After the war is over, will the men and women of America and England and France enjoy traveling in Germany, eating in German hotels, promenading in the Thiergarten of Berlin, and fraternizing with German army officers fresh from the war? Can they tell the ravishers of helpless women, and the murderers of children and old men, from the other men of Germany? No; they can not. The trail of the serpent will be over them all.
After this war how will Americans relish the sound of the German language, and the teaching of it in their schools? Will they patronize German operas as of yore? Of what will the strains of the "Blue Danube" waltz remind them?
How will American men of science now regard the nation whose scientists invented poison gas, and sent bacteria of glanders and anthrax for horses and cattle, into friendly Rumania, under the privileged seal of "diplomacy"? We can give all the details of that episode, from official sources.
Except by rare flashes of side light, the people of America have had few opportunities to learn what the Allies really think now of the German Germans. The catalogue of a dealer in second hand books ordinarily is the very last place in which one would look for expressions of opinion of nations and people. But in war, always look for the unexpected. Book Catalogue No. 767, of Henry Sotheran & Co., London, contains this, soberly set forth on page 21:
Beneden (Pierre Joseph van: Univ. Louvain, Belgium) Animal Parasites and Messmates. 18 woodcuts, post 8vo, 2s. (pub. 5s.).
Belgium came to know viler human parasites from German universities than the filthiest bloodsuckers of the insect world.
And on page 28 this item appears:
Hartman (Robert: Univ. Berlin) Anthropoid Apes, with 63 woodcuts, post 8vo, cl. 2s. (pub. 5s.).
These would suggest the University-bred German officers who defiled with their own filth the French houses in which they were billeted.
We will add that they also suggest the ethics of the wolverine, whose favorite habit it is systematically to defile all the food in a miner's cabin which he can neither eat nor carry away.
All the world now knows that the Allies, of whom, thank God, America at last is one, never will cease fighting the mad-dogs, the wolves and wolverines of Germany until they are thoroughly whipped. Be the time long or short, the Allies will outlast the Teuton and the Turk, and will dictate the terms that both shall accept. America is ready to throw into the scale one-half of all that she possesses, if need be, to secure that end.