Part 2

And ruined after what manner? Let Cardinal Mercier, the Primate of Belgium, tell the story. "At Louvain the third part of the city has been destroyed; one thousand and seventy-four dwellings have disappeared; in addition, in the suburbs Kesselloo, Herent and Herberle, one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-eight houses have been burned. In this dear city of Louvain, ever in my thoughts, the magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover its former splendour. The ancient college of St. Ives, the art schools, the commercial and consular schools of the University; the old markets; our rich library, with its collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its archives, its gallery of great portraits of illustrious rectors, chancellors, professors, dating from the time of its foundation, which preserved for masters and students alike a noble tradition, and were an incitement to good work--all this accumulation of intellectual, historic, and artistic richness, the fruit of the labours of five centuries, all, all is in ashes."

BREAKING DOWN THE CONSCIENCE OF THEIR MEN

More terrible still the scheme invented by the Kaiser and the War Staff for breaking down the conscience of the German soldier. The simple peasants of Bavaria, the artisans of Saxony, until a generation ago, were reared in the morals of Martin Luther. By common consent Luther is one of the great men of modern times. At a critical moment in history he stood forth affirming Paul's statement that every man must give an account of himself unto God. Since Pope Julius could not give his account unto God, Martin Luther claimed religious liberty as to creed and conduct for himself. Since no kaiser could give his account unto God, Martin Luther claimed the right of self-government, through political democracy. Since no philosopher could give his account, Luther demanded liberty of thought and speech. Carrying out this principle, when three hundred years had passed, the free nations stood forth clothed with political democracy, educational democracy, religious democracy, industrial democracy. Just as we trace some river back to a spring on the mountainside, so we trace these great institutions of the Reformation back to Martin Luther, who received his ideas from Paul and John, from Huss and Savonarola, reinforced by John Calvin and Erasmus.

THE SOLDIER'S TOKEN

But Luther's ethics were the ethics of Moses. For several generations the German peasants had been taught that it was criminal to kill, steal, burn, rape and pillage. They knew by heart the words of Jesus, "Woe unto him who offends against one of my little ones; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." Plainly the Ten Commandments stood squarely in the pathway of the Kaiser's ambition. Unless his ambitions for world rule were to be defeated, some scheme had to be invented to free the German soldier from conscience, and break the fetters of divine law.

Therefore the soldier's token was invented. It comes under Jesus' special condemnation, in that not only the Kaiser and the War Staff pursued crime, but "taught men so." These tokens are made of stiff cardboard or of aluminum. At the top is a portrait of Deity as the Kaiser conceives him to be; in one hand the Kaiser's God holds a sickle, for the death-harvest. Beneath, the Kaiser and his War Staff wrote these words, "Strike him dead; the Day of Judgment will not ask you for reasons."

The soldier might read this: "You can slay, pillage, loot, burn, rape, leave thousands of bodies massacred and mutilated on the ground, but remember that your Kaiser and your War Staff will stand between you and the avenging God, and will see to it that the Judge of all the earth makes you no trouble on the great day of accounting." The Kaiser's God, however, is our Devil. For three years the Kaiser has had the Devil all mixed up with God,--being unable to distinguish between them. Whenever the Kaiser uses the word "Gott," Americans always substitute the word "Devil." With one change the soldier's token is quite accurate,--"Strike them dead,--old men, girls and children,--the Devil will not ask you for reasons. Hell and damnation are fully satisfied with all you Germans have done."

EITEL ANDERS

But when the German soldier boy took this token out of his pocket, and looked at his license to crime, what effect did it have upon him? Here is the diary of Eitel Anders. It is believed that he belonged to the 14th Bavarian regiment. The diary was taken from his body upon the battle-field, and is similar to hundreds of others. "We crossed the bridge over the Maas at 11:50 in the morning. We then arrived at the town of Waendre. When we went out of the town, everything was in ruins. In one house a whole collection of weapons was found [the Mayor had ordered the women to bring to his house every weapon that they could find, that the Germans might have no excuse for saying that any one had struck their soldiers or fired a gun]. All the inhabitants, without exception, were brought out and shot. This shooting was heart-breaking, as they all knelt down and prayed, but praying is no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out, and they fell back into the green grass and slept forever. It is real sport." But how did Eitel Anders sleep that night? We know that Macbeth did not sleep after he murdered Duncan and Banquo. Did the Kaiser succeed in stultifying conscience in Eitel Anders? The next day the soldier made another entry;--mark the opening words: "This morning, in happy mood and high spirits, we passed through Taturages. But before this we cleaned up the suburb of Mons, and burned the houses. The inhabitants came out of the houses into the open plain. Here many heart-breaking scenes occurred. It was really terrible to watch."

