Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-06-23
VENGEANCE IS MINE; I WILL
REPAY, SAITH THE LORD

A SPECIAL commission Of honorable
French gentlemen, each Of whom
would scorn to lie even for the national
service. was appointed some weeks ago
TO Investigate reported German atrocities
in the recovered parts Of northern France.
Yesterday our special correspondent in
France, Henri Bazln. published in this
newspaper a review Of the commissions
findings. We could wish that every man
ana woman in America had read his plain
and simple statement Of facts.
The yardstick of civilization is the place
Of woman in organized society. The re-
spect accorded motherhood, the protec-
tion given feminine virtue. the inviola-
bility Of the wife, constitute in themselves
the measure OF human progress. 1t has
been so since history was written. Men
who degrade women degrade themselves,
and they degrade their sons. No nation
has been able. to survive a womanhood
dehled. and civilized peoples, for genera
tions past, even in war, have respected
this principle. But what these Germans
have done, in their mad determination to
COW and bludgeon whole populations into
subsection and servitude is to strike at
the very citadels of life, and truth, and
purity, and faith, and reverence, and Jus
fice. for the despoilment of women and
the enslavement of young girls has been
a definite, fixed and unaltered policy on
their part
1t was difficult to believe in the early
gent as the Germans. so magnificent in
their material progress, could be guilty
of these outrages. But facts are facts.
Only a few months ago a French woman
was tried in a French court for murder,
She had destroyed the lire Of her young
child. Pitiably on the witness stand she
told her story. In the most horrible cir
cumstances imaginable she had been pro-
famed. The child was to her a living tes-
timony OF the fact, an awful reminder Of
events more terrible than death, so horri-
BILE that in her simple mind she hated the
She was acquitted, as she would have
been in any court, but her experience was
simply one to which thousands of her
French sisters had been subjected. Lust
cannot explain these things. Back of the
lust is a deliberate national policy, de-
signed to contaminate the posterity Of
whole provinces and thus bring them
more readily under the Prussian yoke.
In Chaulney, the German in command
said TO the desolate mother whose fifteen
year-old daughter had been seized as a
slave: Know that the words pity and
He told the truth. Nor in the scheme Of
ruthless aggression which has made Ger
many the common foe of all mankind and
the hated of all nations is there any the
orem Of charity to which allegiance is
paid. The lust of conquest has magnifed
and indorsed the other lusts that man
the animal is heir to, and only by pouring
our resources into the conflict and fully
decapitating this hydra-headed monster
can we win back for the world the things
which massed together we call civiliza
tion. We enter upon the mighty task
with complete confidence, for a humble
and religious people do not doubt that the
God whose majesty the German Emperor
has blasphemed will ride on the storm
and direct the issue.
Vengeance is mine; will repay, saith
the Lord.