Part 3

And after the war is over, if we resume friendly "relations" with Germany, we may see Stenger in Washington as Military Attaché to his Excellency the German Ambassador, shaking hands with the President of the United States.

3. THE BOMBING OF CIVILIANS IN LONDON AND ELSEWHERE.

The Kaiser and Zeppelin, and the German people, have spent many millions of dollars in deliberate attempts to slaughter the unarmed inhabitants of London, and strafe England. All the German talk about attacking "the fortress of London" is beneath contempt. Rarely indeed has a soldier been injured in London, or any other English city, by a Zeppelin or an airplane bomb. It has been the helpless women, school-children and other non-combatants who have been blown to pieces.

These murders of civilian men, women and children have served only to send furious Englishmen rushing to the trenches in droves, for vengeance! Had the square-heads deliberately attempted to stimulate British enlistments, the dropping of bombs on London would have been the ideal plan. At last the British public demand reprisals, on the basis of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; which would be absolutely right.

But thus far the statesmen of England firmly say:

"No! We will not descend to the low level of the Huns of Germany."

Nevertheless, Zeppelin died of a broken heart. From a military point of view his campaign has proven a complete fiasco,--just as Americans long ago predicted that it would, and his "frightfulness" gas bags are now on the scrap-heap.

4. TIRPITZ AND THE SUBMARINE MURDERS.

For a submarine to sink a war vessel with all on board is merely war, no more and no less. No one whines about atrocities of that sort. All the world does object, however, and very strongly, too, to the sinking of unarmed passenger steamers, hospital ships, and Belgian relief ships. All such acts of murder as these are the acts of monsters, not of men. Of course we know that Germany sees her doom, and her people are wild over the certainty of defeat. But even a 90 per cent. defeated prize-fighter must not deliver a foul blow.

The submarine murders are so well known to Americans as to require no comment; but a few murder statistics will be worth while, lest we forget.

March 28, 1915. Steamer _Falaba_ 111 lost May 7, " " _Lusitania_ 1,198 " June 28, " " _Armenian_ 30 " Aug. 19, " " _Arabic_ 30 " Nov. 7, " " _Ancona_ 208 " Dec. 30, " " _Persia_ 385 " March 24, 1916. " _Sussex_ (Channel boat) 52 "

HOSPITAL SHIPS MALICIOUSLY DESTROYED BY THE GERMAN "NAVY."

_Portugal._ March 17, 1916 45 Red Cross nurses lost. 40 of the crew. _Britannic._ Nov., 1915 about 50 lost. _Asturias._ March 20, 1915 43 lost. _Gloucester Castle._ March 30, 1915 all wounded saved. _Donegal._ 41 lost. _Lanfranc._ (152 wounded Germans saved by the British Navy!) 19 British wounded lost. 15 German wounded lost.

On a very few occasions, a few German submarine captains have acted humanely, and some even gallantly; but all these acts have been besmirched by the acts of cowardly and brutal men who have deliberately fired upon hospital ships and open life-boats loaded with men attempting to save themselves from drowning. In one celebrated instance a U-boat captain and his crew came out upon their deck, and at close range jeered at drowning men and women who were struggling in icy water.

And here is the latest feat of the brave and gallant German "navy":

On July 31, 1917, 200 miles from land a German submarine engaged in combat and sank the unarmed British freighter, _Belgian Prince_. They assembled the entire crew of 40 men on the submarine's deck, stripped from them their life-belts, and smashed all their life-boats, with axes. Then the brave Germans went below, closed their hatches, ran on the surface for two miles, then suddenly submerged. Thirty-eight were drowned, but two lived to be picked up and tell the story.

A new trick. Look for frequent repetitions.

