New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-08-10
Antecedents of Frightfulness


| In these days of momentous events and
/ history in the making it is sometimes dim
cult to stop long enough for the backward
glance which forms the true perspective.
, The world, for instance, has been shocked
| in so many ways and on so many occasions
! by German brutality and frightfulness IN
war that it was scarcely surprised to learn
| that Hindenburg in his retreat was out
vandaling even the Vandals in destroying
towns and villages, and even cutting down
orchard trees and garden shrubs, that moth
ing might be left to the people who after
the war would come back to what were
once their homes, but where they would
find nothing left but the soil.
AS a matter of fact, all this has been
done simply through blind rage, baffied and
defeated in its purposes and in its attempt
at world domination, but, in consequence of
theories of warfare peculiar to the Prussian
through generations, only reaching its
height in the barbarism which wrecked the
University of Louvain, battered and ruined
the beautiful Cathedral of Rheims and de-
ported Belgians into scarcely disguised
slavery.
To get a proper background for this ex-
hibition of war reverting to barbarism it
is merely necessary to turn back half a
century or more to a German novelist to
find this theory set forth, humorously it is
true, but with sufficient touch of truth
and earnestness to give it effect. In his
novel, translated into English under the
title an the Year 49," Fritz Reuter- makes
one of his characters, Friedrich, trans
late, or rather tell the story of the transla-
ton, of the Prussian motto, "Suum Cuique,"
for the miller's benefit, after this manner:
"But | know another saying, and that is,
If you have thing, you've got it. And we
Prussians have an eagle for our crest, and
underneath it is a Latin verse which fits
that saying as close as your finger and thumb
when you nip pigs tail. And the sergeant
of my company-he was runaway student
he understood the verse and translated it:
Hold fast what you've got, and take what
you can GET Now, this problem is handy at
times, specially in time of war Turning
round again, he went on: MILLER Voss, cursed
be the shilling steal from my neighbor, and
cursed be the wheat, oats or barley cheat
nv master of; but in time Of war it's quite
different. The Turks and the French are the
country's enemy and the countrys enemy is
not better by a hair than the arch enemy.
What said old Captain Won Restorp? Injury
must be done to the enemy in every way.
"If you have a thing, you've got it,"
"Hold fast what you've got, and take what
you can get" and Injury must be done to
the enemy in every way"-could three SEN
fences better explain Germany's attitude
in the present war? AS Henri Bergson
has said: "The moral energy of nations,
! like that of individuals, can only be sus-
tanned by some ideal superior to them
selves, stronger than they are, to which
they can cling with strong grip when
they feel their courage vacillate." What
! is the ideal disclosed by Germany's rape of
Belgium, her submarine frightfulness, her
Zeppelin bombardments of London and
Paris, her destruction, as far as possible,
of the country itself which she is compelled
to evacuate? Could it be better expressed
than in those sentences from Fritz Reu-
ter's novel, published just half century
ago?