When the future historian gives to another age his account of all that
is included in German "frightfulness," there is no feature upon which he
will dilate more emphatically than the extraordinary use made by the
enemy of their Zeppelin fleet. In the experience we have gained in the
last few months we discover that the Zeppelins are not employed--or, at
all events, not mainly employed--for military purposes, but in order to
shake the nerves of the non-combatant population. The history of the
last few Zeppelin raids in England is quite sufficient testimony to this
fact. London is bombarded, although it is an open city, and a large
amount of damage is done to buildings wholly unconnected with the
purposes of the war. The persons who are killed are not soldiers, they
are civilians; the buildings destroyed are not munition works, but
dwelling-houses, and some of the points of attack are theatres.
The same thing has happened in the provinces. In the last raid over the
Midlands railway stations were destroyed, some breweries were injured,
but, with exceedingly few exceptions, munition works and factories for
the production of arms were untouched. Here again the victims are not
either soldiers or sailors, or even workmen employed in turning out
instruments of war, but peaceable citizens and a large proportion of
women and children.
Some such act of brutality is illustrated in the accompanying cartoon. A
private house has been attacked, the mother has been killed, the father
and child are left desolate. The little daughter at her father's knee,
who cannot understand why guiltless people should suffer, asks the
importunate question whether her mother had done anything wrong to
deserve so terrible a fate. To the childish mind it seems
incomprehensible that aimless and indiscriminate murder should fall on
the guiltless.
Indeed the mother had done no wrong. She only happened to belong to one
of the nations who are struggling against a barbaric tyranny. In that
reckless crusade which the Central Powers are waging against all the
higher laws of morality and civilization, some of the heaviest of the
blows fall on the defenceless. It is this appalling inhumanity, this
godless desire to maim and wound and kill, which nerves the arms of the
Allies, who know that in a case like this they are fighting for freedom
and for the Divine laws of mercy and loving-kindness.
And it is for the young especially that the war is being waged, young
boys and young girls like the motherless child in the picture, in order
that they may inherit a Europe which shall be free from the horrible
burden of German militarism, and be able to live useful lives in peace
and quietness. No, little girl, mother did no wrong! But _we_ should be
guilty of the deepest wrong if we did not avenge her death and that of
other similar victims by making such unparalleled crimes impossible
hereafter.