No. Germany's whining plea that she is "fighting for her very existence" is no excuse whatever for her diabolical crimes. No one is, or has been, seeking to "destroy" Germany, or anything German, save only her domineering, dangerous and thoroughly accursed military power. Even in the prize ring all such excuses as that are ruled out; and the fear of being beaten in a fight is no excuse for crime, nor even for brutality in method.
One curious psychological fact is to be noted at the very outset. It is this:
The moment the average German dons a military uniform, and becomes a soldier, with deadly weapons in his hands, he is at once transformed as if by magic into a cruel monster. Frequently he becomes a savage and bloodthirsty dragon; and it would be a gross libel on the lower animals to call him a beast. He becomes a stranger to the feelings of the home-loving husband, father, son or churchman. In the name of "Germany," and "war," he is ready to commit any atrocity and write it down, exultingly, in his diary. Ah! those soldier diaries! There is where German efficiency unwittingly provided instruments for the punishment of German crimes.
But the German in uniform is not the only agent of hate and brutality. "The people of Germany" are only one short step behind him. Let every person who doubts this send five cents to the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, for its issue of July 14, 1917, and on page 16 read "Englander Schwein" ("English Swine") the diary of Corporal Edwards, of Canada's top regiment, the Princess Patricia's C.L.I., who was captured by the Germans. Read it, if you have in your heart even one soft spot for "the people of Germany."
It is a story of revolting filth inflicted upon refined gentlemen, of three days utterly needless hunger torture inflicted on half-starved men taken out of their cars three times a day, lined up and compelled to watch German soldiers stuffed with food by German women, with "Nein!" "Nein!" to them when they begged for food. It is a story of horribly neglected wounds, arms rotting off, slow starvation in the prison camp on food consisting of 200 gallons of water to one small bag of potatoes, and so forth.
Of the murders and mutilations in the trenches there is not time to speak. But read this account of the treatment the Canadians received along the railway from the women of Germany,—even "gentlewomen":
"The mob surged around us, heaping on us insults and blows; particularly the women. They spat on us, with hate in their eyes. We had to take that, or the bayonet. These were the acts not only of the rabble, but also of the people of good appearance and address. One very well-dressed woman came rushing up. Under other circumstances I would have judged her to be a gentlewoman. She was screaming invectives at us as she forced her way through the crowd. 'Schwein!' she screamed, and struck at the man next me. Then, drawing deep from the very bottom of her lungs, she spat the mass full in his face."
In essaying to give in one article even an outline sketch of the crimes of Germany, one is perplexed by the many different kinds of atrocities, and the great mass of instances and proofs bearing upon them. Out of it all there thrusts up the ugly fact, like a spear from a pile of corpses, that many of these crimes were committed intentionally, with malice aforethought, and often were deliberately ordered by German officers, both high and low. For example: