The Way to Win

by William Le Queux

I am firmly convinced that in that letter Lord Rosebery expressed not merely what the great mass of the English people are thinking and saying to-day, but that he expressed a great and real truth.

In the early days of the War it was the fashion here in England to affect to believe that we were at war not with the German people—represented by the pro-Germans in our midst as a kindly, harmless, and industrious lot of folks—but with the mysterious “military caste” who were supposed to have usurped all authority, and to be driving the delightful German people at large into the commission of all kinds of bestial outrages which were entirely foreign to their wholly delightful nature. I should imagine that fiction has long gone by the board. We have seen the “delightful” German nation sent into paroxysms of inhuman glee by such outrages as the sinking of the “Lusitania”; we have seen them time and again savagely gloating over the slaughter of men, women, and children by their murderous Zeppelins; and if those savage outbursts of delight have done nothing else, we have at least to thank them for teaching us the lesson that we are at war with the entire German nation, and that between that nation and the civilised world there is a great gulf fixed which in our time at least will not be bridged over.

Do we owe any consideration to such a nation? Do we owe to them any of the chivalry and honourable forbearance which we have shown, not once, but a thousand times, in our long contests with civilised adversaries on a hundred fields in all parts of the world? Are our hands to be tied and our people to suffer through our adherence to creeds of warfare which the Huns evidently regard—as they regard Christianity itself—as a lot of worn-out shibboleths?

I say emphatically “No,” and I say the time has come when we should take steps, in Lord Rosebery’s words, to bring home the triumphs of the Zeppelins to German hearts and German homes.

It is too much the fashion in this country to look upon the German as a stolid individual with nerves of steel, who is not to be shaken from his serenity by any of the trials which would bear hardly upon ordinary mortals. There never was a greater mistake. I am quite ready to admit that the German can look unmoved upon a great deal of suffering in other people—that is a characteristic of bullies of all nations; and if the German has not shown himself to be a super-man, he has at least convinced the world that he is the super-bully in excelsis. And the only argument that appeals to him is force, naked and unashamed. In his heart of hearts he knows it. That is why he believes that England to-day is cowering in impotent terror under the menace of the Zeppelins, because he knows that is exactly what he would be doing himself if the positions were reversed, and he cannot understand other people who are built on very different lines. We know how one of the early raids on Freiburg produced an instant panic flight of every German who could afford to get away from a district which had suddenly become “unhealthy.”

Now we have it in our power to reproduce that panic in a dozen German towns within easy reach of our lines in France. And we know something of the real effects of a bombardment by one of the Allied squadrons. In the recent raid on Petrich only fourteen French aeroplanes took part. Yet the Bulgarians officially admitted that they sustained a thousand casualties—far more than we have suffered in the twenty odd Zeppelin raids on England.

Surely it is high time we made it clearly known that any repetition of the bombardment of an unfortified area would be followed by reprisals of the most merciless nature. We can imagine what the effect would be of a big British or French squadron of aeroplanes pelting the German frontier towns with a hail of high explosive and incendiary shells. Assuredly the Zeppelin raids on England would seem futile in comparison. And just as assuredly it would bring home to the German nation as nothing else ever will that the policy of “frightfulness” in which they have elected to indulge is one which will call down upon them a richly deserved punishment. I believe that, speaking generally, the entire world would approve of our action if we decided to take such measures of reprisals as German crimes call for. The responsibility would be Germany’s, not ours. We have fought, as our French Allies have fought, with clean hands.

I believe that stern punishment of this nature is the only possible means of putting an end to the German campaign of murder, and it is for that reason that I advocate it without the slightest hesitation or compunction. The idea of those who believe that reprisals are called for is not to punish the Germans so much as to convince them of the error of their ways and to protect our own people. I believe that our air squadrons could set up such a reign of terror in the Rhine towns that even in Germany the demand for the only possible measure of protection—the cessation of the air raids on unfortified places in France and England—would become irresistible. The German Government may continue to delude the German people about events that are happening outside Germany; they could not by any possibility hide the facts if the air war were effectively carried on to German soil.

Further, I firmly believe that half a dozen smashing aerial attacks upon German towns and cities would do more to put a stop to Germany’s unending infraction of all the laws of civilised warfare than the futile notes and protests of President Wilson have effected in a twelvemonth.

It will be objected by those who seek to make war in kid gloves that if we carry out these raids German women and children must inevitably suffer. I do not shrink from the conclusion, though I regret the necessity which has been forced upon us by the Germans themselves. I am not at all ashamed to say that one little English baby dead in the arms of its weeping mother, killed not by the accident of warfare, but of set, savage, and deliberate purpose, far outweighs in my mind any sentimental or humanitarian considerations for our enemies. We should have no ground of complaint if the Germans confined their raids to proper military objects; and if, in the course of those raids, civilians were accidentally killed, that would be one of the penalties of being at war, and we should be justified in asking our people to bear their sorrows with what fortitude they could. The case is widely different when men, women, and children are slain in a foul campaign of insensate murder; and I say again that in self-defence we are entitled to throw mere sentiment to the winds and protect ourselves by any means in our power. And the best means of protection we have against these murderous raids is to hit the Hun in the same way, to give him a taste of his own medicine; in the words of Lord Rosebery, to bring his triumph directly to his heart and his home. Thus, and thus only, we shall convince the German people, and through them the German militarists, that in the long last it does not pay to outrage the conscience of civilisation.