5. POISON GAS, LIQUID FIRE AND POISONED WELLS.

Early in the war the much-vaunted German "men of science" invented poisonous gases (chiefly of chlorine), liquid fire apparatus, and other forms of deviltry forbidden in civilized warfare. The "flammenwerfer" is now a favorite German institution; but occasionally it gets into trouble by being exploded by shell fire, in the hands of the men using it. One result of poison gas and liquid fire is the everlasting odium that it has fastened upon the German army. The British soldiers say that "the Germans are dirty fighters"; and the name will stick forever.

In German South-West Africa, when the Boer General, Louis Botha, captured Swakopmund he found that all six of the wells had been poisoned with arsenical cattle-dip. Bags of the poison hung in the wells; and the crime was acknowledged and defended in writing by Lieut.-Col. Franke, commander of the German forces. Previous to that time, the new German governor had murdered in cold blood 208 of the leading natives of the capital town, to teach the surviving Hereros the advantages of life under the black vulture of Germany.

6. BACTERIA OF GLANDERS AND ANTHRAX SENT INTO RUMANIA.

"The world owes much to German science." This remark is not original. We have heard it about 147,500 times; but the world has not heard quite so often how the worthy "scientists" of Germany sent large collections of living and active bacilli of glanders for horses, and anthrax for cattle, into Rumania, =under the German diplomatic seal=, just before war was declared by Rumania! The precious cultures were found buried in the garden of the German consulate; and in their usual blundering way, the dunderheads did not know enough to destroy the evidence of their newest species of crime. All this has been set forth by the Rumanian government in a neat little pamphlet, very useful to students of criminology and degeneracy.

7. THE MURDER OF EDITH CAVELL.

Not in two hundred years will the world forget or forgive this dastardly crime. If Bissing is not now in hell for it, then there is no such place. The cities of civilized countries should erect Cavell monuments, and name streets Cavell, lest we forget. Only Germans or Turks could have done a deed so unnecessary, so brutal and unchivalrous. But it seems that the German Germans stick at no atrocity.

8. THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN FRYATT.

This crime was committed in cold blood, unchecked by the criminal Kaiser, because on March 28, 1915, Captain Fryatt escaped from a German submarine by attempting to ram it. On June 23, 1916, he was captured, taken to Zeebrugge, and by a naval court martial sentenced to death. Great "sports" were those German naval officers! They have in their veins about as much sporting blood as so many hyenas, but no more.

On several occasions the British have actually honored the fine seamanship and daring and skill of German sea raiders, even after great destruction while at sea. But the British navy men are good sports, while the men of the German navy do not seem to recognize a bold and capable seaman when they see one; and they have no sense of sportsmanship. When did the German navy ever rescue a British or French sailor from drowning? But British sailors have saved many Germans.

The murder of Captain Fryatt brands the whole German navy with a mark that it will wear forever.

9. THE GERMAN OUTRAGES UPON WOMEN.

It is here that the pen falters, and the heart turns sick with horror and loathing. Thus far the newspapers of the United States have shrunk from printing the awful details that have been available on this subject.

For fifty years we have been reading of the wars of nations,--white, black, red, brown and yellow,--but never in modern times have we seen such ghastly, such loathsome, such shocking and sickening brutalities of lust as German officers and soldiers inflicted, wholesale, upon the women of Belgium and northern France. At present we will say little of Poland, for the subject is too vast.

I shall not give instances, even though there are hundreds at hand, well authenticated, and undoubtedly true. But let all Americans remember this: Never within the last four hundreds years or more have any women ever been so brutally abused, so extensively raped by violence, often accompanied by murder in Jack the Ripper fashion, or so disgustingly maltreated before the eyes of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and groups of men as were the wretched women of Belgium and northern France.

The rage of the German brutes whose great conquest of France was balked seemed to be visited with particular fury and cruelty upon the women of the captured territory between fourteen and forty years of age. I have before me one instance so awful and so revolting that the woman upon whom it was inflicted immediately went mad. The details are published only in French, in order that only a few English-speaking persons may read them.

