And some of "the people" of Germany struck a joy medal in celebration of the Lusitania victory. A reproduction shows that it was a charming and soulful work of German art.
And the submarine reptile who sank the Lusitania was decorated (with the "Order Pour la Merite"), and promoted, by the man whom young Hagenbeck of Hamburg characterized as "our dear, good, kind Emperor."
Faugh!
"Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten mine imagination!"
Last week it was reported by wounded British prisoners, exchanged and sent from Germany via Switzerland, that "as we lay in the train, crowded and helpless, many German women came up to the cars and spit upon us." I have already cited the story of a Canadian prisoner.
During the past three years I have read every scrap of eye-witness information that has come before me in print recording observations in Germany, by war correspondents and others. My reading covers many newspapers, magazines, books and official publications of various kinds. Through all this mass I have looked in vain for expressions from the common people of Germany of some disapproval of German cruelties and atrocities on land or sea, or of sympathy for the victims of German cruelty. Find just one, if you can. I can not. Not once have I seen an expression or sentiment of that kind reported from Germany. The callousness of the women of Germany toward the ravishment, wounding, torture and ghastly mutilation of their sisters in Belgium, France, England, Servia, Poland and Armenia is astounding, beyond belief. But we are learning a lot these days.
Germany deliberately permitted the atrocious Turks to murder about 1,500,000 helpless Armenians; and so far as we know, not one person in Germany, high or low, has uttered one little protest against that colossal crime. Can you beat it! As the world knows very well, Germany absolutely controls Turkey, and drove her into the war; and Germany is guilty of complicity in the death of every non-combatant Armenian of that whole two millions of helpless persons who were slaughtered, or drowned, or starved on the deserts.
The ghastly murder of Edith Cavell, the nurse, and the Apache-like slaughter of Captain Fryatt "go" in Germany. The forcible abduction and enslavement of 5,000 young women, boys and men of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, and all the younger women of Noyon, France, just before the latter was recaptured by the British, is all right in Germany. In the New York Evening World of July 27 you will find in an interview with Louis Raemakers, the Dutch cartoonist nemesis of Germany, a fearful account of what the German officers do with the girls of France, Belgium and Servia. There are photographs by the score of dead children in Servia "upon whom the most frightful crimes had been committed before they were slashed to death across the body," and "woman after woman whose breasts had been cut off."
I believe that if the German soldiers were to kill and eat their prisoners, in the name of "Germany," the German people would accept it as justified by the "attack" on Germany, and the utterly false formula that "Germany is fighting for her life."
The military ring has by hard and continuous lying made the German masses believe that "The Allies wish to destroy Germany"; whereas the Allies wish to do nothing of the kind. All they wish to do is to secure the safety of the world against the barbarians of Berlin.