Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1917-05-03

!. MEN WHO DON'T
PLAY THE GAME +.
BY Irwin s. Cobb.
Of the vigiIantes.

! BY Courtesy OF the Saturday Evening
Post.
We nave got to remember that the Ger.
many with which we nave broken is not
the Germany OF Heine and Goethe and
Haeckel and Beethoven; not the
that gave us Steuben in the revolutionary
war. and Sigel and Schurz in the civil
war; not the Germany of the sentimental.
chivalrous. lovabla Saxon, or yet of the
music-loving, home-loving Bavarian; not
the Germany that was the birthplace of
the kindly, honorable, Industrious, pat
riotic German-speaking neigibor round
the corner from you-but the fanatica1.
t%yrannical. power-mad, blood-and-iron
Prussianized Germany of Bismarck and
Won Bernhardi, of the crown prince and
the junkers-that passionate Prussiamzed
Germany which for 40 years through the
fundamentally of its ruling classes-not
necessarily its kaiser, but its real ruling
ciasseS-has been jealousy striving to per-
vert every native ounce of its scientific
and it's inventive and its creative genius
put OF the paths of progress and ~ciyiltza-
ton and to join it into the grooves or
the greatest autocratic machine. the
greatest organism for killing off human
beings, the greatest engine of misbegot-
ten and misdirected efficiency that was
ever created in the world. Because we
have an admiration for one of these two
GerInanys is no more a reason why we
should abate our indignation and our de-
testation for the other Germany than that
because a maj loves a CHEEKY blaze up
on his hearthstone he should refuse to
fight a forest fire.
We have got to remember another
thing. If our oversee, observations OF
this war abroad lave taught US any
thing. they should have taught us that
the German army-and when i say army
l mean in this case, not its men but its
officers. since in the German army tho
[ - r. N,N - y~ 1~~ 1y- fS,1 hrn In, orI thu
power and the motive force directing the
u~nth.nking, blindly obedient mass beneath
tlem-that the German army is not an
army of good sportsmen. And that, L
take 1t, is an even more important con-
sideration upon the field of battle than
it is upon the athletic field. AS the say
ing goes. the Germans don't play the
game. 1t is as inconceivable to imagine
German officers going in for baseball or
football or cricket as it is to imagine
American volunteers marching the goose
step.
The Germans are not an outdoor race;
they are not given to playing outdoor
sports and abiding by the rules of those
sports, as Englshmen and as Americans
are. And in war-that biggest of all OUT
door games--it a proved against
them that they do not play according to
the rules, except they be rules of their
own making. The German is a greedy
winner and he is a. bad loser-a most re-
markably bad loser. Good s%portsmen
would not have broker Belgium into
bloody bits because Belgium stood be-
tween them and their goal; good sports
men would not have sung the Hymn of
Hate, or made "Gott Strafe England"
their battle cry; good sportsmen would
not have shot Edith Cavell or sunk the
Lusitania. Good sportsmen would not
have packed the helpless men and boys
of a conquered and PROSTATE land off as
c~aptives into 81 enforced servitude worse
than African slavery; would not %wantonly
ave wasted La Fere and Chauny and
Ham. and 100 other French towns. as
they did last month. for no conceivable
reason than that they must surrender
these towns back into the hand of the
enemy: would not, while ostens.bly at
peace with us. W. plotted to destroy our
industrial plants and to plant the seeds
of sedition among our foreign born citi-
zens, and to dismember our country. par
ceiling it out to a brown race in Mexico
and a yellow race in Japan. Good sports
do not do these things, and Germany
did all of them. That means something.