No wonder that when the armies of General Joffre and General Foch were chasing the German ravishers back to the banks of the Marne, that the French women of the recaptured towns and villages dragged themselves to their windows, leaned out, and begged the French soldiers to "=Take no prisoners! Kill them,--all!="

The total number of women who have been cruelly abused by German officers and private soldiers never will be known; but it must run up into hundreds of thousands. Only the devil himself knows how many miserables have been "given to the soldiers," just as was the Polish maid of an American lady, Madame Turczynowics, now in New York, who tells about it in her book, "When the Prussians Came to Poland" (page 138). This is the passage:

... we pushed our way into the room where Manya was, ... =what had been= Manya.... An officer came in to ask our business with the girl.

"She is my maid--stolen! This is her father. I have come to take her home."

"I am very sorry, but you are not allowed to take her. =She belongs to the soldiers.="

"Don't you see, Herr Offizier, the girl is =dying=?"

"Ill she is, and shall have the best of care. We have a doctor to attend to just such cases."--And =I had to leave her=!

10. GERMANY'S COLOSSAL CRIME IN ARMENIA.

A little pamphlet of 24 pages, obtainable from the G.H. Doran Company, New York, for five cents, is quite enough to damn Germany, past all forgiveness, from now to the end of Time. It is entitled "The Horrors of Aleppo. Seen by a German Eyewitness," and it is "A Word to Germany's Accredited Representatives, by Dr. Martin Niepage, Higher Grade Teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo."

The enormous extent, and the extreme savagery, of the slaughter of Armenian Christians by the Turkish allies of Germany literally stagger the imagination and sicken the heart. The mind can scarcely grasp the idea of men, women and children being massacred =en masse, in 1916, literally by the thousand=! But let me quote a few lines of strictly German testimony:

Page 14. "It is utterly erroneous to think that the Turkish government will refrain of its own accord even from the destruction of the women and children unless the strongest pressure is exerted by the German government. Only just before I left Aleppo last May (1916) =the crowds of exiles encamped at Ras-el-Ain on the Bagdad Railway, estimated at 20,000 women and children, were slaughtered to the last one=."

Page 11. "Many more appalling things were reported by the engineer of the Bagdad Railway ... or by German travelers who met the convoys of exiles on their journeys. Many of these gentlemen had seen such appalling sights they could eat nothing for days. One of them, Herr Grief, of Aleppo, reported corpses of violated women lying about naked in heaps on the railway embankment at Tel-Abiad and Ras-el-Ain. Another, Herr Spiecker, of Aleppo, had seen Turks tie Armenian men together, fire several volleys of small shot with fowling pieces into the human mass, and go off laughing while their victims slowly perished in frightful convulsions.

"The German Consul from Mosul related, in my presence, at the German Club at Aleppo, that in many places on the road from Mosul to Aleppo he had seen children's hands hacked off in such numbers that one could have paved the road with them.... The Arabs of the village declared that they had killed the Armenians by the Government's (Young Turks) orders."

--And so forth, and so on, until you are sick!

Thus do the "Young Turks" of Turkey (on whom may all the curses of Allah alight) who are determined to Turkify all Asia Minor. Thus have 1,500,000 =Christians= perished, at the hands of Germany's ally,--=an ally absolutely under German control=, and without one protest or prohibition from the arch-criminals of Potsdam and Berlin. And this under "our dear, good, kind Emperor" William!

The crimes of Germany were not committed by the officers of the Army or the Navy, or of the State, alone. They were perpetrated partly by the common people of Germany, as represented by the fathers, sons and husbands making up the army and the navy. The officers are not alone to blame. Therefore, the curses of mankind, and the punishment of the ages, should fall and will fall upon all the Germans of Germany, and their children unto the tenth generation. To them the Germans of to-day will bequeath a vast legacy of world scorn and world aversion.

