The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1918-03-26
URGED TO STAY
AND SPARE NOT
German Soldiers were Incited to Acts
of Cruelty by General Won
Kissing

171deT the 0TdeTS OF IhetT command
ing officers, are shown IN all their
hideoasness By official documents
and the testimony Of eye-aOitnesses,
as yell as By letters Written By Ger
man soldiers IN the field. The bra
zen effort of Emperor William to
cast the odiuna of the fearful deeds
on the Belgians IS also shoa0n. Quo
tations given are from documents
already made public or IN the pos
session of the government at Wash
ington.
This interview was reproduced in
the Berliner Tageblatt of November
20, 1914.
Mr.. F. c. Walcott Of the Belgian re-
lief commission tells in the Geograph-
iical Magazine for May, 1917, of meet
ling Gen Won Bernhard:
aAs I walked out, Gen. Won Bern
Ihardi came into the room, an expert
lartilleryman, professor in one of
their war colleges. / met him the
next morning, and he asked me If
had read his book, Germany in the
Next War
ST said I had. He said: DO you
know, my friends nearly ran me out
of the country for thatr They said,
You have let the-cat out Of the bag
said, No, / have not, because nobody
will believe it, What did you think
of FTP
81 said, General, 1 did not believe a
word of 1t when read 1t, but now
feel that you did not tell the whole
truth and the old general looked
actually pleased"
Speaking on August %, 1914, at
Munster, OF the extreme measures
which the Germans felt obliged to take
against the civil population Of Bel
GUM, Gen. Won Kissing said:
'The innocent must suffer with the
guilty. IN the repression Of
infamy, human lives cannot be spared,
and IL isolated houses. fourishing vii
lagos, and even entire towns are anni-
,hilated, that La assuredly regrettable,
but It must not excite ill-timed senti-
mentality. All this must not in our
eyes weigh as much as the life OF a
single one of our brave soldiers-the
rigorous accomplishment of duty is the
emanation of high kultur, and in
that, the population of the enemy
countries can learn lesson from our
army"
officers Encouraged Atrocities.
Gen. Won Kissing, after his appoint.
ment as governor general Of Belgium
repeated In substance the above opin'
ion to Dutch journalist. The inter
view is published in the Dusseldorfel
Anzeiger of December 8, 1914.
Irwin s. Cobb states his conclusions
ON the responsibility Of the higher Ger
man command for the atrocities:
"But was an eyewitness to crimes
which, measured by the standards o.
humanity and civilization, Impressed
me as worse than any individual ex
| cess, any individual outrage, could
/ ever have been or can ever be; be
cause these crimes Individually were
instigated on q wholesale basis by or
der of officers Of rank, and must hav'
been carried out under their persona
supervision, direction, and approval
sTaking the physical evidence offer
ed before our own eyes. and buttress
i ing 1t with the statements made to Us
not only by natives, but German sol
ldiers and German officers, we coult
reach but one conclusion, which wa
that here, in such and such place
those In command had said to tn
troops: Spare this town and tfres
people And there they had said
Waste this town and shoot these pee
ple.' And here the troops had discrim
lnately spared, and there they had In
discriminatory wasted, In exact az
| cordance with the word of their supe
riors."-Irvin Cobb, Speaking of Prus
slams, New York, 1917, DIP. 1924.
/ Hoodwinked German People.
These ideas, then, were systemai
icalIy impressed upon the military an
, official classes. It was necessary
however, to work upon the minds c
the German people, SO that they mtgf
lend themselves to the inhuman pol
cies advocated by the military leader
To do this was difficult, for, as he
been shown often, many of the civ1
} ian leaders Of public opinion, time an
again, expressed their horror OF tn
new spirit which was animating tn
military authorities. The reichsta
debates give ample evidence OF thi
and the task of the military leader
would have been still more difficult
i the reichstag had any real poWe
(See War Information Series No.
1.-THE Government of Germany" sc
also Gerard's 'My -Four Years in &c
many" chapter %
The military authorities and thos
in sympathy with them have done a
: in their power to stimulate a hatred
? other peoples in the minds of the &c
5 MANS 4 campaign of education b