It is useless to say what this spirit has brought about. Germany has carried on the war with vigor, has armed herself with brazen armor! She has transformed neighboring lands into deserts! She has slit throats, laid waste fields, shattered skulls, she has destroyed all that lay in her path! She has tried to impress the terror she holds salutary upon the souls of inoffensive old men and women and children!
This is the first of all the reasons why it is necessary now to fight, and to fight to the death; because these men will understand the abominable nature of "frightfulness" only when they see that "frightfulness" does not pay; only when they see the uselessness of unchaining horror and of beginning another war. Let an assassin go at liberty and he will commence his killing all over again; send him to the electric chair and he will regret his crime.
Just as France and Paris were not long in understanding what war meant in Germany's mind, France and Paris were not long in accounting for the danger they had passed through on account of the German spy system, on account of the formidable web of espionage the German agents had woven around all France.
People felt that this German spy system was there, speculated about it and talked about it for years and years, but it was only in the first days of the war that they really appreciated how diabolical it was and how far it had penetrated into the heart of France.
What happened at Amiens at the beginning of September, 1914, is especially characteristic of this.
Amiens was occupied twice by the enemy. To use the expression of a military historian, it seemed as if "the French and the Germans were playing hide-and-seek around the town." As soon as the blue caps of the French appeared over the horizon, the yellow pointed helmets of the Germans disappeared, rapidly. German occupation meant the same thing it did everywhere else—exactions, brutalities, rape. Immediately after he had entered the Prefecture, the German governor levied a war contribution of one million francs. He also demanded that the citizens furnish his troops with wine, cigars, and tobacco; drew up a list of hostages; and arrested all the men between the ages of seventeen and twenty years. Within twenty-four hours they were led away under guard.
Nothing of all this surprised the brave Picard city. Proudly she submitted to her fate. But one thing moved her, or rather angered her, and that was the surety and speed with which the German authorities went directly to all the places they should occupy. They did not hesitate an instant about the street to follow or the door at which to knock. The arrest of the fifteen hundred young hostages occurred with an unheard-of rapidity. It seemed as if an invisible but exceedingly clever hand guided each step, regulated each movement of the invaders. Who could it be who directed, advised and commanded the Germans from behind a veil?
Doubtless the mystery would never have been solved if, during the second occupation, the citizens had not been warned that the next day they would have to keep their shades down and close all shutters because His Imperial Highness, Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser's son, would then make a formal entry into the capital of Picardy. The shutters were closed; automatically the streets were emptied.