Many other examples might be cited from the writings of German generals. The very best illustration of this attitude, however, is to be found in the Emperor's various speeches, and especially in his speech to his soldiers on the eve of their departure for China in 1900. On July 27 the Kaiser went to Bremerhaven to bid farewell to the German troops. As they were drawn up, ready to embark for China, he addressed to them a last official message from the Fatherland. The local newspaper reported his speech in full. In it appeared this advice and admonition from the Emperor, the commander in chief of the army, the head of all Germany.
"As soon as you come to blows with the enemy he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown! No prisoners will be taken! As the Huns, under King Attila, made a name for themselves, which is still mighty in traditions and legends to-day, may the name of German be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinese shall ever again dare even to look at a German askance. * * * Open the way for Kultur once for all."
Even the imperial councillors seem to have been shocked at the Emperor's speech, and efforts were promptly made to suppress the circulation of his exact words. The efforts were only partly successful. A few weeks later, when letters from the German soldiers in China were being published in local German papers, the leading socialist newspaper, Vorwärts, excerpted from them reports of atrocities under the title "Letters of the Huns." Many of the leaders in the Reichstag felt very keenly the brutality of the Emperor's speech. The obnoxious word "Huns" had excited almost universal condemnation. When the Reichstag met, in November, the speech was openly discussed. Herr Lieber, of the Center (the Catholic party), after quoting the "no mercy" portion of the speech, added, "There are, alas,Opposition in Reichstag. in Germany groups enough who have regarded the atrocities told in the letters which have been published as the dutiful response of soldiers so addressed and encouraged." The leader of the Social Democrats, Herr Bebel, spoke even more pointedly. Toward the end of a two-hour address on the atrocities committed by the German soldiers in China and on the speech of the Emperor he said:
"If Germany wishes to be the bearer of civilization to the world, we will follow without contradiction. But the ways and means in which this world policy has been carried on thus far, in which it has been defined by the Emperor * * * are not, in our opinion, the way to preserve the world position of Germany, to gain for Germany the respect of the world."
The consequences of the Emperor's speech Bebel aptly described:
"By it a signal was given, garbed in the highest authority of the German Empire, which must have most weighty consequences, not only for the troops who went to China but also for those who stayed at home." "An expedition of revenge so barbarous as this has never occurred in the last hundred years and not often in history; at least, nothing worse than this has happened in history, either done by the Huns, by the Vandals, by Genghis Khan, by Tamerlane, or even by Tilly when he sacked Magdeburg."
Atrocities in China.
These stories of atrocities in China or "Letters of the Huns" continued to be published in the Vorwärts for several years and appeared intermittently in the debates of the Reichstag as late as 1906. At that time the socialist, Herr Kunert, reviewing the procedure in a trial of which he had been the victim in the previous summer, stated that he had offered to prove "that German soldiers in China had engaged in wanton and brutal ravaging; that plunder, pillage, extortion, robbery, as well as rape and sexual abuses of the worst kind, had occured on a very large scale and that German soldiers had participated in them." He had not been given an opportunity to prove his allegations, but had been sentenced to prison for three months for assailing the honor of the "whole German Army." The outrageousness of this sentence was made clear by the revelations, made in the Reichstag shortly afterwards, of similar atrocities committed by German officials and soldiers in Africa in the campaign against the Hereros.
The teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche and their evil influence upon the present generation in Germany are well known. The minds of the responsible officials were filled with ideas wholly different from those to which Germany had agreed at The Hague. The cult of might, and of war as its expression, found many disciples who flooded the press with pamphlets and panegyrics on war and its place in the natural and political development of a nation. Before the war the average number of volumes concerning war published each year in Germany was 700, and the vast majority of those written by the German Army officers advocated the ruthless policy of von Clausewitz, von Hartmann, and von Moltke.
These ideas, which have come to control the minds of the military class, are best shown in the German War Book (Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege), published in 1902. The tone of this authoritative book may be judged from the following extracts: