It thus comes that hatred is adduced to justify a
tragedy which sympathy knows itself unable adequately to prevent. It is estimated that from the areas now occupied by Poland some eight million Germans have trekked to the west ; another five million are being expelled from the Sudeten areas or have fled before the Russians. These wretched 'peOple are deiven from zone to zone in helpless con- fusion ; the Stettmer Bahnhof in Berlin, we are assured, has become a scene of horror. The harvest in the British and American zones is known to have failed ; the housing and fuel shortages are incalculable ; it is quite calmly estimated that between five and ten million Germans will die of cold and starvation during the next six months. It is not only that such a situation will lead to desperate revolts and desperate reprisals ; it is that the moral effect upon our own men and those of the American armies will be terrible indeed. And as accounts begin to dribble back to this country during January and February there will be decent English men and women who, in their desire to spare themselves the agony of truthful thought, will comfort themselves with the excuse "The Germans brought it on themselves." No penance which uncivilised man could have devised could be so terri- ble as that which the German people will now have to pay ; and we, shirking the horror of the facts, may seek to assuage our discomfort by dismissing all humane feelings as "sentimentality" and by accusing those who protest of being "pro-German."
Previous page
