“=Against ordinary though severe reprisals upon civilians who have
fired upon the German troops we have not a word to utter; but
outrage, mutilation, burning alive, and so forth are not reprisals;
they are atrocities which make the name of Germany stink in the
nostrils of mankind. It is hard to believe that a civilized nation
should have so reverted to savagery, but unfortunately the facts
admit of no dispute.=”--From the _Globe_.
“The Hussar-like Stroke.”
The laying of mines in neutral waters in contravention of the rules by
which civilized warfare was to be conducted was in itself a most
dastardly act. To place contact mines in the open sea and then to skulk
behind them was declared by the Kaiser’s wireless press bureau to be a
“Hussar-like stroke.” The Kaiser himself referred with satisfaction to
the fact that his navy had sown the North Sea with death. The laying of
mines is only admissible for the purpose of guarding estuaries and
harbours, and by The Hague Convention it was specifically laid down that
neutral waters must not be mined. In consequence of this cruel action of
the enemy many crews of British and Danish trawlers, the hard toilers of
the sea, were sent to their deaths, while the Wilson liner _Runo_, on a
voyage to Archangel, and His Majesty’s ships _Amphion_ and _Speedy_ were
sent to the bottom with great loss of life. In addition, several
trawlers, while engaged in mine-sweeping operations, were also
destroyed. All craft and cunning in naval warfare was, of course,
admissible, including the alteration and extinguishing of lights, the
removal of landmarks and buoys, and the disguising of warships as
merchantmen; but to scatter death indiscriminately along a neutral
waterway was a stab-in-the-back method worthy, indeed, of the pinchbeck
Napoleon.
=Such is the case against the German Soldier--the terrible and
overwhelming record which makes the very heart sick with horror, and the
blood run chill. One of our great poets called upon the human race to
“move upward, working out the beast, and let the ape and tiger die.”
Apes and tigers are noble creatures beside the living apostle of German
“culture.” He has built himself a monument upon the heights of infamy, a
monument from which, through all the ages yet to come, every honest man
will turn away in loathing and disgust.=
=JOHN RUSKIN’S words:=--
“=For blessing is only for the meek and merciful, and a German
cannot be either; he does not understand even the meaning of the
words ... but a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and
morality ... but no quantity of learning ever makes a German
modest....=
“=Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lombardy, they
bombard Venice, steal her pictures (which they can’t understand a
single touch of), and entirely ruin the country, morally and
physically, leaving behind them misery, vice, and intense hatred of
themselves, wherever their accursed feet have trodden. They do
precisely the same thing by France--crush her, rob her, leave her
in misery of rage and shame, and return home, smacking their lips,
and singing Te Deums.=”--_Fors Clavigera._