For the credit of human nature we feel compelled, in sight of such
enormities, to go back to Mr. Maeterlinck’s theory that invisible powers
of evil are using man for the execution of devilish designs. But if so,
they have had no mercy on their creatures. We read that when, in fear of
another flood, not trusting the promises of the Almighty, the children
of Noah began to build a Tower of Babel, the Lord sent a confusion of
tongues among them to bring their design to destruction. The excuses
the Germans have offered for their barbarities suggest a confusion of
intellect that can only lead to a like result. Has the world ever before
listened to such whirlwind logic?
When a German submarine has sunk a British merchantman and left her crew
to perish we have been told that she was performing a legitimate act of
war. But when a British merchantman has mounted a gun in order to defend
herself, she has been said to violate the law of nations. When British
battleships have blockaded German ports they have been trying to starve
sixty-five millions of German people. But when German submarines have
attempted to blockade British ports by drowning a thousand passengers
of many nations on a British liner, they have been executing a just
revenge. When a neutral nation in Europe has supplied foodstuffs
and materials of war to Germany, she has been doing an act of simple
humanity. But when the United States has supplied foodstuffs and
materials of war to Great Britain she has been breaking the laws of her
neutrality. When a brutal German officer has shot a British civilian in
a railway train he has committed a justifiable homicide and becomes a
proper person for promotion. But when a Belgian civilian has killed a
German soldier who violated his daughter before his eyes he has been
guilty of assassination and quite properly shot at sight. When Germany
has refused to honour her name to a “scrap of paper” she has been a holy
martyr obeying a law of necessity. But when England has honoured hers
she has been a holy humbug, whose hypocrisy deserved to be exposed.
Therefore God punish England! Above all, when God has crowned the arms
of Germany with success on the battlefield, his most Christian Majesty,
William the Pious, has always been with Him. Therefore God bless the
Kaiser!
Surely confusion of intellect can go no further, and the German Tower of
Babel must soon fall.