Bisbee daily review., 1917-10-07

Just why are we in this war? For For the ancient law among nations that the word Of people is its oath?
 Perhaps for all of them. Perhaps, too. because we could not keep out We tried Whatever may have been our record in the past, it can never be said of us that we brought this war on ourselves or that we failed to use every honorable method to keep out of the death grip of Europe. If we were long in couing to our decis- ion, it was because we remained in credulous. We were asked to believe something that was hard to believe.
 So we waited and hoped and stress ed every point of international law to the breaking point because of this thing we would not believe. We were a clean and humane people. We can understand individual cruelty. We have had sad experiences of the hys- teria of crowds. But We can not un- derstand. and today we hardly credit, the cruelty of a government.
 We have ourselves constructed government that is dignified, just, slow to wrath and humane.
 But for three years a conviction has been growing among us that one of the nations in the world war is none Of these things-not dignified, not just, not humane Had Germany's cruelties ceased with Belgium, she might in time have made her case be- fore the world. For three years in that wretched country she has been covering her tracks.
 But Germany has bungled. She has disclaimed frightfulness in Belgium only to bring it home to the world at large. She has introduced into war fare such cruelties of killing, such in human methods, such destruction, such contempt of the laws of war as have set the world pale with horror. She has added hate to the vocabulary of war. and hatred is a oontagion.
 Yet, consistently a nd in the face Of the evidence. she has disclaimed the atrocities in Belgium. She has been willing to shoulder the sinking of wo- men and children in unarmed ships. She is proud of the invention of poi son gases and liquid fire. She be- neves that the shelling of unfortided cities and the use of the submarine against helpless fishing boats will, or her initiative. be accepted by the neXt Hague convention as ethical and legal.
 But she continues to disclain the atrocities in Belgium. Why should she not? The thousands who died in protecting the advance of her army the other thousands who were shot without inquiry against the brick walls of captured towns. those men who were bayoneted while trying to protect their women from the as laults of drunken soldiers, the little children whose bodies lay unburied by the roadside-none of them will ever tell the story.
 The atrocities in Belgium are un true. They are matters of record. German soldiers themselves have set down the details in the diaries their government gave them I have read some of those diaries. Not all Ger man soldiers turned into beasts in Belgium. There are some who re- cord that the horrors sickened them. It is not true that the German govern ment ordered assaults on women. But it did order footing and arson and wholesale murder.
 The result of that order for footing was, mob of drunken men, whose victims today fill great graves.
 This is a terrible accusation 10 bring againsta a people. Yet I know the thing of which I speak During the first year of the war I went to that portion of Belgium which re- mained unconquered. There I saw men, officers high in the Belgian army, who had themselves seen that infamous advance protected by their own people-old men, women carry ing children, small girls, sturdy boys. with death behind and death ahead
 It was impossible not to believe The accumulation of evidence was too great. The German army had come into Belgium prepared for opposition. They brought fire confetti, which they flung into the houses while they were occupied. More than one German di- ary tells of the shooting of the inhaD- itants as they tried to escape. Drunk