and that his honored name raises it above suspicion. Lord Bryce is an
old man and it is inferred that he signed the report in good faith
without, however, having looked into the truth or falsity of the
statements himself, accepting the word of others who were using him
for their nefarious purpose, the intention being to incite American
public opinion to action in behalf of the Allies. For Lord Bryce is
flatly contradicted by the following cable message from London, taken
from the daily papers of September 15, 1914:
(Lord Bryce subsequently modified his position by a denial
of the truth of the report as presented.--Ed.)
London, Sept. 14, 3:23 P. M.--Premier Asquith told the
House of Commons today that official information had
reached the Ministry of War concerning the repeated stories
that German soldiers had abused the Red Cross flag, killed
and maimed the wounded, and killed women and children, as
had been alleged so often in stories of the battlefields.
Joseph Medill Patterson: The Hague, September 11--To the
Chicago “Tribune:” I firmly believe that all stories put
out by the British and French of tortures, mutilations,
assaults, etc., of Germans are utterly rubbish.
A flat denial of the atrocity stories was furnished by a Washington
dispatch to the New York “World,” five months after the invasion of
Belgium. The report contained the substance of an official finding by
the British government and was turned over to Ambassador Walter H.
Page for transmission to Washington upon the request of the American
government. When Dr. Edmund von Mach subsequently requested the
State Department for information about the finding, after returning
one evasive reply, Secretary Lansing left Dr. von Mach’s letters
unanswered and the report has never been made public. Following is
the Washington report referred to:
Washington, Jan. 27. (Special to the “World”)--Of the
thousands of Belgian refugees who are now in England not
one has been subjected to atrocities by German soldiers.
This in effect is the substance of a report received at the
State Department from the American Embassy in London. The
report states that the British government thoroughly had
investigated thousands of reports to the effect that German
soldiers had perpetrated outrages on the fleeing Belgians.
During the early period of the war, columns of the British
newspapers were filled with these accusations. Agents of
the British government, according to the report from the
American Embassy at London, carefully investigated all of
these charges; they interviewed alleged victims and sifted
all the evidence. As a result of the investigation the
British Foreign Office notified the American Embassy that
the charges appeared to be based upon hysteria and natural
prejudice. The report added that many of the Belgians had
suffered severe hardships but they should be charged up
against the exigencies of war rather than the brutality of
the individual German soldier.
According to advices from Switzerland, under date of July 9, 1916,
the paper “Italia” printed the following:
“Assisted by the Papal state department, the congregation
of Catholic church officials instituted a searching
inquiry into the reported German atrocities in Belgian
convents, first among the Belgian prioresses resident
in Rome, next among the Belgian nuns passing through,
all of whom unanimously deny having any knowledge of the
alleged atrocities. Bishop Heylen, of Namur, who was
among those examined, declared that the reports referred
to were lacking in every essential of truth. Possibly an
isolated case had occurred without his knowledge, but
certainly nothing beyond this. Cardinal Mercier, who was
also interviewed, spoke of three cases based upon hearsay.
The Congregation deplored the spread of exaggerated
reports lacking all semblance of truth and expressed its
satisfaction with the results of the investigation.”
To the last it was a favorite pastime to charge the Germans with
wanton destruction of towns. Ample contradiction could easily be
offered if space permitted. Thus William K. Draper, Vice Chairman
of the New York County Chapter of the American Red Cross, is quoted
in the New York “Times” of July 13, 1919: “A pitiful part of this
destruction is the realization that much of it was caused by French
artillery, the troops being forced to demolish the towns while being
occupied and used by the Germans.”
The whole web of lies and the conditions underlying the scheme
are conclusively exposed in “The Tragedy of Belgium,” by Richard
Grasshof, (New York: C. E. Dillingham Co.)
The Belgian atrocities were purposely conceived and exaggerated for
two reasons:
1. To camouflage the fact that against all rules of civilized warfare,
the Belgians of Louvain and several other towns, claiming protection
as civilians, awaited an opportune time to institute a massacre of
German soldiers who had entered and been stationed there approximately
a week in apparently good relations with the population.
