The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1917-10-04
THE SOLDIERS OF THE FIGHT
ING ARMIES.


What is the real lesson of the atrocities
Germany has committed in the war?
Do they prove that Germans are a diff
ferent species of human beings?
This would do violence to the OBSERVE
tons which nearly all broad minded men
have reached, who have come into contact
with many breeds of men.
Scientists, travellers and just plain folk
are pretty we'll agreed that in his own
home in normal surroundings the average
man of one cline or race is very much like
the man of any other breed. Certainly the
war has proved that IN the primitive quail
ties of courage, endurance AID loyalty the
rank and file of the combatant races are
very much alike.
RELYING on these facts the defenders
of German crime have continued to whls-
per. ooh, all soldiers arc alike, ii the allies
had been on German: soil they would have
done Just as bod!y."
This is a slandci q the living heroes of
every army except the German. Even the
Turkish fighting man has a better record.
1t is also a SANDER on the dead OF our
American armies of the Revolution and the
Civil War.
No such outrages as the German crimes
were recorded in any American war, by
either side.
Even in the track Of Sherman's march
across Georgia today there is not tradl-
ton of anything like the hellish things
which marked the German tide through
Belgium In the South African war there
was not one instance of British soldier
even insulting black or white woman.
The Germans in 1870 did not do such
things in France. To match the atrocities
of 1914-1917 one must travel back to tn
massacres and rapine of the religious war
of the 10th and 18th centuries.
The answer to the whole anomaly is very
simple and douby damning to the ruling
caste IN Prussia today.
All soldiers are very much alike. but
ARMIES and OFFICERS are not.
Any army contains percentage of men
who will, if not held by rigid discipline, per-
petrate outrages of the blacklist kind
Every city, every village every country
side has individuals of the same sort.
But every army in the world today and
tor SUI years back, except the German
army, has been controlled by a set of Off
GERS and system of discipline, which held
such troops in check and kept them under
the control of the decent ma jority
The fact that the German army. with
its iron discipline, did not do so, proves that
LIN WI mali u IlllGS were E,RA l.
LIZ ENCOURAGED, and ORDERED bv
the government through it's officer class
That is the real lesson of the German
atrocities. They teach that the German
government, and it's military system, are
different from all other governments and
all other military systems For enduring.
such system the German people and the
German private soldiers must bear full
blame
In that sense all soldiers are not like
We can hardly imagine the clean minded
and independent young fellows now gath
cred in our training camps committing anv
such acts as the loot of Louvain, even if
their officers told them to. Military dis
c1pl1ne in the American, French and Brit
lsh armies has we'll defined limits, because
Americans and their allies are not reared
to believe that any set of men on Gods
earth has any divine rights.
And that is the real difference between
the soldiers of the fighting armies-a diff
terence which explains atrocities and
everything else.
The L. S. government has limited the