Lazaret of Frioul, off Marseille,

and a similar quantity of material to the hospitals at Sidi-Abdallah

(Tunis), and elsewhere in Tunisia and Algeria, given over to the

treatment of Serbians.

Mrs. Bliss and her friends have also conducted a work for "frontier

children," dating from August, 1914, which has cared for French,

Belgian and Alsatian children to the number of 1,500.

APPENDIX

I

TO THE READER

This book is only a sign post pointing to the place where better men

than I have suffered and left a record. For those who wish to go

further on this road I give sources of information for facts which I

have sketched in outline.

The full authoritative account of the American Ambulance Field Service

will be found in a book called "Friends of France," written by the

young Americans who drove the cars at the front. It is one of the most

heartening books that our country has produced in the last fifty years.

Much of our recent writing has been the record of commercial success,

of growth in numbers, and of clever mechanical devices. We have been

celebrating the things that result in prosperity, as if the value of

life lay in comfort and security. But the story of these young men

is altogether a record of work done without pay, under conditions of

danger that sometimes resulted in wounds and death. Their service was

given because France was fighting for an idea. Risk and sacrifice and

the dream of equality are more attractive to young men than safety,

neutrality and commercial supremacy.

Those who wish to assure themselves that a healthy nationalism is

the method by which a people serves humanity will find an exalted

statement in Mazzini's "The Duties of Man." A correction of his

overemphasis is contained in "Human Nature in Politics," by Graham

Wallas. Valuable books on Nationality have been written by Ramsay Muir

and Holland Rose. Lord Acton's essay on Nationality in his "The History

of Freedom and Other Essays" should be consulted. He shows the defects

of the nation-State.

On the American aspects of nationality, Emile Hovelaque and Alfred

Zimmern are the two visitors who have shown clear recognition of the

spiritual weakness of our country, and at the same time have pushed

through to the cause, and so offered opportunity for amendment.

Hovelaque's articles in the _Revue de Paris_ of the spring of 1916 I

have summarized in the chapter on the Middle West. From Zimmern I have

jammed together in what follows isolated sentences of various essays.

This is of course unfair to his thought, but will serve to stimulate

the reader's interest in looking up the essays themselves.

"There is to-day no American nation. America consists at present of a

congeries of nations who happen to be united under a common federal

government. America is not a melting pot. It does not assimilate its

aliens. It is the old old story of the conflict between human instincts

and social institutions. The human soul can strike no roots in the

America of to-day. I watched the workings of that ruthless economic

process sometimes described as 'the miracle of assimilation.' I watched

the steam-roller of American industrialism--so much more terrible to me

in its consequences than Prussian or Magyar tyranny--grinding out the

spiritual life of the immigrant proletariat, turning honest, primitive

peasants into the helpless and degraded tools of the Trust magnate and

the Tammany boss. Nowhere in the world as in the United States have

false theories of liberty and education persuaded statesmen on so large

a scale to make a Babel and call it a nation."

And the remedy?

"Those make the best citizens of a new country who, like the French in

Canada and Louisiana, or the Dutch in South Africa, bear with them on

their pilgrimage, and religiously treasure in their new homes, the best

of the spiritual heritage bequeathed them by their fathers."

Alfred Zimmern is the author of "The Greek Commonwealth," contributor

to the "_Round Table_," and one of the promoters of the Workers

Educational Association. Those who wish to get his full thought on

Nationality should consult the pamphlet "Education and the Working

Class," the volume "International Relationships in the Light of

Christianity," and the _Sociological Review_ for July, 1912, and

October, 1915.

The most penetrating recent articles on the American democracy as

opposed to the cosmopolitanism of the melting pot were written by

Horace M. Kallen in issues of the New York _Nation_ of February, 1915.

Dr. Kallen is a Jewish pupil of the late William James, of outstanding

ability, the spiritual leader of the younger generation of Jews. He has

touched off a group of thinkers on the American problem, of whom one is

Randolph Bourne.

Those interested in the interweaving of French and early American

history should read the book by Ambassador Jusserand, called "With

Americans of Past and Present Days."

A careful investigation of the myth-making machinery used by nations

in war-time is given by Fernand van Langenhove in "The Growth of a

Legend"--a study based upon the German accounts of francs-tireurs and

"wicked priests" in Belgium. It is made up of German documents.

A fuller study of the German letters and diaries is contained in

the pamphlets of Professor Joseph Bedier, the books of Professor J.

H. Morgan, and the volumes by Jacques de Dampierre "L'Allemagne et

le Droit des Gens" and "Carnets de Route de Combattants Allemands."