Plainly the soldier's token and the Kaiser's scheme succeeded. Having stated that he had murdered men, young Eitel Anders sleeps well at night, and the "next morning in happy mood and high spirits" wakened to plan fresh crimes. Macbeth had no German soldier's token to help him sleep at night. Conscience became the whisper of God in his soul. Sleep forsook his eyes, and slumber his eyelids. Shakespeare's murderer did not dare trust himself out under the stars that blazed with anger, but Eitel Anders' sleep was not disturbed by the blood upon his hands, because he really believed the Kaiser would be able to stand between him and the Great Day of Judgment.

After General Clauss shot fifteen aged men in the streets of Gerbéviller, too, that officer rode away with a light heart, quite free from the remorse that unseated the reason of Macbeth. Plainly the Kaiser's scheme succeeded. It destroyed conscience in many German officers and soldiers alike. To-day, the men of Germany without moral sense or any remorse following their crimes are like a sky that holds an empty socket where once the summer-making sun had shined. They are like human bodies out of which the intellect has passed, leaving only gibbering idiots. The German "Laws of War on Land," their Handbook of Military Tactics, has organized crime into a science, and killed in men the spiritual optic nerve. Germany to-day is an intellectual machine, and her officers and her soldiers at last can commit crimes without remorse, which proves that they are becoming moral idiots.

GERBÉVILLER THE MARTYRED[1]

In August of 1914, when the German army was broken and compelled to retreat before the French, they passed through many French towns and villages in which they found no soldiers and no weapons, and where no battle, no skirmish and no shot took place. During last July and August we went slowly from one of these ruined towns to another, talking with the broken-hearted women and children, comparing the photographs taken immediately after the German retreat and almost before the mutilated bodies were cold. Slowly we sifted the evidence. On the ground we compared the full official records made at the time, with the statements of wretched survivors who live in cellars, where once stood the beautiful homes, the orchards and vineyards, but where now all is desolation and anguish.

Among the multitude of events described by witnesses who survived the martyrdom of their village are the following: When the noise of the approach of General Clauss' division of twenty thousand soldiers in full retreat was heard, an aged Frenchman stood in his open door. He had retired from business, to spend his last days midst the friends of his childhood and youth. Hearing the noise of the approaching army, the merchant stepped to his open door. As the first automobile swept by, the German officers lifted their revolvers and emptied the lead into the old man's body. He pitched forward down the stone steps, and in his death struggle worked his way to the wrought iron gate, where after the German retreat he was found dead. Before touching the body, official photographers, under the direction of their noble Prefect, took their photographs from different angles. In the garden behind the smoking cellar was found the wife, lying dead upon the grass, her left wrist tied by the clothes-line to the root of an apple tree, the right wrist tied to a clump of gooseberry bushes. She was dead, but not through dagger or pistol. Standing beside their graves we studied the photographs and talked with the families of the fifteen aged men whom General Clauss ordered shot because there were no young or middle-aged men in the village whom he could kill.

BURNING OF AN AMBULANCE DRIVER

Most harrowing the testimony given by the mother of a Red Cross ambulance driver. The day before the Germans came, this man had returned from the front, bringing an ambulance filled with wounded soldiers. While the division of twenty thousand Germans were looting the houses, and carrying away every rug, carpet, table, chair, picture, tool, art treasure towards the Rhine, German officers entered the house of Sister Juliet, who was nursing the wounded soldiers. Finding the young Red Cross man there, they immediately shot him. Later while his mother was holding his head in her arms and staunching his wounds, a German officer approached and, seizing her hands, held them behind her back, while one of the privates poured petrol over her son's head. With two fingers this soldier ripped the clothes from the breast of the wounded man and poured oil under his shirt and then set fire to his garments. Referring to his death struggles and the photograph of the charred mass that had once been her son lying on the brick pavement, this mother exclaimed, "If I had only let him bleed to death! If I had only let him bleed to death! Then they could not have made him die twice!"

THE MURDER OF HEREMINEL

In a little farming village not many miles from Gerbéviller the martyred, stands a battered square belfry, into which the Germans lifted their machine guns, hoping to hold back the pursuit of the French army, thus giving General Clauss time to retreat and "dig in" some miles to the northeast. Tying the ropes to the axle of automobile trucks, the Germans soon lifted their guns into the church tower. They then drove the French women and children into the church and used them as a screen, for no German ever exposes himself to danger if he can possibly find a woman or child behind whom he can hide. One young mother did not immediately obey, because of certain duties in connection with her little child. With two other girls this young wife was stood up against the stone wall of her own little house and shot, for the purpose of teaching French women to obey instantly when German savages command.

