This appeal is used in a periodical with a circulation of over a million, as an advertisement for silk hose. I do not agree with Miss Tarbell that this is the time to rally to the support of home industries. I do not agree with the advertiser that when in Belgium several million women and children are homeless, starving, and naked that that is the time to buy his silk hose. To urge that charity begins at home is to repeat one of the most selfish axioms ever uttered, and in this war to urge civilized, thinking people to remain neutral is equally selfish.
Were the conflict in Europe a fair fight, the duty of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is not to fight fair.
That is the way Germany is fighting. She is defying the rules of war and the rules of humanity. And if public opinion is to help in preventing further outrages, and in hastening this unspeakable conflict to an end, it should be directed against the one who offends. If we are convinced that one opponent is fighting honestly and that his adversary is striking below the belt, then for us to maintain a neutral attitude of mind is unworthy and the attitude of a coward.
When a mad dog runs amuck in a village it is the duty of every farmer to get his gun and destroy it, not to lock himself indoors and toward the dog and the men who face him preserve a neutral mind.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
NEW YORK, Dec. 1st, 1914.
Contents
I. The Germans In Brussels
II. "To Be Treated As A Spy"
III. The Burning Of Louvain
IV. Paris In War Time
V. The Battle Of Soissons
VI. The Bombardment Of Rheims
VII. The Spirit Of The English
VIII. Our Diplomats In The War Zone
IX. "Under Fire"
X. The Waste Of War
XI. The War Correspondents
Chapter I The Germans In Brussels
When, on August 4, the Lusitania, with lights doused and air-ports sealed, slipped out of New York harbor the crime of the century was only a few days old. And for three days those on board the Lusitania of the march of the great events were ignorant. Whether or no between England and Germany the struggle for the supremacy of the sea had begun we could not learn.
But when, on the third day, we came on deck the news was written against the sky. Swinging from the funnels, sailors were painting out the scarlet-and-black colors of the Cunard line and substituting a mouse-like gray. Overnight we had passed into the hands of the admiralty, and the Lusitania had emerged a cruiser. That to possible German war-ships she might not disclose her position, she sent no wireless messages. But she could receive them; and at breakfast in the ship's newspaper appeared those she had overnight snatched from the air. Among them, without a scare-head, in the most modest of type, we read: "England and Germany have declared war." Seldom has news so momentous been conveyed so simply or, by the Englishmen on board, more calmly accepted. For any exhibition they gave of excitement or concern, the news the radio brought them might have been the result of a by-election.