“There must be no mistake about the apportionment of blame for this and numberless other crimes. We have listened too long to the bleatings of professors bemused by the false glamour of a philosophy which the Germans themselves have thrust aside. The Kaiser and his people are alike responsible for the acts of their Government and their troops, and there can be no differentiation when the day of reckoning comes.
“The Kaiser could stop these things with a word. Instead, he pronounces impious benedictions upon them. Daily he appeals for the blessing of God upon the dreadful deeds which are staining the face of Western Europe—the ravaged villages, the hapless non-combatants hanged or shot, the women and children torn from their beds by cowards and made to walk before them under fire, all the infamies which have eternally disgraced German ‘valour.’ We are no longer dependent upon hearsay for these stories. Our own men are bringing them back from the front. Let there be no mistake as to where the responsibility rests.”
What the Kaiser Said.
It was the Kaiser (addressing his troops in June, 1900, on their setting out for Peking) who said:—
“When you meet the foe you will defeat him. No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Gain a reputation like the Huns under Attila.”
And Who Was Attila?
It is worth while to recall the methods of this savage, for he was nothing better. In one expedition across Greece and in another across Italy he reduced seventy of the finest cities to smoking ruins and to shambles. The inhabitants were either slaughtered on the spot or marched away in chains to end their lives as slaves. Men, women, children, babies—all came alike to this black demon of outrage and destruction. Briefly, the Monarch of the Huns may be best described as the worthy leader of one vast gang of Jack the Rippers.
And this is the blood-guilty ruffian whom the Kaiser now holds up as his exemplar! Judging by Louvain, he is no unworthy follower of his Master.
Then was it not Bismarck who said:—
“You must leave the people through whom you march only their eyes to weep with.”