Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-10-01

French, German and Austrian from
tiers were rendered impossible by the
| actual hostilities, and Italy was al
most as hard to enter or to traverse
owing to her immediate mobilization.
1t was Just the moment of high sea-
SON. for American tourists. None
could get away, none could get
money Letters of credit awaited not
at all. Frequently the millionaire
was caught with less and the little
schoolmistress with more, merely de-.
pending on who had been to the bank
most recently.
After about three weeks of this the
American ambassador in Paris Sc
cured permission from the French
government to run a few special
trains of Americans through France.
The second one of these trains was
put under my charge to conduct to
Paris, one single passport, carefully
| guarded in my innermost pocket,
,, serving for us all, and this at time
when every other stranger in France
was having his individual passport ex-
amined and vised about every time
he turned round! l was selected by
the embassy doubtless owing to my
happening to speak French and Eng
fish with about equal proficiency.
1t took us IS hours to get to Paris,
instead of the customary eight or ten.
| The delay was caused mostly to allow
passage of the long freight trains filed
with wounded French soldiers. They
lay on the floor in the cars merely on
layer of straw that was red and
matted with human blood. Our train
UntIt6 ar xya Of
then lie by for a couple of hours, and
always these terrible trains We're our
neighbors in the railway yards. Owing
to my official position, l was permit
ted by the military authorities to visit
| them as freely as l desired, and it is
of the long intimate talks with these
wounded French soldiers that l want
especially to write.
The report in the newspapers about
German atrocities I had previously set
down to hysterical exaggerations, such
as characterize the beginnings of so
many wars, and it was with a sort
| of amused tolerance that l first
/ listened to 1t all in my talks with
these soldiers. But, by heavens,
neither you nor anybody else would
have talked with them long without
realizing that eall that we have been
reading in the papers about these in
| human barbarities does not even give
faint idea of the actual horrible
! truth One soldier after another 1
questioned, always asking for exactly
| what he had seen with his own eyes,
and not picked UP by mere heresay. I
| tell you the things I learned all that
long day and night in regard to mutt
lations of women and young girls were
| beyond description in their inconceiv-
able horror. No such mass of circum-
stantial details related to me by actu-
| al witnesses lying SO near to death in
those bare cars, and next day in the
long rows Of cots in the hospitals that
visited in Dieppe, could have been
| elaborated nor invented. Each
simple, straightforward narration stood
clear as but another facet of the great
| central mass that could not but be the
| truth!
| If the Germans had acted but half
so madly they would now stand worse
condemned in the eyes of the world
1t is the very enormity of the acts that
! defeats their gaining credence. That
women and young girls should have
ured for life, not in rare instances,
but literally in hundreds of cases, ap-
pears too improbable to the average
person to be aught but exaggeration.
| AS is the case with yourself, have
| had many acquaintance and friends
in Germany, and they would all be in
| capable of any lack of delicacy or or
| honor. They are good fathers hus-
bands, sons. They would not mall
treat animals. Explain it how you
may; these things I heard from those
| just fresh from the scene could not
| be else than true. All these wounded
] soldiers came from the campaign in
Belgium and on the Mouse, frequently
entering towns and villages that the
Germans had Just left in ruins, and the
| corpses of ravished women and child
rem were a constant feature. They
| thought at first they were casualties
| from bullets but the wounds were too
| frequently those of bayonet and of
| sword. After the final conquest Of
| Liege the German soldiers, so long
baffied and starved and maddened,
then fell upon Belgium in a frenzy,
famished as they were and mad with
thirst for alcohol. The Germans that
you and I knew 25 years ago had for
| their motto: Fear God and do right;
under the cold mathematical goddess
ness of present Prussian militarism 1t
seems to be changed ts Fear the
Kaiser and do-otherwise as you
wish"
Victims of mutilation cannot hope
to hush their stories. You have but
to put yourself in the positions of VIC
| tins of mere rape, or of the father or
| brother or husband of such victims to
| realize how the first thought would be
for concealment The horrible cases
| Of muttlation cannot be concealed But
these latter cases give a method of
! roughly calculating the total In the
| science of morbid and abnormal psy-
chology there is a certain perversity
| known as sadism from the Marquis
de SADIE, who first described IT'D 1t is
| the desire to mutilate the body of the
| victim Of ones lust. 1t is very rare.
| In the annals of crime of London of
recent years there has been but one