One word only about compensations. It is not enough that everything which has been destroyed and can be paid for shall be paid for. Those who have wilfully set our villages on fire must be compelled to rebuild them; we shall, I hope, requisition in “Boche”-land enough manual labour to repair all that can be repaired of their crimes. When they have not destroyed our manufactories they have pillaged them, stealing raw material, manufactured articles, and machines; I sincerely hope that they will be compelled to restore our plant to us in good condition, that in case of need, while we wait for better, we shall not hesitate to take theirs in place of our own, which they have no doubt broken up, and that we shall have the sense to impose upon them a whole category of economic measures calculated to restore those of our industries which they have deliberately ruined.
And I imagine also that in the domain of art, compensations will be put down in settling up the accounts. We will leave them all their own public monuments, in the clumsy bad taste of which they take such pride. But there are in the German and Austrian museums masterpieces of art—not of German art, but of Flemish or Italian, Dutch or French, Russian or English. The Boches will entertain profound respect for us if we collect all these works, which in any case they do not understand, and form with them in beautiful maltreated towns such as Louvain, Ypres, Reims, and Arras, museums of the Great War. If we do not act in this way they would feel no gratitude towards us, but would treat us simply as imbeciles, and for once I should be of their opinion.
But to come to a graver question: the necessity for punishment. It will not be enough that the material and economic damage which they have done shall be repaired, it will not be enough that the Monster which has steeped the whole world in blood shall be struck down and rent limb from limb, and placed for ever in a condition in which it can do no harm. The outraged conscience of humanity demands personal decrees against the assassins.
Ah! If the sponge were to be passed over all the crimes that have been committed, over all the outrages and all the violations of the rights of nations, if this war were to be ended by an ordinary treaty modifying the frontiers, and stipulating for financial and economic conditions and nothing more, and if, after this treaty, wearied of hating and giving in to a great craving for moral peace, the hostile Nations were to blot from their memories the recollection of the Evil accomplished, and were to throw themselves into each other’s arms and exchange a mighty kiss of concord and of love—let us take every precaution against such a possibility! A misfortune would overtake humanity far more serious for it than all the catastrophes which it has suffered in the course of its sorrowful history. I say that if we do not strike at the head of the most exalted, the most powerful among the responsible authors of these crimes—those who let loose the war, those who gloried in tearing up treaties like “scraps of paper,” those who ordered the sinking of the Lusitania and the Persia and their thousands of passengers, those who first bombarded open towns, those who for the first time launched aeroplanes and Zeppelins over our industrial cities on both sides of the Channel (to speak only of our own front) those who burnt Louvain, who murdered the Cathedral of Reims, those who gave the order for the first acts of incendiarism and pillage and assassination, those who splashed the statue of Charity with the noble blood of Miss Cavell, those who started the régime of asphyxiating gases and liquid fire, and all who have placed themselves beyond the pale of the law, and of humanity—if the sword of the law does not fall on all these men personally, this is what will happen: man will no longer believe in honour, he will no longer believe in right, he will no longer believe in justice, he will no longer believe in anything. His faith in a better future will vanish and be dispelled for ever, along with the beautiful dreams which—whether they were realizable or not—were our joy, our hope, and our pride, in which we were constructing, on the foundation of Law and of Right, better national and international organizations than those by which man up to our day had protected himself. If the criminals do not bear the punishment of their crimes the principle of responsibility gives way, carrying with it all our codes and laws. It will remain a settled principle that only Force counts. The force of Germany will not have triumphed this time, but its hateful doctrine will remain all-powerful, and that would be for humanity a terrible moral relapse.
The Germans have taught us to hate—and perhaps that is their greatest moral crime. To this new passion, but lately still unknown to us, we had for long ages closed our hearts. We should not have allowed it to enter them, if, whether as conquerors or conquered, we had been challenged by our enemies to an honourable combat. Under the repeated blows of their outrages our hearts ended by giving it admittance; hatred has entered into them, it has settled itself there, and taken up its abode. It will stay there till justice has been done. Our soul will not be freed from hatred till the day when the expiation of the chief culprits has been carried out. Then, and then only, humanity will be able to resume its enthusiastic and yet halting march in the direction of Progress.
These are not the extravagant visions of a solitary dreamer. You recognize these sentiments, friend Campbell. You have felt how strongly they were imposed upon upright consciences, however enamoured of the ideal, by the stern contact with realities. No one can remain a stranger to that fact who has made the melancholy pilgrimages which you have in the murdered lands,—for example, in the wasted fields of Lorraine or Champagne—if, in the cities of Reims or of Pont-à-Mousson, in Sermaize or Clermont en Argonne, in Nomeny or Gerbéviller—and all the other places, alas! where innocent blood has flowed—he can hear and remember with a brotherly heart the cries of the martyrs, as he passes through the midst of the ruins.
Is it impossible to realize these projects? Is it an idle fancy to talk of such conditions and to demand such punishments, while the enemy is still burrowing in trenches dug in our soil? No! No! Whatever trials we may still have to submit to, whatever long sufferings we may still have to endure, in France, as in England, in Russia, in Italy, in Belgium, and in Servia, we all know perfectly well—as the rest of the world is beginning to know—that absolute victory, with the conditions dictated by us, will without any doubt be the prize of our efforts, if we pursue those efforts with enough resolution and method, that is to say if we are determined to have it, if our determination and our actions are in proportion to the importance of the object we have to attain. And you, friend Campbell, will have the honour of being of the number of those who, from the first hour, have had a clear vision of the future, of those who have taught your noble Nation to understand and to be determined. And so with all my heart I give you my hand.
Yours truly,
LÉON MIRMAN.