"One village after another to the flames. We then came to the roadside ditches, where we ate cherries"—so writes Sebastian Weishaupt of the 3 Bavarian Infantry.
"We have burned and plundered. But God is just and sees everything. His mills grind slowly, but exceeding small."—The diary of an officer of the 46 Reserve Infantry Regiment.
These extracts which I have given are from diaries of which I have examined the originals, and gone word by word over the German, in the penciling of the writer. The revelation of these diaries is that the Germans have not yet built their moral foundations. They have shot up to some heights. But it is not a deep-centered structure they have reared. It is scaffolding and fresco. We shall send them back home to begin again. Sebastian Weishaupt and Private Hassemer and Corporal Menge must stay at home. They must not come to other countries to try to rule them, nor to any other peoples, to try to teach them. Their hand is somewhat bloody. That is my feeling in reading these diaries of German soldiers—poor lost children of the human race, back in the twilight of time, so far to climb before you will reach civilization. We must be very patient with you through the long years it will take to cast away the slime and winnow out the simple goodness, which is also there.
III
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