After an examination of these German documents, no student will speak

of German atrocities as "alleged." The most careful collection of

testimony by eye-witnesses is that contained in the report of the

French Government Commission, "Rapports et Procès-Verbaux D'Enquête."

I have personally examined several of the witnesses to this report.

They are responsible witnesses. Their testimony is accurately

rendered in the Government record. I trust that some American of

high responsibility, such as Professor Stowell, of the Department of

International Law at Columbia University, will make an exhaustive study

of the German documents held by the French Ministry of War.

For the peasant incidents in the last section of my book, I refer

to the book by Will Irwin, "The Latin at War," as independent

corroboration.

II

TO NEUTRAL CRITICS

Certain points in my testimony have been challenged by persons sitting

in security, three thousand miles away from the invaded country, where

at my own cost and risk I have patiently gathered the facts on which I

have based my statements.

I have built my testimony on three classes of evidence.

First: The things I have seen. I have given names, places and dates.

Second: The testimony of eye-witnesses, made to me in the presence

of men and women, well-known in France, England and America. These

eye-witnesses I have used in precisely the same way in which a case is

built up in the courts of law.

Third: The diaries and letters written by Germans in which they

describe the atrocities they have committed. I have seen the originals

of these documents.

It is noticeable that the specific fact has never been challenged. The

date has never been found misplaced, the place has never been confused,

the person has never been declared non-existent. The denial has always

been in blanket form.

The New York _Evening Post_ says: "After the spy came the invasion, and

after the invasion came the 'steam roller,' flattening out Belgium.

This is all given in a general way."

It is given with exact specifications.

Clement Wood, in the Socialist paper, _The New York Call_, writes:

"This book attempts more of a summing up of German offenses, and,

being written to sustain an opinion rather than to give impartially

the facts, correspondingly loses in interest and persuasiveness. Its

usefulness to the general reader or the person who desires an unbiased

understanding of the conflict is slight." He speaks of "the alleged

German atrocities in Belgium."

My statements do not deal with opinion but with things seen. Apparently

it is an offense to take sides on this war. One is a trusthworthy

witness if one has seen only picturesque incidents that do not reveal

the method of warfare practiced by an invading army. One is fair-minded

only by shutting the eyes to the burned houses of Melle, Termonde and

Lorraine, and the dead bodies of peasants; and by closing the ears to

the statements of outraged persons. One is judicial only by defending

the Germans against the acts of their soldiers, and the written

evidence of their officers and privates.

The _Independent_ says: "He saw the wreck of the convent school, but

learned none of the sisters had been harmed."

The critic selects that portion of my testimony on the convent school

which relieves the Germans of the charge of rape. As always, I have

given every bit of evidence in favor of the Germans that came my

way. I have told of the individual soldier who was revolted by his

orders. I have published the diaries of German soldiers which revealed

nobility. But is that scrupulous care of mine a justification to the

_Independent_ for omitting to tell the humiliations visited on that

convent school?

My testimony of bayonetted dying peasants is "credible in so far as no

testimony from the other side was obtainable."

"Mr. Gleason also saw the ruins of bombarded Belgian cities."

Is it fair of the _Independent_ to be inaccurate? My evidence is not

of bombarded Belgian cities. It is of Belgian cities, burned house by

house, with certain houses spared where "Do not burn by incendiary

methods" was chalked on the door.

"Otherwise his evidence is at second or third hand mainly."

On the contrary, I have quoted witnesses whom I can produce.

The _Times_, of Los Angeles, says: "He is quite rabid. He writes with

the frenzy of a zealot."

I do not think the colorless recitation of facts, fortified by name,

place and date, is rabid or frenzied.

The _Literary Digest_ says: "Of the 'atrocities' in Belgium, we find

reports of a 'friend,' or a 'friend's friend,' or what 'some one saw or

heard.'"

I have told what I myself saw and heard.

"Fair-minded readers will be inclined to reserve judgment."

But in the light cast by eye-witnesses and German diaries, we have

reserved judgment too long. Our American Revolution would have been a

drearier affair, if the French had reserved judgment. In a crisis the

need is to form a judgment in time to make it tell for the cause of

justice. Truth-seeking is a living function of the mind.

Another critic says: "By careful reading one sees that, while it

pretends to give real evidence, there isn't any that is real except

where not essential. Mr. Gleason attempts to belittle the stories of

priests inciting girls to deeds of violence."

I do not attempt to belittle those stories. I disprove them on the

evidence given by German generals, whose names I cite. Because I

defend Roman Catholic priests from slander does not mean that I am

anti-Protestant. Because I prove that Belgium and France have suffered

injustice does not mean that I am anti-German. I went over to find out

whether Belgian and French peasants, old men, women and children, were

a lawless, murderous mob, or whether the German military had sinned in

burning their homes and shooting the non-combatants. Neutrals can not

have it both ways--either the peasants were guilty, or the German Army

was guilty. I found it was the German Army that had sinned.

