Is she waging a "holy war," ringed around by jealous foes?
I believe we have the final answer in such atrocities as I witnessed. A hideous officially ordered method is proof of unrighteousness in the cause itself.
No, only a military system that ordered the slow sapping of friendly neighboring powers.
Only the host of "tourists," clerks, waiters, gentlemanly officers, that betrayed the hospitality of people of good will.
Only an army that practised mutilation and murder on children, and mothers, and old people,—and that carried it through coldly, systematically, with admirable discipline.
I believe there are multitudes of common soldiers who are sorry that they have outraged the helpless.
An army of half a million men will return to the home-land with very bitter memories. Many a simple German of this generation will be unable to look into the face of his own child without remembering some tiny peasant face of pain—the child whom he bayoneted, or whom he saw his comrade bayonet, having failed to put his body between the little one and death.