Meade County news., 1917-12-20

human" "The great good In war Is
that 1t should be ended quickly. In /
view of this. every means, except thos
which are positively condemGable
must be permitted. cannot. in any
way. agree with the declaration of ST
Petersburg when it pretends that the
weakening of the military forces of the
enemy constitutes the only legitimate
method of procedure in war. No One
must attack all the resources of the |
enemy government, his finances, his
railroads, his stock of provisions and
even his prestige. :"
Many other examples might be cited |
from the writings of German generals. |
The very best Illustration of this atti
tude, however, is to be found in the |
emperor's various speeches, and espe- |
cially In his speech to his soldiers on |
the eve Of their departure for China in
1900. On July 27 the kaiser went TO |
Bremerhaven to bid farewell to the |
German troops. As they were drawn !
up, ready to embark for China, he adj |
dressed TO them last official message |
from the fatherland. The local news
paper reported his speech in full. In
it appeared this advice and admonitiOn
from the emperor. the commander In
chief of the army, the head of all Ger
| many:
Soldiers Told to Be MercIess.
"As soon as you come to blows with
the enemy he will be beaten. No mercy
will be shown No prisoners will be
taken! AS the Huns, under King At
tia, made a name for themselves,
which is still mighty in traditions and
legends today, may the name of Ger
man be so fixed in China by your deeds,
that no Chinese shall ever again dare
even to look at a German askance. .
| Open the way for Kultur once for all"
Even the imperial councillors seem to
have been shocked at the emperor's
speech, and efforts were promptly
made to suppress the circulation of his
exact words The efforts were only
partly successful. A few weeks later,
when the letters from the German sol
diers in China were being published,
in local German papers, the leading
socialist newspaper, Vorwaerts, ex-
cerpted from them reports of atroci-
ties under the title Letters of the
Huns" Many of the leaders in the
reichstaglf felt very keenly the brutality
of the emperors speech. The obnox-
ious word "Huns" had excited almost
universal condemnation. When the
reichstag met, in November, the speech
was openly discussed. Herr Lleber Of
the center Catholic party, after quot
ing the mo mercy" portion of the
speech, added, "There are, alas, in Ger
many groups enough who have regard
ed the atrocities told in the letters
which have been published as the duti-
full response of soldiers so addressed
and encouraged" The leader Of the
social democrats, Herr Bebel, spoke
even more pointedly. Toward the end
of two-hour address on the atrocities
committed by the German soldiers in
China and on the speech Of the en-
peror, he said:
"If Germany wishes to be the bearer
Of civilization to the world, we will
follow without contradiction. But the
ways and means in which this world
policy has been carried on thus far, in
which it has been defined by the en-
peror are not, in our opinion,
the way to preserve the world position
of Germany to gain for Germany the
respect of the world"
The consequences of the emperors
speech Bebel aptly described:
"By 1t the signal was given, garbed
in the highest authority Of the German
empire, which must have most weighty
consequences, not only for the, troops
who went to China but also for those
who stayed at home. An expedition
Of revenge so barbarous as this has
never occurred in the last hundred
years and not often in history; at
least, nothing worse than this has hap
pened in history, either done by the
Huns, by the Vandals, by Genghls
Khan, by Tamerlane, or even by Tllly
when he sacked Magdeburg."
Atrocities in China.
, THESE dITOClLlSS Ill Slluu VI ASCltSAo
of the Huns" continued to be published
in the Vorwaerts for several years and
appeared intermittently in the debates
of the reichstag as late as 1908. At
that time the socialist, Herr Kunert
reviewing the procedure in a trial Of
which he had been the victim in the
previous summer, stated that he had
offered to prove "that German soldiers
in China had engaged in wanton and
brutal ravaglng; that plunder, pillage,
extortion, robbery, as well as rape and
sexual abuses Of the worst kind, had
occurred on a very large scale and that
German soldiers had participated in
them" He had not been given an op-
portunity to prove his allegations, but
had been sentenced to prison for three
months for assailing the honor Of the
"whole German army" The out
rageousness of this sentence was made
clear by the revelations, made In the
reichstag shortly afterwards, Of SINH
, lar atrocities committed by German
officials and soldiers in Africa in the
campaign against the Hereros.
- kN