Two thousand years are a long time in terms of history.
Many damnable tools have been invented during these twenty centuries.
The rack, the thumbscrew, the tomahawk, the fagot belong among these
devilish instruments.
Cruelties so terrible have been devised that old scholars often felt
unwilling to believe that men were so low in the scale as to have been
the authors of these methods of fiendishness.
In the hope, therefore, of keeping respect for man many scholars
transferred all responsibility unto devils. They called in Satan and
made him to be the father of hate and cruelty. They could not believe
that Nero, Judas or Torquemada could conceive such wickedness. They
therefore made the devil with his cloven feet and his long tail to
whisper these cunning suggestions in the ear of the traitor. Thus the
responsibility for unwonted cruelty was divided between the murderer and
the devil who counselled the black crime.
Perhaps the most damnable thing that was ever suggested by the devil in
two thousand years is this little object called the German soldier's
token. Never did an object so small send forth cruelties so large and
manifold.
The little disc is stamped out on thick paper for German privates and
upon aluminum for the officers. At the top of this cardboard is the
portrait of that awful being called by the Kaiser "our good old German
God."
Look at his white hair, the long beard and the great sword in the right
hand, with the suggestion that since God uses the sword the German
soldier must cut men to pieces also.
Beneath you see flames gushing up, suggesting to the German soldier that
he is quite right in burning the houses of France and Belgium after he
has looted them, and for flinging the dead bodies into the blazing
rafters. Now read the words written beneath the face of the being the
Germans call God.
"Strike them all dead. The Day of Judgment shall ask you no questions."
Strike dead old men and women! Dash the children's brains out against
the stone wall! Violate young girls! Mutilate their fair bodies so that
they will be unseemly when they are found by the husband or father.
Burn, steal, kill--but remember that your Kaiser and the War Staff have
promised to stand between you and God Almighty and the Day of Judgment!
Even if Jesus did say, "Woe unto them that offend against my little
ones," you must remember that your Kaiser and officers have promised you
immunity on the Day of Judgment.
That is what is meant by the sentence on page thirty-one in the German
handbook of "War on Land": "That which is permissible to the German
soldier is anything whatsoever that will help him gain his goal
quickly."
Nothing better illustrates the total collapse of manhood in the Germans
than this soldier's token.
A coward by nature, the German is afraid to kill and steal, and so he
invented a screen behind which he could hide and named it "the soldier's
token."
Going into a French village the Germans collect the women and children,
order them to march in advance, shoot a few to terrorize the rest, and
then, hiding behind this living screen, the Germans march forward. In
this way they protect themselves.
The whole history of the human race contains no chapter of atrocity like
the atrocity of the Germans. The history of the world contains no story
of cowardice so black and damnable as the cowardice of the Germans. Out
of cowardice the soldier's token was born.
And so the Kaiser and the War Staff invented this round piece of
cardboard, with the representation of God as going forth with His sword
to kill men and with His flames to burn them and with the motto: "Strike
them all dead, for the Day of Judgment will ask you no questions."
Therefore among the instruments of cruelty, called the rack, the fagot,
the thumbscrew and the tomahawk, let us give the first place to the
German soldier's token, the most damnable weapon that has come out of
hell during the last two thousand years.