Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-09-18
AMERICANS SCOUT
GERMAN 'ATROCITY'
Five Correspondents Sign d
Round Robin indicating
Kaiser's Army.
SHOCKED BY MYTHICAL
TALES IN LONDON PAPERS
Sole Cruelty Was Kiss Given
Belgian Girl, Who Slapped
Offender.
BY JAMES o,poNNEIL BENNErr.

sat down to write with greater con-
viction than / purpose writing now.
! never sat down to write with a
more sincere belief that could say
something that ought to be known.
Today | had my share in the compo-
sition of a round robin on the So
called German atrocities"
That round robin has been, the
signers of if hope, started ON its way
TO you by Marconi wireless. via the
African coast and SO over the seas of
the Far East into America. There IS
no other way by which we can he
sure our communication will reach
you.
Germany's direct cable commune
cation with the United States is cut.
We also cabled our round robin to
you out of Holland, via London, but
whether the English censors will let
that communication pass we gravely
doubt. If such thing as the Wanted
English sense of fair play" still sur
wives in panic stricken London the
censor will allow our dispatch to so
through.
The Marconi via Africa is likewise
uncertain, but for different reasons.
In trusting ourselves 10 the Marconi
we are contending with the battling
ebb and flow of mysterious currents
m the ether; in trusting ourselves to
the English military censorship we
are at the mercy of radical hatreds
that seem at times to amount to de-
mentia.
Would Tell the Truth.
But the mails out of Holland to
America we believe we can trust and
we have some solemn truth to tell in
detail now
The round robin was a bare state
ment in which we expressed our earn
est belief-a belief based on days OF
personal observations in the theatre
Of war-that the reports of barbara
ties alleged to have been perpetrated
by German troops on an inoffensive
Belgian countryside are shocking
falsehoods.
We believe this as firmly as we be-
lieve that we are now safe in the
ancient city of AiX-la Chapelle after
more than week of wandering over
that very countryside, sometimes in
the rear of and sometimes alongside
German columns.
We have Travelled on foot, on BIZ
cycles, by horse and cart and by
train more than 100 miles We have
passed through twenty towns and
villages. We have moved from Brus-
sells on the north to Beaumont on the
south and to AiX-la- Chapelle on the
east.
We have been within 100 feet of
the Belgian French border on the
south and We have crossed the Bel
chamberlain border on the cast. We
have shared the food and wine and
the straw beds of German soldiery.
We have sung songs with them in
the post of the rear guards at night
and we have talked with scores of
Belgian peasants, men and women,
across whose fields and through
whose villages the German host has
passed. OF German soldiers we must
have seen at least 100000 with our
own eyes.
Probe Reveals Not One Atrocty.
And amid all we have heard and
all that we have seen in ten tumul-
tuous wearying days, we have Meth
Ell heard of a single "atrocity' that
our Investigations verified, nor seen
a single atrocity perpetrated.
The rigors and the shocking waste
of war we have seen. We have seen
burning villages and women weeping
over their desolated homes We have
seen miles of highway strewn with
the caps, coats. bloody shoes, bloody
bandages. smashed rifles, empty
knapsacks, band instruments, field
glasses and wine bottles of the re-
treating French.
We have seen new-made English
graves i. the lonely fields over which
the evening mist hung like pale
shroud.
We have beheld the wreck and the
CRIME and the squalor of wars pass
ing, but we have been spared the
sight of outraged women and tortured
children.
Why is this?
We firmly believe that it is because
no such atrocities have been com
mitted by the German soldiery.
And yet, safe in Aixla Chapelle,
safe though still under the surveil-
lance of German military authorities
who, like all Europe, are spy mad
safe and well and bathed and
shaver at last, We open bundles of
London newspapers in the quiet Of
fees of the American consul, Thomp
son, and we read column after col
umn of the most narrowing and
dreadful accounts of most infamous
barbarities inflicted upon the Belgian
peasantry by German troops.
We are aghast as we read. We
turn to the consul and say: What
does this mean? How is 1t that we
have seen nothing of this?" He looks
gravely back at us and says II
have been reading those things for
days before you came"
The American consul has lived sew
en- years in Germany and he has car
ried on special studies concerning the
volume, the nature and the effect OF
German immigration into America
from the beginning of that immigra-
ton in colonial times to tine present
day The defining of the contribu-
lions of German blood and German
culture to the life of the republic Is a
field of investigation in which he has
made himself an authority. Few
Americans know the German people
half so we'll as he does. He. likes
them and trusts them.
His observation of the present war
has not extended into the field, but
he is no less baffled by the frantic
reports from London than are we,
whose scouting has taken us to scenes
Of actual operations.
fIe is, and from the nature of his
position must be. officially non-con-
initial To us he only mods his mead
and says: 81 can't understand it,"
AS FOR the Germans, both military
and civilian, with whom we have
TALKED in Aix-la -Chapellc, they are
distressed and shaned by the reports
that are pouring into America via
London So were the officers with
whom we talked when we were fol-
lowing the columns. But they hid their
distress under sneers 1T once stoicai
and bitter.
One OF thom saii; "Wc must bear
il. In two r,onths tho world will
knew the truth. We can wait"
IT was in the name not alone of
Justice but of common dpccncy that
the Eve OF lis signed that round
robin this afternoon. We five are
trained newspaper men, accustomed
IN Observing, to deGucing from our