When all the women and children were packed into the church, a boy was sent back to tell the French that if they fired upon the guns in the church belfry, they would kill their own families. Two nights later when a storm was raging, the women slipped a little boy through the window, and sent word to the officers of the approaching French army that their wives wished them to open fire on the German guns. In blowing these weapons out of the belfry, the French killed twenty of their own wives and children, who preferred to share death with the men they loved, rather than suffer nameless indignities from German brutes. In a hundred years of history where shall you find a record of soldiers, whether red, black or yellow, save Germans, who were such sneaking, snivelling cowards that they do not dare play the game fairly and like men, but in their chattering terror use women and little children as shields against danger? Of a truth, the "Potsdam gang" has added a new word to the literature of cowardice.

THE FRENCHMAN'S LOVE OF FRANCE

Terrible also the German assassination of the land itself. All men love their native land, but the Frenchman's love has a unique quality. He speaks of La Belle France as Dante spoke of Beatrice, as Petrarch spoke of Laura, and the name of France lingers upon his lips as music trembles in the air after the song is sung.

It is love of native land that has made France beautiful just as through affection the lark, after completing its nest, makes it soft and warm by pulling the down out of her own bosom. The French people love France as Millais loved his Gleaners, as Bellini loved the missal he had illuminated, and as that young architect loved the little Roslyn chapel, upon whose delicate capitals he had lavished his very soul. For centuries the enemies of farms, houses, towns and cities have been fire, flood and earthquake. Witness the city of St. Pierre. An interior explosion blew off the cap of the mountain and a flood of gas poured down upon the lovely city, asphyxiated the citizens and left not one house standing. Witness that mighty convulsion in San Francisco that brought thousands of brick buildings crashing down in ruins. Witness the fire in Chicago that turned the great city into piles of twisted iron and ashes. In New Zealand there is a lake called Avernus, the birdless lake. Poisonous gases rise from the black flood of water, and soon the lark with its song, and the eagle with its flight fall into the poisonous flood.

But all these images are quite inadequate to explain the devastation of France upon the retreat of the Germans. About forty miles north of Paris, one strikes the ruined region. Then hour after hour passes, while with slow movement and breaking heart the investigator journeys one hundred miles to the north and zigzags one hundred and twenty-five miles south again, through that ruined region. Centuries ago Julius Cæsar described it as a wild land, rough, with forests filled with wolves. Then the Frenchman entered the scene. He subdued all the wild grasses, drained the valleys and widened the streams into canals. He enriched the fields, surrounded the meadows with odorous hedges and filled swamps with perfumed shrubs. Slowly the Frenchman threw arches of stone across the streams and carved the bridges until they were rich in art, while everything made for use was carried up to beauty. He gave to the roof of the barn its lovely lines; the approach to the house was upon a curved road, the highways were shaded by two rows of noble trees. The stony hillside was terraced, and there the vines grew purple in the sun. How simple was his life! What a sanctuary his little home! With what rich embroidery of wheat he covered all the hills! He was prudent without being stingy, thrifty without being mean. The French peasant saves against old age with one hand and distributes to his children with the other.

WHAT HATE CAN DO

And having lavished all their love upon the little farmhouse, the granary and the garden, having pruned these grape-vines with their clusters of white and purple, the time came when each vine seemed like a friend, dear as that miraculous picture was to Baucis and Philemon. For these reasons all France was invested with affection and beauty.

The French peasants loved their land and then lost it. One morning the Hun stood at the gate. The farmers with their pruning knives were no match for Germans with their machine guns, and down they fell under the plum trees they were pruning. The devastated regions of France are like unto a world ruined by devils. The Germans cut down the apples, the pears, and all the peaches. They did not spare the cherry, the quince, the gooseberry and currant, or the vineyards. Gone also all the beautiful bridges--they have been dynamited! Gone all the lovely and majestic Thirteenth Century churches! Gone all the galleries, for some of the finest art treasures in the world have perished.

The land has been put back to where it was when Julius Cæsar described it two thousand years ago--a wild land, and waste, growing up with thorns and thistles. That proclamation on a wall tells the whole story. "Let no building stand, no vine or tree. Before retreating see that the wells and springs are plentifully polluted with corpses and with creasote." The spirit was this, "Since we Germans cannot have this land, no one else shall."

PRINCE EITEL'S CRIME

But there is more. One of the historic chateaux is that of Avricourt, rich in noble associations of history. It was one of the class of buildings covered by a clause in the international agreements between Germany, France and the United States and all the civilized nations, safeguarding historic buildings. For many months it was the home of Prince Eitel, the Kaiser's second son.

