THE CRIMES OF GER3IANY.*
TUB Field newspaper has issued, with a preface by its editor, Sir Theodore A. Cook, a volume entitled The Crimes of Germany. Published at one shilling and well illustrated, it is a " synopsis of the violations of Inter- national Law and of Humanity by the armed forces of the German Empire." It is based on the Official Inquiries of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Belgium. We are exceedingly glad that the volume has been published, for it is essential that we should not be allowed to forget the crimes of Germany. Yet they will be forgotten if the world is not constantly reminded of them. The important thing to remember about these crimes is that they were in no sense necessary or unavoidable, or " the way of all war." No doubt terrible things, cruel things, desperate things are and always will be done in war. But such things as the slaughter of women and children and the seizing and murdering of hostages and other non-combatants are not only not • The Crimes of Germany. London : The Field and Queen. [is. net) necessary, but had actually died out of the customs of war, and have only been revived, so to speak, and brought back into use by the Ger- mans. Napoleon himself never openly encouraged or even permitted such base, brutal, and bloody deeds as the Germans committed in the very first four or five days of the war. They entered Belgium, as we know, with a deliberately prepared policy of frightfulness. They wanted to make an example so dreadful that it would serve at once to show the world at largo what happened if German orders were resisted.
One of the thoroughly well authenticated incidents recounted in the book before us tells how at the very beginning of the war a peasant was deliberately shot because he did not answer the door quickly enough when German soldiers beat upon it. The officer who shot him told him and the people round that this came of not obeying German orders rapidly enough. Here is the German policy in a nutshell.
Perhaps most impressive of all the chapters in The Crimes of Germany is that entitled " Other Crimes against Women and Children Testified by tho Germans," being statements from German soldiers' letters and diaries. The following is an extract from the diary of " Stephen Luther," as set forth in the Bryce Report. And here let us remind our readers that the documents published in that Report were so carefully winnowed and tested that there was no possibility of any forgeries having crept in. But the plea of forgery is the only one that could be rightly brought against a German soldier's diary :-
" In the village below, the saddest scenes ; naturally many misunder- standings occurred because officers understood no French. There was terrible destruction ; in one farmhouse was a woman who had been completely stripped and who lay on burnt beams. There was of course reason for such procedure, but how savage."
That is one of the least horrible stories. We quote it as a proof of the policy and deliberation practised by the Germans, not as an example of how brutal our enemies could be.
Among the most interesting of the illustrations are the reproductions of the German war medals. Besides the now famous Lusitania ' medal—perhaps the record brutality in the realm of art—there is a rather fine naval medal, struck to commemorate the submarine blockade of England, February 18th, 1915. It provides, Sir Andrea Cook tells II; the first example of the now famous phrase Gott strafe England I Another fine piece of work is the silver medal, " Nadi Paris," 1914, which has a portrait of General von Kluck on the face, and some sort of primitive male !Valhi:re on a wild horse on the reverse. Another curious illustration is a picture of one of Germany's "successful opera- tions." It is supposed to represent the bombardment of Scarborough and the effect produced thereby. In such a picture in most countries we should have seen the beach crowded with men. In the picture before us there are only two men prominent, one a bent old sailor and the other a man with a tiny baby in his arms. The rest of the crowd are women, girls, and quite young children. A more significant picture it would be difficult to imagine.
Before we leave The Crimes of Germany we must say a few words in anticipation of the question which is sure to arise in our readers' minds : " Why do you urge us to read these horrors ? What good can it possibly do ? " We understand the point of view, but we are quite sure it is a mistaken one. It is the duty of Englishmen and Englishwomen to read, mark, and understand this record of crime, not in order to execute vengeance on individuals, but in order that they may make their resolve the firmer that if it is humanly possible these brutalities shall not go unpunished, and that something shall be done to warn the politicians and the combatants of the future that though war cannot be abolished, it shall not be waged in the manner in which the Germans have waged it.. As we have said before, there is no necessity for such brutality. Tho world had escaped that horror, and had learned to wage war both by sea and land without it. The world has reverted, not to the Napolconio standard, but to something far below it, to the standard of Louis XIV. and the devastation of the Palatinate, or even to the standard of Froissart. The only way to ensure that the German standard shall not be universally adopted is to get people to understand the true position, and to give up the practice of saying vaguely that these things are bound to happen in war. On the contrary, what people must say is : " These things need not happen in war, and if they do happen, the punishment which shall fall upon those who ordered them or permitted them shall be so exemplary that no one again will dare to use the weapon of frightfulness. They must bo made to sec that it does not pay." That is the reason why every neutral and every decent man and woman not only in this country but throughout the world should pray Heaven for the defeat of the Germans. If our enemies succeed, or even if the Allies fail to beat them and the conflict remains undecided, frightfulness will have paid. Then every war will be a war of unmitigated horror.
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