The World Decision

by Robert Herrick

Real truth often underlies popular nomenclature. It is neither accident nor a desire to abuse that has given the German the name of barbarian in the Latin nations. Just as the Latin peoples are the inheritors of Greek ideals, so the German peoples seem to be the active modern protagonists of all that the Greeks meant by their term "barbarian." The French before the war regarded the Germans as not wholly well-bred persons, lacking in some of those niceties of feeling and conduct which seemed to them important—"parvenus" as a French officer characterized his feeling about the race, and added the descriptive adjective "sale"—dirty. Since the war there has been ground into the French the more awful inhumanities of which these parvenus are capable. Therefore, when they think of the German, there comes instinctively to their lips the ancient term of complete distinction,—les barbares,—by which is meant a person and a nation who are not governed by ideals of taste, honor, humanity, what to the non-barbarian are summed up in the one word "decency." The adjective that the officer used—"sale"—does not imply necessarily literal physical dirt, but a moral callousness and unrefinement of soul which in the spiritual realm corresponds with the term "dirty" in the physical. He sees the soul of the German as a dirty soul, unclean, unsqueamish. And this conception of the enemy has given to the French soldier something of that crusader spirit which has sustained him through his terrible conflict. As M. Émile Hovelaque has expressed it,—"France is fighting the battle of humanity, of the world, of America, of every nation, man, and child who are resolved to live their own life in their own way, under the dictates of their conscience, within the limits of the laws they have accepted." The battle of the world to push back once more the pest of barbarism! It is that which has roused French chivalry, French heroism, not merely the love of the patrie. Indeed, for the higher spirits the patrie is closely identified with the non-barbaric ideals of humanity.

* * * * *

The whole conscious world has had the manifestations of the new barbarism before its eyes for an entire year and more. It has recoiled in disgust from the invasion of Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania, the shooting of Edith Cavell, from the wanton destruction of monuments. All these barbarities are indisputable facts, which may be explained and extenuated, but cannot be denied. There is another class of barbarities,—the so-called "atrocities,"—which are more easily denied, but which most people who have taken the trouble to examine the charges know to be equally true. The record of these multiplied atrocities is so enormous and so well authenticated that it would seem to me useless to add any words to the theme were it not for an amazing attitude of indifference to the subject on the part of many Americans. "We don't want to hear any more atrocity stories," they say. "Perhaps the atrocities have been exaggerated, probably there's truth on both sides. Anyway, war is brutal as every one knows." Some newspapers will not publish the atrocity charges, whether because of our popular prejudice against anything "unpleasant" unless freshly sensational or because of more sinister reasons, the reader may judge.

This attitude is both evasive and cowardly. It is essential to understand the atrocity for a proper realization of the war and of the German menace. It is false to say that all war is barbarous, and that in every war similar atrocities have occurred. As Mr. Hilaire Belloc has well said,—"Men have often talked during this war … as though the crime accompanying Prussian activities in the field were normal to warfare…. It is of the very first importance to appreciate the truth that Prussia in this campaign has postulated in one point after another new doctrines which repudiate everything her neighbors have held sacred from the time when a common Christianity first began to influence the states of Europe. The violation of the Belgian territory is on a par with the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission of their innocence, with the massacre of priests and the sinking without warning of unarmed ships with their passengers and crews. To regard these things as something normal to warfare in the past is as monstrous an historical error as it would be to regard the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution as normal to civil disputes within the states."

It is the business of every person who is concerned about anything more than his own selfish fate to examine into the atrocity charges and to convince himself, not only of the truth, but of the more serious implications in their premeditated and persistent character. The record has been well made, fortunately, often in judicial form. It is already voluminous and being added to constantly. Best of all the evidence, perhaps, are the German diaries of soldiers and officers, extracts of which have been edited by Professor Bédier, of the Collège de France, with facsimile photographs of the texts. Next I should place in evidence the so-called German "War Book" ("Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege"), where under the convenient title of "Indispensable Severities" may be found the text for many of the worst atrocities committed in Belgium and France.

If the atrocity charge against the Germans is false or exaggerated, it is surely time to know it, but no mere denial or general argument can be accepted in rebuttal. The world must convince itself of the truth. The German crimes have been too many and too public, too well authenticated by witnesses to be disproved by mere denial. The best public opinion of the world has condemned military Germany as a barbarous outlaw. The crimes committed with the connivance of the supreme military authorities, authorized by their instructions to their officers, have fouled the name German for eternity: it will be coupled with Vandal, Tartar, Barbarian.

* * * * *

I believe the atrocity charges to be substantially true in a vast majority of cases. Moreover, I do not believe that half the truth of them has been told or ever will be. My reasons for this belief in the atrocity charge are the following: First, undisputed crimes, such as the Lusitania and Cavell cases. A government that would sanction these murders would sanction all other atrocities. Second, the witness of persons in whose credibility I have confidence, such as French officers and civilians, nurses and doctors, whose occupations have thrown first-hand evidence in their way, who have personal knowledge of specific outrages. Third, from what I myself gathered while I was in France from the lips of abused persons. Although I did not look for atrocities, I could not avoid getting reports from such people as I met in the devastated territory of the Marne, weighing their stories, and estimating the validity of them.

I believe in the truthfulness of that abbé of Esternay, who was one of the unfortunates that the Germans used as a screen before the operations of a body of troops. I believe in the truthfulness of the keen old peasant woman at Châtillon, whose home had been riddled by German bullets and who had been fired at when she took refuge in the cellar of her house, and of many others with whom I talked of their experiences during the early days of September, 1914. Unfortunately, there was no photographer at work those days along the Marne valley, though no doubt the German denying office would instantly impugn the evidence of a photograph of the act. Each one of us, however, has his own inner instinctive tests of truth to which he puts the credibility of a story, and I believe the abbé, the old woman, and many others who suffered abominably at the hands of German soldiers.

One fact only too evident to anybody who has followed in German footsteps through the valley of the Marne is the part that mere drunkenness had in this affair. The flower of the German army was incredibly drunken throughout the advance into France. Pillage, rape, incendiarism followed inevitably. They are common crimes to be expected where an exhausted soldiery is inflamed with drink. But the cowardly slaughter of non-combatants, the wanton destruction of monuments, the brutal tyrannies toward conquered peoples—these are the blacker crimes against the German name.