When a judge and jury held inquiry at the ruins of the chateau, the aged French servant, who understood the electric lighting and had charge of the gas plant during Eitel's occupancy, stated that he heard the German officers telling Eitel Frederick that he would disgrace the German name if he destroyed a building that had no relation to war, that could be of no aid or comfort to the French army, and that he would make his own name, and that of his family, a name of shame and contempt, of obloquy and scorn. But the man would not yield. He brought in his auto trucks and carried to the freight cars every historic object in the splendid chateau. Having pledged himself to leave the building uninjured, the prince stopped his car at the gates of the exit, ran back to this historic house, filled his firebrand, spread the flames upon the halls, waited until the flames were well in progress, and then ordered his men to light the fuse of dynamite bombs. A few days later inquiry was held and testimony of aged servants and little children was taken. The degeneracy of this German Prince as then revealed has not been equalled since the first chapter of Romans catalogued the unnatural crimes of the men of the ancient world. Germany has no artistic sense. Her own poet, Heine, predicts that she will yet pull in pieces her one fine cathedral. The German poet does not think any beautiful thing is safe so long as it is in German hands. This gifted Hebrew had the vision that literally saw the German pounding to pieces the Cathedral at Louvain and Ypres, in Arras, in Bapaume, in St. Quentin, and Rheims.

RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

One of the atrocities that has horrified the civilized world has been the ruin of Rheims Cathedral. Germany, of course, was denied by nature any gift of imagination. The German mind is a hearty, mediocre mind, that can multiply and exploit the inventions and discoveries of the other races. The Germans contributed practically nothing to the invention of the locomotive, the steamboat, the Marconigram, the automobile, the airplane, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the reaper, the electric light. Even as to the weapons with which she fights, Americans invented for Germany her revolver, her machine gun, her turreted ship, and her submarine. In retrospect it seems absolutely incredible that Germany could have been so helplessly and hopelessly unequal to the invention of the tools that have made her rich.

But imagination is not her gift. If Sheffield can give her a model knife, Germany can reproduce that knife in quantities and undersell Sheffield. The German people keep step in a regiment, in a factory and on a ship, and therefore are wholesalers. The French mind is creative. It stands for individual excellence, and is at the other extreme from the German temperament. The emblem of the German intellect is beer; the emblem of the English intellect is port wine; the emblem of the French mind is champagne; the emblem of an American intellect like Emerson's is a beaker filled with sunshine--but Germany has a "beer" mind. It is this lack of imagination that explains Nietzsche's statement that for two hundred years Germany has been "the enemy of culture" while Heinrich Heine insists that "the very name of culture is France."

It is this total lack of any appreciation of art and architecture that explains Germany's destruction of some of the noblest buildings of the world. She cannot by any chance conceive how the other races look upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it publicly in one of her state papers, "Let the neutrals cease chattering about cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military ends." Guizot in his history of civilization presents three tests of a civilized people: First, they revere their pledges and honour; second, they reverence and pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture and literature; third, they exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor, the weak and the unfortunate.

Now apply those tests to the Kaiser and his War Staff, and you understand why Rheims Cathedral is a ruin.[2] No building since the Parthenon was more precious to the world's culture. What majesty and dignity in the lines! What a wealth of statuary! How wonderful the Twelfth Century glass! With what lightness did these arches leap into the air! Now, the great bombs have torn holes through the roof; only little bits of glass remain; broken are the arches, ruined these flying buttresses, the altar where Jeanne d'Arc stood at the crowning of Charles is quite gone. The great library, the bishop's palace, all the art treasures are in ruins. But ancient and noble buildings do not belong to a race, they belong to the world. Sacred forever the threshold of the Parthenon, once pressed by the feet of Socrates and Plato! Thrice sacred that aisle of Santa Croce in Florence, dear to Dante and Savonarola. To be treasured forever the solemn beauty of Westminster Abbey, holding the dust of men of supreme genius.

In front of the wreck of the Cathedral of Rheims, all blackened with German fire, broken with the German hammer, is the statue of Jeanne d'Arc. There she stands, immortal forever, guiding the steed of the sun with the left hand, lifting the banners of peace and liberty with the right. By some strange chance, no bomb injured that bronze. That figure seems a beautiful prophecy of a day when the spirit of liberty, riding in a chariot of the sun, shall guide a greater host made up of all the peoples who revere the treasures of art and architecture, and law and liberty, and will ride on to a victory that will be the sublimest conquest in the annals of time.

THE DEVASTATION OF THE FRENCH HOME