Americans should be the last people on earth to talk to outraged England, France, Russia and Servia of "magnanimous" terms to Germany, and peace "without annexations or indemnities." =Germany must Pay for her war and her crimes.=

III. The Punishment of Germany.

Without stopping to give any serious thought to the matter, some people assert, "You cannot punish a nation." If not, why not? Ask a student of history, and he will tell you, without hesitation, "Decidedly, yes. Ever since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, countless tribes, cities, states and nations have been soundly punished for their crimes."

To-morrow, or soon after, Germany, the arch-criminal of nations, will be up before the bar of Christian Civilization for sentence. In courts of justice it is customary to review the criminal record of the accused before judgment is pronounced. It is now a case of Germany to the bar, to face her police record.

Guilty nations are no more immune from punishment for their crimes than are individuals guilty of high crimes. By their acts the German people now are heaping up dire punishment for themselves. The world is losing, with tremendous rapidity, its original and totally erroneous impression that "the German people" are innocent of the crimes that have been committed under the German uniform and the black-vulture flag.

The mental attitude of President Wilson as it was expressed in his message to Congress as late as April 2, 1917, is not the mental attitude to-day of the American people at large. He said: "We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering upon this war."

All the world outside of Germany now knows full well that Kaiser Wilhelm, representing the whole German people, is the man who started the war, who keeps it going, and who brought the war's consequences upon Germany. He pressed the button, with the united and enthusiastic approval of "the German people." It is an undeniable fact that from the very beginning until now the people of Germany have gloried and exulted in the war, and steadily have acclaimed the ruthless leaders who have directed it,--Wilhelm, Bissing, Hindenberg, Tirpitz and Zeppelin. In spite of all their losses and miseries, even to-day the "German people" are absolutely devoted to the Kaiser, and cheerfully swallow all the lies that his cabinet and the Reichstag hand out to them. Why should even one American deceive himself about the millions of Germans who are at heart as mean and as cruel as Tirpitz and Zeppelin? Remember that German women hawk and spit in the faces of heroes who happen to be their prisoners!

* * * * *

There is much idle talk in newspaper correspondence about "unrest in Germany," and a "demand for a change." All that empty talk is only an effort to throw dust into the eyes of the world, and deceive the enemies of Germany. There has been no change of heart at Berlin, and there never will be.

Beyond a doubt, Arthur S. Draper is absolutely right when he assures us that the German people are devoted to the Kaiser and kaiserism, and that under no circumstances will Wilhelm and the Hohenzollerns be kicked off the throne. Mr. Draper says that even if a change is made, it will be to a "constitutional monarchy" =under the Kaiser=; which we know would be no change whatsoever! We know what Germany will be like under the Chinless Hero (?) of Verdun.

Americans must now be very careful not to fool themselves in measuring out sympathy for "the German people"; for every particle of it will be wickedly misplaced. At least let us not make ourselves a laughing-stock for Hans and Gretchen.

With all due regard for our war President, we respectfully claim that in the minds of many millions of Americans both his premises and his conclusions are wrong. Once,--three full years ago,--many Americans (like ourselves) felt sympathy for "the German people"; but by outrage upon outrage the fact has been driven home to Americans that all such sympathy is utterly misplaced. The official publications of the war have opened our eyes. The great mass of the German people are guilty of an unprovoked war, and of wholesale and retail murder, rape, destruction and tortures unparalleled even among the lowest savages of modern times.

For forty years the swell-headed pan-germanists and the odious Junkers deliberately have educated the German people into this fearful war of attempted conquest. The millions of Germany smilingly kow-towed to the war lords and approved colossal annual expenditures in preparing for =this very war=! The man who says that the conquest of France and England was not ardently desired and deliberately planned by "the German people" is very ignorant of current history. Excepting a few Socialists, all Germany was ready "to the last gaiter button" on August 1, 1914, and feverishly eager for the war to begin! Was the great Kiel Canal built for commercial purposes? Not on your life! Every German knows that it was built as a means for the vanquishment of England on the sea; and one German friend who claims much inside knowledge has solemnly assured me that Germany had long intended to strike France and England just as soon as the Canal was finished.

Never in the history of the world was any war ever planned and developed through so long a period, or with such loving pains and thoroughness, as Germany's present war. Its construction covered thirty years, and throughout that period German newspapers, lectures, books and speeches were full of it. It was taught to the children of Germany, for at least twenty years. For at least ten years the officers of the German navy had been drinking to "Der Tag,"--"The Day" when they would attack the British navy and crush it.

* * * * *

Bismarck was a very shrewd statesman, as well as a ruthless conquestador and a changer of telegrams. But he left Germany in peace and friendship with England and Russia, while William the Egotist, hungry to be the boss of all Europe, promptly estranged both. William alone created the Triple Entente!

Outside the British Army and Navy, there were practically no British statesmen who realized the real trend of Germany's ambitions. That is why the outbreak found England without a powerful army.

Let no American think for a moment that the press and the people of Germany were ignorant of what was coming, or opposed to it. The whole nation, Socialists and all, had become afflicted with acute megalomania, and a real elephantiasis of egotism. They thought that by being sufficiently prepared, and sufficiently treacherous and cruel, they could bring all Europe under the German heel, to toil forever in the German yoke. To-day even the German Socialists support Kaiserism; and while they vociferously are shouting for "peace," remember that =they wish only a German-made peace that will leave Germany in the saddle=! Let all other Socialists make due note of this.

The first incident that shocked the American people into a realization of the true character of "the German people" was the sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the drowning of its great company of women, children and other non-combatants. And then, while England and America were laying their streaming dead in long rows on the dock at Queenstown, "the people" of Germany were literally dancing with joy! The German people called it a glorious "victory"! "Were some women and children lost? Well, they should not have sailed on the _Lusitania_. They were warned,--=by the German Ambassador himself=!"

And the beautiful city of Frankfort-on-the-Main gave all its school children A HOLIDAY, in which to indulge in unrestrained rejoicing over the sinking of the _Lusitania_! In Frankfort, if you were to throw a banana peel on the street, or in the Palm Garden, you would fiercely be arrested, and savagely fined 5 marks for the atrocity.

And some of "the people" of Germany struck a joy medal in celebration of the _Lusitania_ victory. A reproduction shows that it was a charming and soulful work of German art.

And the submarine reptile who sank the _Lusitania_ =was decorated (with the "Order Pour la Merite"), and promoted=, by the man whom young Hagenbeck of Hamburg characterized as "our dear, good, kind Emperor."

Faugh!

"Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, To sweeten mine imagination!"

Last week it was reported by wounded British prisoners, exchanged and sent from Germany via Switzerland, that "as we lay in the train, crowded and helpless, many German women came up to the cars and spit upon us." I have already cited the story of a Canadian prisoner.

During the past three years I have read every scrap of eye-witness information that has come before me in print recording observations in Germany, by war correspondents and others. My reading covers many newspapers, magazines, books and official publications of various kinds. Through all this mass I have looked in vain for expressions from the common people of Germany of some disapproval of German cruelties and atrocities on land or sea, or of sympathy for the victims of German cruelty. Find just one, if you can. I can not. Not once have I seen an expression or sentiment of that kind reported from Germany. The callousness of the women of Germany toward the ravishment, wounding, torture and ghastly mutilation of their sisters in Belgium, France, England, Servia, Poland and Armenia is astounding, beyond belief. But we are learning a lot these days.

Germany deliberately permitted the atrocious Turks to murder about 1,500,000 helpless Armenians; and so far as we know, not one person in Germany, high or low, has uttered one little protest against that colossal crime. Can you beat it! As the world knows very well, Germany absolutely controls Turkey, and drove her into the war; and Germany is guilty of complicity in the death of every non-combatant Armenian of that whole two millions of helpless persons who were slaughtered, or drowned, or starved on the deserts.