Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-01-16

| with growing amazement article of some
| 1000 words contributed by you to the London
Chronicle and entitled IA Policy Of Murder:
How Prussia Has Degraded the Standard Of
| Modern Warfare"
To me that article seems very terrible
and very terrifying document-torrible in
it's wrath. in its passionate sincerity and in
! it's massing of statements; terrifying in its
effect upon the minds OF neutral peoples if
it's statements accepted.
In making some reply to your article
| shall not much try to say things that will
| call in question the things you have said as
! try to say things that will to some extent
give another point of view than yours on
one of the greatest and most perplexing
| questions of the time-the question of how
| Germany makes war.
The Taking of Brussels
On August IL l arrived in Brussels from
London. where I had just taken up my work
as London correspondent for the Chicago
Tribune. During the next five or six days l
made brief trips to the east and south of
Brussels-as far east as Landen and as far
north as Namur On these journeys, by
train and on foot. / heard no reports that l
was able to confirm of wanton atrocities
perpetrated by German troops against the
Belgian civil population which had observed
the laws OF war, Dut L ulu near Oh SOIne III
stances of drastic punishment meted out to
franctireurs
On August 20 I was in Brussels and
watched for three days and a half the pass
ing of thousands of German troops through
the city. l was in many parts of Brussels
for many hours of that strained and eXct-
ing time and l neither heard nor saw an
act of outrage or Of pillage. 1 did not see
even an act of rudeness on the part of
either population the invading soldiery.
What I did see was friendly visiting between
groups of civilians and soldiers at o'clock
in the evening. That was four hours after
the entry began.
Atrocities Vanish On Inquiry
One day we of a small party rode and
marched by ourselves through many Belgian
villages and towns. We heard stories of un-
provoked atrocities when we visited with the
inhabitants, but always the scene was ''in the
next village monsieurs." Arriving in the next
village we received the same assurance and
so on all that day. Finally Belgian burgo-
master told us that he had been investigat-
ing the reports for two days and had come
to believe that they were frantic inventions.
Of the cruel signs of war we saw much and
of the summary execution of franctireurs
we heard something and we heard it from
a German column at Beaumont and were
placed under surveillance by German officers.
On Friday night they put us on a train
with scores of French prisoners of war
bound for Cologne deposting us at Aachen
and seeming right glad to be rid of us.
Result of German Discipline
In Aachen we were under surveillance for
three or four days by the civil police and
npn ptnl,NV
or interest. The town being convenient to
the Holland border, where we could mail our
letters to America, we made it our headquar-
ters for nearly two months. During that
period 1 made two trips to scenes of Ger
man military operations in France, each
time under escort OF German officer. On
those trips had scores of opportunities to
observe the iron discipline of the German
troops, their sobrety, their scrupulousness
in paying for meals at French inns, and
their good understanding with the civil pop
ulation in France, and it is of these matters
that would make some statement in detail.
AS to Murder Policy
In the opening paragraph of your con-
trbution TO the Chronicle you say that "a
time has now come when in cold blood,
with every possible restraint, one is justi-
fed in saying that since the most barbarous
campaigns of Alva in the lowlands, or the
excesses of the Thirty Years War; there has
been no such deliberate policy of murder as
has been adopted in this struggle by the Ger
man forces This is the more terrible since
these forces are not like those of Alya, Parma
or Tnly, bands Of turbulent and mercenary
soldiers, but they are the nation itself, and
their deeds are condoned or even applauded
by the entire national press"
Haltingly owing to meagre knowledge
of the German language, but pretty faith
fully for more than three months, I have
followed the reputable Cologne and Aachen
papers on the war and I have neither read
nor heard read any such eondonement or
applause Naturally what they do not con-
eede they do not have to condone and the
German press does not eoncede that German
troops have outraged the laws OF civilized
warfare.
Cites Case of German Sympathy
You say in your next paragraph that war
may have a beautiful as well as a terrible
side and be fun OF touches of human sym
pathy and restraint which mitigate its un-
avoidable horrors" and you cite instances
of this from the medieval wars between
England and France lnd from the cam
paigns in the peninsula in proof OF that as
sertion.
And then you ask:
could one imagine Germans making war
in such q spirit as this?'
can not only imagine It, but have seen
thought It a beautiful thing to see my
friend. Captain Franz Won Kempis, Of the
Konigln Augusta Garde GFenadier Resi-
sfarHfaa uncovered on a chill