Whose Fault?
The poor soldiers, obliged to obey orders under penalty of death, defending (as they believe) their homes from wanton attack, are surely, in the mass, but little to blame. The blame rests elsewhere. A body of Russian prisoners was brought into a village in East Prussia. The sufferings of the inhabitants during the invasion had made them bitter, and from the crowd of onlookers there was a scornful outcry. “At that one of the prisoners bent forward, shook his head and said slowly, with great, sad eyes, ‘It is not your fault, and it is not mine.’” (Dr. Elisabeth Rotten in Die Staatsbürgerin.) Looking at it all with fresh knowledge, after more than three years of war, I feel that this Russian spoke for all the peoples, “It is not your fault, and it is not mine.” Meanwhile there still goes on what my wounded friend, writing from Rouen described as “this orgy of slaughter, this incredible and criminal lunacy.”
An Order Against Kindness.
A girl who, with others, was attending to the enemy wounded, writes: “Doubtless we should have more consolation among our little soldiers, since here we are forbidden to give little kindnesses and attention; but I believe that before the end we shall disobey the order, because we put our hearts into our devotion and our pity.” (La Guerre vue d’une Ambulance, p. 116.) It is a little startling to learn of orders against kindness to enemy wounded. In a country one of whose chief newspapers advocated slaughter of the enemy like swine, such orders seem unwise. They can surely scarcely be made except when we wilfully blind ourselves and imagine that our enemies do not share our humanity.