2. It was expected that Germany and Austria would be surely invaded
under the joint impact of the forces of Russia, France, Belgium,
Servia, Montenegro, England and Japan. In that event the world would
hear no end of Cossack, Servian and Montenegran atrocities committed
on German women and children, as in the Balkan campaign. England had
called into the field the Indians, Maoris, Zulus and other savage
blacks and yellow skins; France had called the Moroccan natives and
the Senegalese tribesmen, blacks who hang around their necks strings
adorned with the ears and noses of their fallen foes.
Forseeing that the ravages of these uncivilized warriors would excite
the anger of the world against the Allies, if they ever crossed
into German territory, that their deeds would bring the curses of
the universe upon England’s head, it was resolved to anticipate
all possible criticism and reproach by being the first to charge
atrocities against their enemies and thus to negative all counter
charges, or to say that they were merely retaliatory measures adopted
in reprisal for barbarous acts committed against their own men. The
Allies never crossed the German lines, save in East Prussia, nor
the Austrian-Hungarian border save in Galicia, and here the Cossack
reign, short as it was, proved the shrewd wisdom of English and
French foresight; 700,000 homes were wantonly destroyed in Galicia
alone. Its lawlessness beggars description; but humanity was not
staggered because the mind of the world had been drugged by fatal
infusions of falsehood about Belgian babies and women maimed and
brutalized by “German barbarians.”
Prof. John W. Burgess, Charles Carleton Coffin (“The Boys of ’61”)
and others have shown that precisely the same hysterical lies were
circulated throughout England and the world by Englishmen during the
American Civil War, the same kind of atrocities being charged against
the Union Army.
No paper has been more aggressive in charging the Germans with
atrocities than the New York “Times.” In its issue of April 17, 1865,
it said:
“=Every possible atrocity appertains to this rebellion. There is
nothing whatever that its leaders have scrupled at. Wholesale
massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing
of great cities, piracies of the crudest kind, persecution of the
most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination
in high places--whatever is inhuman, whatever is brutal, whatever is
fiendish, these men have resorted to. They will leave behind names so
black, and the memory of deeds so infamous, that the execration of
the slave-holders’ rebellion will be eternal.=”
The late James G. Blaine quoted Lord Malmesbury of date February 5,
1863, as accusing the Union troops guilty of “horrors unparalleled
even in the wars of barbarous nations.”
All efforts to counteract the avowed campaign of misrepresentation
were denounced as the acts of men in the pay of the Kaiser or
irreclaimable pro-Germans determined to lend aid and comfort to
the enemy, and subjected any one attempting them to the penalties
contained in the Espionage Act. In interpreting the act, as applied
to the liberal press, Postmaster General Burleson was quoted as
follows:
“There are certain opinions and attitudes which will not be
tolerated by the Post Office Department. For instance, such
papers have sought to create in the minds of our citizens
of German birth or descent the impression that Germany is
fighting a defensive war; that the accounts of Belgian
atrocities ... are all English or American lies.”
To gainsay such an edict was to risk imprisonment for a term of
twenty years.
=Bancroft, George--Treaty with Germany--Vancouver Boundary
Line.=--The very cordial relations which subsisted between the
United States and Germany from the days of Frederick the Great were
carefully nurtured by the great men succeeding the establishment of
the republic, as shown elsewhere by the comments of President Adams
on the treaties with Prussia, and were strongly cemented by the aid
extended the Union by Germany during the Civil War, as acknowledged
by Secretary Seward and prominent members of the United States
Senate. One of the most active promoters of this friendship was
America’s foremost historian, George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy
under President Polk, and father of the Naval Academy at Annapolis,
minister to Great Britain and subsequently to Prussia and Germany
(1867-74).
It was through his efforts and friendly personal relations with
Bismarck that a memorable agreement came into existence which
established the right of immigrant German Americans to renounce
their old allegiance and accept an exclusive American citizenship,
exempting them from performing military service should they return
to their native land. The effect of this agreement was more
important than appears, as it was the first time that by a formal
act the principle of renunciation of citizenship at the will of the
individual was recognized. Beyond this, it led to a complete change
of policy on the part of Great Britain by upsetting the old doctrine,
“once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” The immediate good
result was the renunciation by England of her claim to indefeasible
allegiance, and to the right to impress into the British service a
former British subject who had become an American citizen, a claim
which had contributed to bring about the War of 1812.
Nor was this all that Bancroft accomplished. The Northwestern
boundary, having been settled by treaty, Bancroft, while United
States Minister in Great Britain, had perceived an incipient effort
of a great English interest to encroach on the territory which had
been acknowledged by the treaty to be a part of the United States.
By and by the importunities of interested persons in England, who
possessed a great party influence, began to make themselves heard,
and the British government by degrees supported the attempt to raise
a question respecting the true line of the boundary of the Northwest
and finally formulated a perverse claim of their own, with a view of
obtaining what they wanted as a compromise.
The American administration had of course changed, and the President
and his cabinet, having had no part in the negotiations, agreed to
refer the question to an arbiter. They made the mistake of consenting
that the arbiter, if there was uncertainty as to the true boundary
line, might himself establish a boundary of compromise. The person
to whom the settlement of the dispute was to be referred was the
president of the Swiss Republic.
The American Secretary of State chanced to die while the method of
arrangement was still inchoate. Bancroft at once wrote to the new
Secretary, urging him not to accept a proposal of compromise, because
that would seem to admit an uncertainty as to the American title, and
to sanction and even invite a decision of the arbiter in favor of a
compromise, and would open the way for England, under an appearance
of concession, to obtain all that she needed.
Being at the time minister to the court of Prussia, he advised the
government to insist on the American claim in full, not to listen to
a proposal of compromise, but to let each party formulate its claim,
and to call on the arbiter to decide which was right, and urged it to
select for that arbiter the Emperor of Germany.
The Department of State at once consented that the arbiter should be
the Emperor of Germany, and left the whole matter of carrying out the
American argument to Bancroft. The conduct of the question, the first
presentation of the case, as well as the reply to the British, were
every word by him, and the decision of the Emperor was unreservedly
in favor of the United States. (Prof. William M. Sloane, in “The
Century,” for January, 1887.)
Bancroft has been pronounced one of the greatest historians of the
past century; he was one of the most distinguished statesmen of his
time, and as former minister to London and a student at Göttingen and
minister to Germany, he was qualified as no other famous American to
form an appraisal of German, French and English policies, especially
in regard to ourselves. We may be pardoned, therefore, in taking more
than a cursory interest in some expressions which occur in a letter
of Bancroft’s, addressed to Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State,
and written at Berlin during the Franco-Prussian war.
In summing up his reasons for preferring Germany over England and
France, he says: “If we need the solid, trusty good will of any
government in Europe, we can have it best with Germany; because
German institutions and ours most resemble each other; and because
so many millions of Germans have become our countrymen. This war
will leave Germany the most powerful State in Europe, and the most
free; its friendship is therefore most important to us, and has its
foundation in history and in nature.” (“Life and Letters of George
Bancroft,” by M. A. De Wolfe Howe, II, 245.)
=Baralong.=--An English pirate ship commanded by Capt. William
McBride, which sailed under the American flag, with masked batteries,
and sank a German submarine which had been deceived by the Stars and
Stripes and the American colors painted on both sides of her hull. On
August 19, 1915, the “Nicosian,” an English ship loaded with American
horses and mules and with a number of American mule tenders aboard,
was halted by a German submarine about 70 miles off Queenstown. The
men took to the boats and the U-boat was about to sink the “Nicosian”
when a ship flying the American flag came alongside. Without
suspecting anything, the submarine allowed the ship to approach,
when suddenly the American flag was lowered and the English ensign
hoisted, and a destructive fire was opened on the U. The latter soon
sank. Half a dozen German sailors swam alongside of the “Nicosian”
and clambered on deck, concealing themselves in the holds and engine
rooms as the English followed them aboard. They were dragged out and
murdered in cold blood. The German captain swam toward the “Baralong”
and held up his hand in token of surrender but while in the water was
first shot in the mouth and then repeatedly hit by bullets aimed at
him by the English, and killed without compunction. The story of the
“Baralong” is one of the most brutal in the history of the seas and
illuminates the inhuman character of English warfare toward a weaker
foe in the most glaring light. The history of the tragedy first
came to light through a letter written by Dr. Charles B. Banks, the
veterinary surgeon aboard the “Nicosian,” to relatives in Lowell,
Mass., giving some of the gruesome details as follows: “A number of
German sailors were swimming in the water. Some swam to our abandoned
ship and climbed up to the deck. Shots from the patrol boat (the
‘Baralong’) swept several from the ropes. We were taken aboard the
patrol boat, and then the boat steamed slowly around our ship while
the marines shot and killed all the Germans in the water. As we had
left three carbines and cartridges aboard the ‘Nicosian,’ we had
reason to believe the Germans had found them. So marines went on our
ship and killed seven men there. We were then towed to port.” The
infamous wretch who performed this murder, Capt. McBride, later wrote
a letter to the captain of the “Nicosian,” warning him not to speak
of the affair, and requesting that the Americans aboard especially
be cautioned to keep the matter from the public. But one of the
American mule tenders made an affidavit to the truth at Liverpool
and forwarded it to the American Embassy in London and three others
made affidavit to the same facts on their return to New Orleans. The
affidavits were sent to the State Department, but neither President
Wilson nor Secretary Lansing complied with the request of the German
Ambassador to demand an inquiry into the misuse of the American flag,
and the cold-blooded murder of German sailors. Dr. Bank’s letter was
published in the N. Y. “Times” of September 7, 1915, but that paper
was among the most active in preventing an investigation.
=Berliner, Emile.=--One of the most important inventors in the United
States, distinguished for his improvements of the telephone; born
at Hanover, Germany, May 20, 1851; came to the United States in
1870. Invented the microphone and was first to use an induction coil
in connection with the telephone transmitters; patentee of other
valuable inventions in telephony. Invented the Gramophone, known also
as the Victor Talking Machine, for which he was awarded John Scott
Medal and Elliott Crosson Gold Medal by Franklin Inst. First to make
and use in aeronautical experiments light weight revolving cylinder
internal combustion motor, now extensively used on aeroplanes.
=The Boers--England’s Record of Infamy.=--The success in causing the
surrender of the Boers by exterminating their women and children
by slow starvation and disease is the incentive which prompted the
British nation to violate international law by stopping the shipment
of non-contraband goods, Red Cross supplies and milk for babies, to
Germany and contiguous countries. The number of deaths (in the Boer
concentration camps) during the month of September, 1901, was 1,964
children and 328 women. There were then 54,326 children and 38,022
women under Kitchener’s tender care. The “Daily News” on November
9, 1901, said: “The truth is that the death rate in the camps is
incomparably worse than anything Africa or Asia can show. There is
nothing to match it even in the mortality figures of the Indian
famines, where cholera and other epidemics have to be contended
with.” “Reynold’s Newspaper” (London) of October 20, 1901, spoke of
“the women and children perishing like flies from confinement, fever,
bad food, pestilential stinks and lack of nursing in these awful
death traps,” with a rate of 383 per 1,000. The “Sydney Bulletin”
said: “The authority granted by Lord Roberts to Red Cross nurses to
attend our camps has been withdrawn.” The English wanted the women
and children to perish for want of Red Cross supplies, as in the case
of Germany. President Steyn of the Orange Free State, in a letter of
protest to Lord Kitchener, dated August, 1901, among other things
said:
=Your Excellency’s troops have not hesitated to turn
their artillery on these defenseless women and children
to capture them when they were fleeing with their wagons
or alone, whilst your troops knew that they were only
women and children, as happened only recently at Graspan
on the 6th of June near Reitz, where a women and children
laager was taken and recaptured by us, whilst your
Excellency’s troops took refuge behind the women; and when
reinforcements came they fired with artillery and small
arms on that woman laager. I can mention hundreds of cases
of this kind.=
On December 16, 1913, the Boers, in the presence of immense throngs,
dedicated a monument at Blomfontein with the following inscription:
=This Monument is Erected by the Boers of South Africa
in memory of
26,663 WOMEN AND CHILDREN
who died in the Concentration Camps during the War 1900-1902=
No better evidence can be desired than is contained in a speech
which the present British Premier, Lloyd George, made in 1901,
charging that the English army had burned villages, swept away the
cattle, burned thousands of tons of grain, destroyed all agricultural
implements, all of the mills, the irrigation works, and left the
territory a blackened, devastated wilderness. Then the women and
children were herded, in winter, in thin, leaky tents, surrounded by
barbed wire fences, where thousands died of unnecessary privations.
He said:
Is there any ground for the reproach flung at us by the
civilized world that, having failed to crush the men, we
have now taken to killing babies?
“=Illegal, Ineffective and Indefensible Blockades.=”--The World War
has evolved principles of warfare, upset practices and sanctioned
acts that place war in a new aspect, present it as a new physical
problem, like the discovery of a new planet. So many laboriously
achieved understandings, agreements and principles of international
law were swept overboard that the world must begin its efforts all
over, if humanity is to regain the rights which it had slowly wrested
from reluctant power during four or five centuries.
The outstanding fact is the recognition of the right of a belligerent
power to compel another to surrender by the starvation of its civil
population.
If this object were obtainable by direct blockade of the nation to
be starved there would be some latitude for discussion; but when
attainable only by so controlling the food supply of neutral nations
as to leave them no alternative but to starve themselves or to help
starve the power to be coerced, a new problem is created which will
recur to vex those who sanctioned it.
During the Civil War we sent food to the starving mill operatives of
England who were exposed to famine by the war, although English-built
and equipped privateers were destroying our commerce, and England
was actively supporting our enemies in other ways. Germany sent us
food, chemicals, goods, shoes and necessary supplies in one of the
most needful stages of the war, for non-contraband supplies were
recognized as immune from seizure or destruction.
A blockade is illegal unless it is effective in blockading the point
named. The blockading of a whole nation and the rejection of the
immunity character of non-contraband supplies intended for the civil
population, down to the furnishings of the Red Cross, is an English
expedient and a product of the late war, though the same policy was
tentatively tried in England’s war against the Boer republics.
We held that such blockade was illegal, for in the note of October
21, 1915, our State Department said: “There is no better settled
principle of law of nations than that which forbids the blockade
of neutral points in time of war,” and we reminded the British
government that Sir Edward Grey said to the British delegates to the
“Conference assembled at London upon the invitation of the British
government,” that:
A blockade must be confined to the ports and coasts of the
enemy, but it may be instituted at one port or at several
ports or at the whole of the seaboard of the enemy. It may
be instituted to prevent the ingress only or egress only,
or both.
And because England had violated these and numerous other principles,
agreements, covenants and pledges we said to her:
“It has been conclusively shown that the methods sought to
be employed by Great Britain to obtain and use evidence
of enemy destination of cargoes bound for neutral ports
and impose a contraband character upon such cargoes are
without justification; that the =blockade upon which
such methods are partly founded is ineffective, illegal
and indefensible=.... The United States, therefore,
cannot submit to the curtailment of its neutral rights
by these measures, which are admittedly retaliatory,
and therefore =illegal in conception and in nature, and
intended to punish the enemies of Great Britain for alleged
illegalities on their part=.”