Nancy, February 2nd, 1916.
My dear Campbell,
You wrote the last words of your book on the 1st of January, 1916, at Delémont. I am very sorry that you did not open the year 1916 where you began the year 1915, among your friends at Nancy. You would have witnessed there a fresh crime, bearing the unmistakable hall-mark of “Kultur.”
Nancy—as you proved for yourself de visu, and as you state in the course of your book—is a ville ouverte, without any fortifications. It does not contain a single military establishment. The barracks, which are full of soldiers in time of peace, were emptied on the first day of the war, and were all converted either into hospitals or else into homes of refuge for women and children, refugees whom I gathered in from the destroyed communes. Not one cannon, not one shell, not one soldier is housed in the town. And yet, by means of a long-range gun, mounted at a distance of about 33 kilometres, the Boches are sending us shells of 800 kilos., which fall from a height of 8000 metres and crush a house like a walnut. They have no military objective. What, then, is their purpose? Their intention is twofold. In the first place they wish to “terrorize”; these people are fools, they will never understand that they inspire not fear but horror, and that by acts of this kind they are sowing not terror but hatred. In the second place, they hope to kill, in this great industrial town, a few women and children. This object they can obviously attain more easily than the other; it lies within the reach of every artilleryman, however poor a gunner he may be, who takes a large town as his target.
So far this statement tells you nothing that you did not know before. It is a long time since the Boches gave us their first samples. Every one is acquainted with their methods. To-day it is only of set purpose that it is possible to ignore them. The bombardment, without any military reason, of open towns with no garrison, has become, on the part of the Germans, an everyday affair. But these last bombardments of Nancy show a particularly studied nicety, full of the most delicate refinement.
These heavy guns began to fire on our beloved city of Lorraine in the dawn of the new year, on the sunny morning of the 1st of January, 1916. Picture to yourself, cher ami, on the evening of that 1st of January, the family hearth of a German intellectual, a chemist, a philosopher, a historian, or an artist. Herr Doktor is surrounded by his children, they are celebrating the feast of the New Year by eating sausages and jam, or black puddings and sugar. The evening paper arrives. The family stop talking. Herr Doktor unfolds the sheet, and reads aloud the stop-press news: “To-day, January 1, twelve shells of 800 kilos, were fired on Nancy. Several houses were reduced to dust. Two old men were buried under the ruins of one of them. The explosion of a shell killed a child of fifteen months in the arms of its grandmother....” Herr Doktor exclaims: “Wife, children, stand up! We must celebrate this victory on our feet. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch! The children of Nancy have received some New Year’s presents, some kolossal presents, explosive sugar-plums weighing 800 kilos. The year 1916 has opened magnificently. This victory of Nancy will fill with pride and enthusiasm all the sons of Great Germany. Let us thank our old German God for having granted it to us. Let us praise our mighty Emperor. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!”
As for us we buried our dead, poor innocent victims, in silence. We washed the pavement red with blood. We put down this new crime in the list of accounts that has to be settled. And we set ourselves again to our work, with our spirits not cast down but invigorated by the ordeal.
German crimes! You have seen some of them, my dear Campbell, in Lorraine. A day will come when we shall have to make a complete list of them, for the instruction of future generations. There will be some of us, I hope, who will devote ourselves to this task. It would be too monstrous that the veil of oblivion should be drawn over all these crimes.
It is imperative that we should know, that the whole world shall recognize, that our school-children shall learn all the evil that the German has done to mankind. At the head of these plain statements—all the more terrible indictments for the dryness of the official reports—we will place the following declarations, the authors of which are classed amongst the most notorious German writers:
“There is nothing in common between them (Kultur and Civilization). The war which is being waged is that of Kultur against Civilization. Kultur, the spiritual (!) organization of the world, which does not exclude bloody savagery—Kultur which is above morals, reason, science; Kultur, die Sublimerung des Dämonischen.” This unforgettable profession of faith appeared under the signature of Thomas Mann in the Neue Rundschau, in the number of November, 1914.[[A]]