In reprisals of good we may learn something from the new Russia. When the German prisoners were set to work Kerensky said, “Prisoners or not, they shall be paid at the same rate as other men,” and they were. What was the result? Again the movement of gratitude, which is so potent a force, if only we would believe it. The German prisoners presented half their wages to the Russian Red Cross. I have to rely on private information for this.
Thoughts From the Other Side.
The thoughts of the others are much like our own—that is the difficult truth we have to learn. It is a truth that is absolutely essential to any peace that is to be more than an armistice of fools.
The war has produced in the public opinion of the nations a state of mind which formerly would not have been regarded as possible in our age of internationalism and intellectuality. National egotism and the effort to assert one’s own national interests by all and every means are dominating so exclusively each belligerent group that it forms for itself a closed circle of ideas, and under its influence conclusions are drawn which are so contradictory that one is almost inclined to think that logic and common sense have been entirely eliminated from the thinking capacity of the warring nations....
We Germans, among the others, are subject to this war-suggestion. We do not wish to say, after the manner of the Pharisees, beating their breasts: “We thank Thee, Lord, that we are not like these publicans.” We know that we, too, are prisoners of our circle of ideas, and must remain so, for we, too, are ruled by our national egotism and by our desire to win the war.—Kölnische Zeitung, as quoted by the Daily News, September 3, 1915.
Ideas imprisoned, narrowed (beschränkt, as the Germans say), become putrescent through lack of free air. It is in this putrescence that the gospel of hate is bred. Here is a German officer’s protest against the infamy of this gospel. It is quoted from the Kölnische Zeitung by Mr. A. G. Gardiner in his book, “The War Lords”:
Perhaps you will be so good as to assist, by the publication of these lines, in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel very strongly. I have on many occasions, when distributing among the men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on which the defeated French, English and Russians were derided in a tasteless fashion. The impression made by these postcards on our men is highly noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with these postcards; on the contrary, every one expresses his displeasure.
This is quite natural when one considers the position. We know how victories are won. We also know by what tremendous sacrifices they are obtained. We see with our own eyes the unspeakable misery of the battlefield. We rejoice over our victories, but our joy is damped by the recollection of the sad pictures which we observe almost daily.
And our enemies have, in an overwhelming majority of cases, truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had they not fought bravely we should not have had to register such losses.
Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, their effect here on the battlefields, in face of our dead and wounded, is only calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards are as much out of place on the battlefield as a clown is at a funeral. Perhaps these lines may prove instrumental in decreasing the number of such postcards sent to our troops.