On several occasions the British have actually honored the fine seamanship and daring and skill of German sea raiders, even after great destruction while at sea. But the British navy men are good sports, while the men of the German navy do not seem to recognize a bold and capable seaman when they see one; and they have no sense of sportsmanship. When did the German navy ever rescue a British or French sailor from drowning? But British sailors have saved many Germans.
The murder of Captain Fryatt brands the whole German navy with a mark that it will wear forever.
9. THE GERMAN OUTRAGES UPON WOMEN.
It is here that the pen falters, and the heart turns sick with horror and loathing. Thus far the newspapers of the United States have shrunk from printing the awful details that have been available on this subject.
For fifty years we have been reading of the wars of nations,—white, black, red, brown and yellow,—but never in modern times have we seen such ghastly, such loathsome, such shocking and sickening brutalities of lust as German officers and soldiers inflicted, wholesale, upon the women of Belgium and northern France. At present we will say little of Poland, for the subject is too vast.
I shall not give instances, even though there are hundreds at hand, well authenticated, and undoubtedly true. But let all Americans remember this: Never within the last four hundreds years or more have any women ever been so brutally abused, so extensively raped by violence, often accompanied by murder in Jack the Ripper fashion, or so disgustingly maltreated before the eyes of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and groups of men as were the wretched women of Belgium and northern France.
The rage of the German brutes whose great conquest of France was balked seemed to be visited with particular fury and cruelty upon the women of the captured territory between fourteen and forty years of age. I have before me one instance so awful and so revolting that the woman upon whom it was inflicted immediately went mad. The details are published only in French, in order that only a few English-speaking persons may read them.
No wonder that when the armies of General Joffre and General Foch were chasing the German ravishers back to the banks of the Marne, that the French women of the recaptured towns and villages dragged themselves to their windows, leaned out, and begged the French soldiers to "Take no prisoners! Kill them,—all!"
The total number of women who have been cruelly abused by German officers and private soldiers never will be known; but it must run up into hundreds of thousands. Only the devil himself knows how many miserables have been "given to the soldiers," just as was the Polish maid of an American lady, Madame Turczynowics, now in New York, who tells about it in her book, "When the Prussians Came to Poland" (page 138). This is the passage:
... we pushed our way into the room where Manya was, ... what had been Manya.... An officer came in to ask our business with the girl.
"She is my maid—stolen! This is her father. I have come to take her home."
"I am very sorry, but you are not allowed to take her. She belongs to the soldiers."
"Don't you see, Herr Offizier, the girl is dying?"
"Ill she is, and shall have the best of care. We have a doctor to attend to just such cases."—And I had to leave her!