Nothing measures a man so accurately as the names he gives to his
favourite son. Most significant, therefore, is the fact that the Kaiser
named his second son Eitel, or Attila. Who was this Attila who has
captured the imagination of the Kaiser? He was a Hun who devastated
Italy fifteen hundred years ago. The motto of this black-hearted
murderer Attila the Hun was: "Where my feet fall, let grass not grow for
a hundred years." When the Kaiser read Attila's story he exclaimed:
"That is the man for me!" First, he named his favourite son for Attila
the Hun. Second, in sending his German soldiers out to China, and later
in 1914 to Belgium, he gave them this charge: "You will take no
prisoners; you will show no mercy; you will give no quarter; you will
make yourselves as terrible as the Huns under Attila." Plainly the
Kaiser knew his men. He knew that they were capable of outdoing even
that monster Attila the Hun. So he sent them forth to bayonet babes,
violate old women, murder old men, crucify officers, violate nuns, sink
_Lusitanias_, and turn solemn treaties into scraps of paper.
Now over against the Kaiser's charge, black as hell, and big with death,
witness Pershing's charge, reported loosely by a French boy, with his
imperfect knowledge of English, translated out of the French newspapers
on July 18, 1917. Pershing's brief address comes to this:
"Young soldiers of America, you are here in France to help expel an
invading enemy; but you are also here to lift a shield above the poor
and weak; you will safeguard all property; you will lift a shield above
the aged and oppressed; you will be most courteous to women, gentle and
kind to little children; guard against temptation of every kind; fear
God, fight bravely, defend Liberty, honour your native land. God have
you in His keeping." "Pershing."
The difference between yonder lowest hell in its uttermost abyss and
yonder highest heaven, where standeth the throne of a just God, is not
greater than the chasm that separates that unspeakable butcher, the
Kaiser, from General Pershing and the American soldier boys, who have
never betrayed in France, the noblest ideals of service cherished by the
people of the American Republic.