The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1917-07-25
COddling the Hun Il Crime.

The people of Great Britain, arous-
ed by the recent air raid in which an
unusually large number of women and
children were wantOnly murdered,
are once more attempting to stir
their passive-resistent government to
adopt measures of reprisal.
The refusal to adopt such measures,
which alone will carry home to the
German people a full sense of their
infamy in upholding the methods of
barbarism, is nothing short of i'm
moral. 1t is n standing invitation to
the Huns to continue this unspeak-
able slaughter of the innocents.
The systematized and persistent
campaign of assassination has been
borne without retaliation in kind
quite long enough to demonstrate to
the civilized world how reluctant is
any self-respecting nation to resort
to such measures. But it has also
been long enough to show to the sat-
isfaction Of any sane man that the
rules of chivalry which govern the
warfare Of knight gentlemen are
merely Knocked and abused by the
brutal Prussian, whether at home or
in the field, whose instructive blood
lust knows no law but to kill.
If in our own daily experience
band of midnight marauders were
abroad, killing and destroying, night
after night, would we calmly wait un-
TIL we could summon the officers of
the law, with elaborate legal process,
entrap the criminals and summon
them before the court for punishment,
or, as a safeguard for our sleeping
women and children, would we shoot.
and shoot to kill. as soon as we caught
sight of their brigand faces?
We hear much Of these chivalric
motives which restrain England from
reprsal. Is it, in point of fact,
true chivalry to expose English wo-
men and children to the merciless
raids. Of these arch-fiends of the
skies?
10 there any sanity or common
sense in fighting barbarism with
beatitudes?
is there any excuse for pursuing a
policy which is solicitous for the foul
mouthed females of Germany who
spit upon the English wounded and
even in the ranks Of the Red Cross.
disgrace the emblems of mercy by de-
liberately refusing aid to those who
wear British uniform?
AS the Manufacturers Record OF
last week forcibly pointed out, it is
time to have done with this sentimen-
tality about the German people not be-
ing our enemies. They are our bitter
and inveterate foes, and they are
loud in their demands, that this in
human warfare upon innocent CIV
ilians should go on.
1t is a known fact, as The News
has pointed out, that a single mild
raid upon one Of the interior German
cities spread such abject terror among
the people that for brief moment
they clamOred for a REIMBURSEMENT of
these raids. Their dull Teuton minds
can understand nothing but the force
they have delied. and they should have
it thrust into their very vitals until
they implore their government to end
these murderous raids.
This grossly mistaken mercy to the
enemy is callous cruelty to the hun
dreds of women and children who
even now. under all the laws of prSb-
ability, are marked for slaughter as
they sleep.
The foregoing. from the Macon
News, does not begin to tell the full
story. The death of the women and
children by the murderous campaign
of Germany is small part of the
heinous crimes of which it's soldiers
| are guilty. For long time the med
| ical societies of this country have
| been quietly discussing whether in
view of the ceaseless outrages upon
| the women of France and Belgium
| resulting in the birth by these sad
dened souls of children from the rape
of German fathers, it would be prop
er to prevent the birth of such chill
dren or not. Doctors Of the hgihes: