If the highly organized enemy with whom we are at grips in a
life-and-death struggle would only play the war game in accordance with
the rules drawn up by civilized peoples, he would, indeed, command our
admiration no less than our respect. Never on this earth was there such
a splendid fighting machine as that "made in Germany." The armies
against us are the last word in discipline, fitness, and equipment; and
are led by men who, born in barracks, weaned on munitions, have but one
aim and end in view "World-Dominion or Downfall."
As a matter of fact, instead of winning our admiration they have drawn
our detestation. Not content with brushing aside all international laws
of warfare, they have trampled upon every law, human and divine,
standing in their way of conquest. Indeed, Germany's method of fighting
would disgrace the savages of Central Africa.
Prussianized Germany has the monopoly of "frightfulness." When not
"frightful," Prussian troopers are not living down to the instructions
of their War-lords to leave the conquered with nothing but eyes to weep
with. Not content to crucify Canadians, murder priests, violate nuns,
mishandle women, and bayonet children, the enemy torpedoes
civilian-carrying liners, and bombs Red Cross hospitals. More, sinning
against posterity as well as antiquity, Germans stand charged before man
and God with reducing to ashes some of the finest artistic output of
Christian civilization. When accused of crimes such as these, Germany
answers through her generals: "The commonest, ugliest stone put to mark
the burial-place of a German grenadier is a more glorious and venerable
monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together" (General von
Disfurth in _Hamburger Nachrichten_). "Thus is fulfilled the well-known
prophecy of Heine: 'When once that restraining talisman, the Cross, is
broken ... Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up, and with it
shatter into fragments the Gothic cathedrals'" (_Religion and Philosophy
in Germany in the Nineteenth Century_).
What, I ask, can you do with such people but either crush or civilize
them?
The very stones cry out against them.