The wonder is not that women went mad, but that there are left any sane
civilians of the ravished districts of Belgium after all those infamies
perpetrated under orders by the German troops after the first
infuriating check of Liege and before the final turning of the German
line at the battle of the Marne. We have supped full of horrors since,
and by an insensible process grown something callous. But we never came
near to realizing the Belgian agony, and Raemaekers does us service by
helping to make us see it mirrored in the eyes of this poor raving girl.
This indeed is a later incident, but will serve for reminder of the
earlier worse.
It is really _not_ well to forget. These were not the inevitable horrors
of war, but a deliberately calculated effect. There seems no hope of the
future of European civilization till the men responsible for such things
are brought to realize that, to put it crudely and at its lowest, they
don't pay.
What the attitude of Germany now is may be guessed from the blank
refusal even of her bishops to sanction the investigation which Cardinal
Mercier asks for. It is still the gentle wolf's theory that the
truculent lamb was entirely to blame.