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I. The Blunders of Germany.
BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY.
Member Board of Trustees American Defense Society.
Already in America there are signs of the inevitable "magnanimity" toward the great world criminal of the present world war, and of a movement for a whitewashed peace with "no annexations and no indemnities." There is danger that within six months Americans who do not know Germany will seek to snatch the boon of durable peace and human freedom from the Allied nations who have given their bravest and best men, literally by millions, and their wealth by billions, to protect the rights of man. A German peace means a German triumph, and the certainty of another war in the near future. As an approach toward a settlement, it is now very necessary that every American should know Germany exactly as that bloody military dragon really is. As a means to that end, these three chapters have been written.
The blunders, crimes and punishment of Germany are inseparably linked together.
The blunders of Germany constitute a spectacle of very much more than passing interest. The questions they raise are by no means academic. The logic of them is as inexorable as Death. They are of vital interest to every freeman, and to every state and nation that sincerely undertakes to conserve the rights of its people. To unhappy Austria, shoved into the war by Germany, they are of life or death interest. A correct view of Germany is now absolutely essential to the future freedom of man!
Germany now resembles a rat in a pit, furious from countless defeats, insane with baffled hate and rage, and wild with a fearful certainty of her Finish. All her fine plans, and twenty years of active preparation, have gone awry. Her vast naval and military preparations have brought her only death, poverty, ruin and hatred. Even her own allies now thoroughly hate and detest her, and one and all would break away from her if they dared.
All her long years of lying and spying and plotting have been revealed in their naked and hideous ugliness. She stands before the world as a foiled conquestador, a black-hearted murderer of defenseless women, children and old men, and the wholesale ravisher of helpless women. The "skull-cracker" spiked club of Germany, and the deadly "murderer's mace" of Austria, now abundantly shown in Italy's war museum, are used for the murdering of wounded prisoners in the trenches and on the battlefields.