Well, reverend sir, before proclaiming the cruelty of the Belgians, before asserting, from the vantage of the pulpit of Truth, that Serbia and Egypt have declared war on Germany, a little circumspection and critical sense would not have been out of place!
Let us also cite the sermon preached on the 9th August, in the synagogue of Schwerin, by Dr. S. Silberstein, rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. "They have forced us to put our hand to the sword; we execrate the perfidy with which our enemies are fighting us; we wish to ward off the danger that threatens us in honourable combat." So the Jewish rabbis knew as early as the 9th August that it was Germany that had been attacked, and that the other nations were forgers!
Useless to prolong the series.... We should be only repeating ourselves; for all the preachers, of whatever confession, repeat the same lesson, almost in the same words: "The war which has been forced upon us ... our treacherous enemies ... our loyal allies ... the cruel Belgians ... our excellent soldiers, allying goodness to bravery ... our heroic leaders...."
B.—Untruthfulness.
To describe frankly and completely the attitude of the Germans in Belgium during the present war, without speaking of their duplicity, would be an impossible task; so that the reader must not be surprised that on every page of our record we have pinned down at least one lie. We must not forget that modern Germany follows the examples of Bismarck, and that Bismarck himself proclaimed that he had caused the outbreak of the war of 1870 by a skilful falsification of a Government despatch. At the time of the centenary of the Iron Chancellor's birth—the 1st April, 1915—the German newspapers gave their lyric enthusiasm a loose rein; but none of the endless dithyrambics consecrated to the glorification of the Great Man contained a single word of blame for the forgery itself—abominable as it was—nor for the ostentatious impudence with which its author confessed it.
What honesty can we expect in a people which praises to the skies a forger because he was a forger, and a forger proud of his skill!
1. A Few Lies.
Number 50 of Die Wochenschau (1914, p. 1588) contains a photograph in which we see sailors loading a gun installed among sand-hills. The inscription underneath (translated from the German) reads: "Belgian gun, captured and served by German sailors on the coast of the Channel." The Channel! The Germans have never been there: they did set out, full of enthusiasm, for Calais, and then the shore of the Channel, and then London. But in that direction they never got farther than Lombartzyde, on the right bank of the Yser. But they prefer to let it be believed that they command the Channel, so they have chosen the Channel coast for the site of their gun—on paper. Then this "Belgian gun" is of a curious type for a piece of Belgian artillery; our guns have a rectangular shield, while the shield of the German guns is round—just like that in the photograph! Finally, one may ask what the gunners are aiming at on this seashore, with their small gun? Certainly not one of the English vessels bombarding the Belgian coast, for these lie much too far out to sea; perhaps the Germans are amusing themselves by firing shells at the shrimpers, to repeat their memorable exploit of the 8th September, 1914? Well, that makes three flagrant lies to one single photograph!
Number 15 of Die Wochenschau (1915) gives on page 463 a view of the interior of the Palais de Justice in Brussels. Here is the description—a French translation is given: "German soldiers in the hall of the Assize Court in the Palais de Justice of Brussels. Brussels having become the seat of the German General Government for Belgium, has naturally a strong garrison and a very animated military life. The famous Palais de Justice on the Place Poelaert also houses a great number of soldiers. Nothing is more singular than the picture presented by this imposing and luxurious building with the new inmates in 'campaigning grey' who are installed there. A thousand precautions are taken so that nothing shall be spoiled; and while wherever the enemy has trodden on German soil it will be necessary to work for a long time rebuilding the buildings he has destroyed, no one will perceive, who sees the superb halls of the Palais de Justice in Brussels, that the German soldiers are billeted there."
To understand the full beauty of this pleasantry one has only to look at the picture. One sees there the linen which these soldiers are drying on clotheslines stretched across the "luxurious hall"; this, apparently, is one of the "thousand precautions" taken in order that nothing may be spoiled.