These, and other crimes, are corroborated in the four reports of the French Inquiry, in “Violations of International Law,” published, by order of the French Foreign Minister, by the twenty-two reports of the Belgian Commission, the reports of a German book published May 15, 1915, diaries and note books found on bodies of dead German soldiers, wounded men and prisoners. They are books of horror, but, books of truth, glaring evidence of murdered men, misused women, ruined homes. Much of them is actually furnished by perpetrators of the deeds. Comments are unnecessary, words inadequate, cold print fails.
FROM A GERMAN DIARY
“The natives fled from the village. It was horrible. There was clotted blood on the beards, and the faces we saw were terrible to behold. The dead—about sixty—were at once buried; among them were many old women, some old men and a half-delivered woman, awful to see. Three children had clasped each other and died thus. The altar and vault of the church were shattered. They had a telephone there to communicate with the enemy. This morning, Sept. 2, all the survivors were expelled, and I saw four little boys carrying a cradle with a baby five or six months old in it, on two sticks—all this was terrible to behold. Shot after shot, salvo after salvo—chickens, etc. all killed. I saw a mother with her two children, one had a great wound in the head and had lost an eye.”
L’ENVOI
Into Europe’s seething cauldron of blood and tears, American youth have been cast.
Patriotism, pride, resolutely demands that the Devil incarnate, who stirs his awful mess of ghoulhash, shall perish.
Our national peril, the whole earth’s dire need, assembling the Country’s selected young manhood, now make this a United States in fact—probably, for the first time since Washington and Valley Forge.
I have tried to make you see war as I know it, war with no footballs, portable bath tubs, victrolas nor Red Triangle Huts. Such blessings are God-sends—more power to His messengers!
I met a company of the 18th U. S. Engineers swinging along the tree-fringed macadamized highway toward the front. Clean-cut, well dressed, smooth-shaven, happy and gay. It was a joy to see them. It made a man feel proud to belong to the same race. They yelled a greeting in broken French to the dirty Poilu, who responded in the latest American slang, and marched away singing into the darkness, the words echoing loud or low, as different sections took up the tune: