New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-07-02

In former European wars foul practices
were committed by individual members
Of armies But the total army in eaeh coun-
try was a small. hired band OF men, repre-
senting only the fractional part of per cent
of the population. It was in no way repre-
,entsti,. Of the mind OF the people. OF the
prescnt German army, Professor DR.. Max
planck. Of the University Of Berlin. distin-
guishcd physicist, has recently written:
"The German army is nothing but the Ger
man people in arms. and the scholars ana
artists are, like all other classes, inseparably
bound up With It,"
We must regard the acts Of the German
army as the acts OF the people. We cannot
dodge the problem Of their misbehayIor by
saying they have not committed atrocities
We have the signed statements Of thousand
German diaries that they have practised
frightfulness, village by village, through Bel
gum and Northern France. We cannot say
il was n handful of drunken, undscipHned
soldiers who did these things It was the
German people in arms
Irritated by an unexpectedly firm resistance
from the Belgian and French armies, fed on
lies spread by German officers concerning the
cruelty of French and Belgians, they obeyed
the commands to burn houses and shoot civil
ans. These commands released primitive
quality Of brutality
4 Monstrous Penalty.
On August %. 1914, Reservist Heinrich Bis
singer. of the town of Ingostadt, Of the I'd
Company. Of the LIST Bavarian Pioneers, writes
Of the village of Orchies:
80
stop at the word halt, but kept running
away Thereupon we burn the whole place
"Samtlche Civilpersonen werden verhaftet
Fine Frau wurde verschossen, we'll sic auf
halt rufen NIGHT helt, sondern susreissen
wolfe Hierauf Vsrbrennen der ganzen Ort-
schaft"
One wonders If Heinrich Bissinger would
wish the treatment he and his comrades ac-
corded to Orchies TO be applied to his own
home town of Ingolstadt. II some German
peasant woman in Ingolstsdt failed TO under
stand a word in a foreign tongue and was
killed. and then if Ingolstadt was burned
would Heinrich Bissinger feel that military
necessity" exonerated the soldiers who per-
formed the deed?
Private Philip, from Kamenz, Saxony, OF
the 1st Company, of the first Battalion of the
I7sth Regiment, writes "Kregs Tagebuch-
Sodat Philip, I Kompsnie (Sachsen)" at
the head of his diary. On August %, he
writes of a village that had been burned:
"A spectacle terrible and yet beautiful.
Directly at the entrance lay about fifty dead
inhabitants who had been shot because they
had traitorously fired on our troops. In the
course Of the night many more were shot so
that we could count over two hundred. Women
and children. lamp in hand, had to watch the
horrible spectacle. Then in the middle of the
corpses we ate our rice; since morning We
had eaten nothing BY search through the
houses We found much wine and liquor, but
nothing TO eat
I'm Laufe der Nacht wurden noch vlele
erschossen sodass wr uber 200 zahien konn-
ten Frauen und Kinder. die Lampe IN der
Hand. mussten dem entsetzichen Schauspiele
zusehen Wiz assen damn inmtten der
Leichen unsern Refs, seit Morgen hatten wiz
NIGHTS gegessen."
German soldiers obey these orders because
their military training and their general edu-
cation have made them docile. They have
never learned to exercise independent indl-
vidual moral judgment in relation 20 acts or
oered by the state. The state 70 them IS
mystical organism. functionng in regions
that lie outside the intellectual and moral life
Of the individual. In every German there are
separate water tight compartments; the one
for the life he leads as a husband and father,
the other for the acts he must commit as
citizen of the empire and as a soldier OF the
army.
In his home life he makes choices. In his
public life he has no choice. He must obey
without compunctions. SO he lays aside his