The Brunswick news. [volume] (Brunswick, Ga.) 1906-2016, 1917-10-11
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
FIGHTING ARMIES.

| Nhat IS the real lesson OF the atrOc-
tiles Germany has committed in the
war?
Do they prove that Germans are a
different species of human beings?
This would do violence to the OBJ
servations 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 well 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 qualities
OF courage, endurance and loyalty the
rank and file of the combatant races
are very much alike.
Relying on these facts the defend
ers Of German crime have continued
to whisper, oh, all soldiers are alike;
if the allies had been on German soil
they would have done just as badly
This is a SANDER on the living
heroes Of every army except the Ger
man. Even the Turkish fighting man
has a better record. It is also a SLAM
der on the dead of our American arm
les OF the Revolution and the Civil
War.
No such outrages as the German
crimes were recorded in any Ameri-
can war, by either side.
Even in the track OF Sherman's
march across Georgia today there is
not tradition Of anything like the
hellish things which marked the Ger
man tide through Belgium, In the
South African war there was not one
instance Of q British soldier even in
suIting a black Or white woman.
The Germans in 1870 did not do
such things in France. To match the
atrocities Of 1S14-1917, one must trav-
Ell back to the massacres and rapine
of the religious wars of The sixteenth
and Seventeenth centuries.
The answer to the whole anomaly
is very simple and doubly damning
to the ruling caste in Prussia today.
An soldiers are very much alike,
but armies and officers are not.
ANY army contains a percentage Of
men who viii, if not held by rigid
discipline, Derpetrate outrages OF the
blacklist kind.
Every city, every village, every
countryside has individuals of the
same sort.
But every army in the world today
and for 300 years back, except the
German army, has been controlled by
a set of officers and 9 system of dis
cipline which held such troops in
check and kept them under the con
troll of the decent majority.
The fact that the German army,
with its iron discipline. did noa do
so, proves that the German crimes
were deliberately encouraged and or-
dered by the government through its
officer class.
That is the real lesson of the Ger
man atrocities. They teach that the
German government and its military
system are different from all other
governments and all other military
systems For enduring such a sys-
TEN the German people and the Ger
man private soldiers must bear full
blame
IN that sense all soldiers are not
alike. We can hardly imagine the
ciean-minded and Independent Young
fellows now gathered in our training
camps committing any such acts as
the loot of Louvain, even if their OF
ficers told them to. Military discip-
line in the American, French and
British armies has well-defned limits.
because Americans and their allies
are not reared to believe that any
set Of them on Gods earth has any
divine rights.
And that is the real difference be-
tween the soldiers of the fighting arm
ies-a difference which explains afro
cities and everything else.