This critic goes on to say: "Only a few years ago the entire world was

shocked by the horrible atrocities carried on in the Congo."

Evidently those atrocities were proved to his satisfaction. But was

the case not established by the same process I have used--personal

observation, documentary proof, and the testimony of eye-witnesses?

The _Post-Dispatch_, of St. Louis, says: "Gleason in trying to make

out a strong case against Germany goes too far. He is too venomous. It

will be a hard thing to convince neutral Americans that German soldiers

maliciously ran their bayonets through the backs of girl children. The

volume would be of much greater historical value if Gleason had used

his head more and his heart less." Dr. Hamilton, in _The Survey_, makes

the same point.

In my testimony I detail my evidence, and they who deny it rest on

general statements. I assure them it is not in lightness that I record

these conclusions about the German Army. I have gone into the zone of

fire to bring out German wounded. I have taken the same hazards as

thousands of other men have taken to save German life. Does venom act

so?

I find in these criticisms an underlying assumption, a mental attitude,

toward war, and therefore toward facts about war. Some of these

periodicals are sincere pacifists. In the cause of social reform, in

their several and very different ways, they have served the common

good. But because they believe war is the worst of all evils, they

assume that both sides are equally guilty or equally foolish. It

is not a mental attitude which leaves them open-minded. I want to

ask them on what body of facts they base their criticism. Were they

present in Belgium at the moment of impact? Has the German Government

provided them with detailed documentary proof that in the villages

I have mentioned, on the dates given, the persons I have named were

not burned, were not bayonetted? Have they examined the originals of

the German diaries and found that I have omitted or altered words?

Have they spent many days in Lorraine taking testimony from curé

and sister and Mayor and peasant? Has that testimony shown that the

destruction and murder did not take place? Has Leon Mirman, Prefect of

Meurthe-et-Moselle, given them a statement in which he retracts what he

said to me?

Several of these critics happen to be personal friends. It would

be impossible to write in resentment of anything they say. I am

not interested in making out a case for myself. But I am very much

interested in inducing my fellow countrymen to accept the facts of the

present world struggle. My books about the war have been written with

one purpose only--to bring home to Americans the undeserved suffering

of Belgium and France. To do that I need the help of all men of good

will. I ask them not to break the force of the facts which I have

patiently collected, by the carelessness which calls systematically

burned cities "bombarded" cities, and by the mental attitude which

finds me "rabid," when I have given every favoring incident to German

soldiers that I could find. I have spent nearly two years in observing

the facts of this war. Against my desires, my pre-war philosophy,

my hopes of internationalism, I was driven by the facts to certain

conclusions.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Some of our people go further even than the giving of banquets

to the efficient staff of the _Deutschland_. They give praise to

U-53. In a newspaper, edited and owned by Americans, and published in

an American Middle Western city of 40,000 inhabitants, the leading

editorial on the exploits of U-53 was headed, "Hats Off to German

Seamen," and the writer says:

"The world in general that had educated itself to regard the German as

a phlegmatic and plodding citizen will remove its headgear in token

of approbation of the sustained series of sensational feats by German

commanders and sailors. The entire aspect of affairs has been changed

by the events of two years. The Germans have accumulated as much heroic

and romantic material in that time as has been gathered by other

nations since the date of the American Revolution."

In the second section of this book, I have told why we talk like

that. The mixture of races (mixed but not blended), the modern

theory of cosmopolitanism, a self-complacency in our attitude toward

Europe, an assumption that we alone champion freedom and justice,

the fading of our historic tradition--these have caused us to preach

internationalism, but fail to defend ourselves or the little nation of

Belgium. They have led us to admire successful force.

[2] Mazzini's idea of neutrality was this:

"A law of Solon decreed that those who in an insurrection abstained

from taking part on one side or the other should be degraded. It was

a just and holy law, founded on the belief--then instinctive in the

heart of Solon, but now comprehended and expressed in a thousand

formulæ--in the solidarity of mankind. It would be just now more than

ever. What! you are in the midst of the uprising, not of a town, but of

the whole human race; you see brute force on the one side, and right

on the other ... whole nations are struggling under oppression ...

men die in hundreds, by thousands, fighting for or against an idea.

This idea is either good or evil; and you continue to call yourselves

men and Christians, you claim the right of remaining neutral? You

cannot do so without moral degradation. Neutrality--that is to say,

indifference between good and evil, the just and the unjust, liberty

and oppression--is simply Atheism."

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

-Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's Our Part in the Great War, by Arthur Gleason