The widow of Col. Robert Bacon, who fell in action, was invested with the insignia on behalf of her husband of the order of British knighthood; Edward R. Stettinius was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor; the Order of the Crown was conferred on Elliot Wadsworth of Boston; Mrs. James Hamilton Lewis received a French decoration; Jacob A. Riis received the order of Danneborg from the King of Denmark. This list is only a partial one of Americans distinguished in the manner indicated, which prompted Arthur Brisbane in his column in the New York “American” to observe:
We shall have our little titled class in America, thanks to the British King’s action. General Pershing is now “Sir John”—in England, anyhow, and here if he chooses. Our General Dickman, commander of the Third Army, is made a Knight Commander of the Bath. He will be “Sir Joseph” and his wife “Lady Dickman.” Those that “dearly love a Lord” or a Knight are not all English.
In England such men as Gladstone, Carlyle and others refused any title, setting too high a value upon their own dignity. Some American soldiers have missed an opportunity to take democracy seriously.
Atrocities.
Atrocities.—It is easily conceivable that had Germany been invaded early in the war by the joint world powers, instead of the reverse, there would have been a decided sentiment in favor of Germany instead of an increasing hatred which in a short time was extended to people of German ancestry in the United States; it held them morally responsible for the alleged atrocities of the German armies in Belgium. When a paper like the New York “Sun” holds that “the Germans are not human beings in the common acceptation of the term,” it cannot avoid the responsibility which that verdict imposes on every person of German lineage in America. It is therefore a matter of duty to investigate the testimony of responsible persons whether the Belgian atrocities had any existence inthe light in which they were presented. The administration shares this responsibility in having steadfastly ignored demands for the publication of the report on Belgian atrocities made by the British government early in the war and transmitted to the State Department by Ambassador Page at London. These atrocities were alleged to consist of cutting off of hands of Belgian children, cutting off tongues, of mutilating the breasts of women, of outraging nuns and violating nurses, crucifying soldiers, etc.
Now and then a conscientious voice was heard out of the universal cry of accusation such as represented by the following self-explanatory letter addressed to the New York “Evening Post:”
To The Editor of the “Evening Post:”
Sir: Every man who has had a connection with the honorable British journalism of the past ought to thank you for your just and moderate rebuke of the pretended censorship which has passed off such a mountain of falsehoods on the public of both hemispheres. I suppose I am the Doyen of the foreign editors of London, and well I know that under Gladstone and Beaconsfield it would have been impossible to find either writers or censors for the abominable fictions which have been spread in order to inflame the British masses against their German opponents. The tales of German officers filling their pockets with the severed feet and hands of Belgian babies, and German Catholic regiments deliberately destroying French Catholic Cathedrals, would decidedly not have been accepted by any editors of the “Times” or “Morning Post” in the days of Queen Victoria.
The worst part of these infamous inventions has been that they have stirred up the blind fury of the English populace against tens of thousands of inoffensive and useful foreigners who have done nothing but good in a hundred honest professions, and who are now, in the midst of savage threats and insults, torn from their industrious homes and thrust into bleak and miserable prisons without a single comfort on the brink of the wintry season. The spectacle is a hideous one, and the military censorship which has spread the exciting calumnies has gained no enviable place in truthful history.
F. Hugh O’Donnell.