The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1918-09-26
Chaplain Would
EXterminate Foe

Baltimore, Md.-Rev. George A.
Griffin, Baltimore Protestant Episco-
pal clergyman serving as chaplain
with the Fifth field artillery, the regi-
ment that fired Americas first shot in
the war, has written a letter to DR..
Henry Barton Jacobs, prominent Bal
timOrean, which was printed in full in
the current issue of the Manufacturers
Record, in which he discusses at length
eruelties inflicted by the Germans upon
civilians and soldiers
81 feel" he says, that I express the
sentiment of those who have seen and
heard over here, when 1 say that were
[ in America today, priest as am, l
should do my best to have put to death
any Boche in America or any so-caHed
American who would apologize in any
way for what the BOche has done.
"All that you have heard in America
about them does not approximate the
truth. There are little children right
here in France with their little stumps
Of hands; there were some not far from
my last camp, and young men with all
the fingers of their right hand cut off
The other day a British officer and
three TOmmieS told me that Il short
lime ago they went as an advance
party into a little village from which
the Boche had been driven back, and in
n large room there We're four young
Canadians crucifed, one. on each wall
of the room.
Torture Young Girls.
"Also, when l was with the British
they told me the BOchcS had taken
young Belgian and French girls into
their first line trenches and tortured
them until their screams made the
Scotch and the Canadians so crazed
they would go over into the machine
gun nests which the BOche had set up
using the wOmen's screams as a decOy.
"And have it on the word of q Brit
fsh officer that they have stood (the
pfficers) with guns leveled at their men
to keep them from going over when the
women scream, and being needlessly
Slaughtered. l cannot tell you what
the TOmmies told me they found when
they drove these hell-fiends out of these
positions it is too awful even to think
about. l also have it on the word of
one of the greatest French abbes that
the BOche were especially instructed to
destroy cOnventS-and kill or outrage
the nuns-and he says that all through
France and Belgium are ruined con-
r,;,-
the soldiers to be outraged in camps.
"These are not isolated cases nor alb
normal conditions which prevail here
and there where troops were drunk or
without restraint. Go along the French
or British front, and the only conclu-
sion you arrive at is that they ave
just the ground principle of Boche eff
ticiency in action.
| at is American blood that is flowing
now, and God grant it may give Amer
lea some strength to realize what we
are up against. To talk of terms until
the Boche is eXterminated is to league
with Satan for a corner in hell. Priva-
tions, sacrifices! What can you do at
home to compare with what these men
of ours are doing over here? Meatless
days, wheatless. days, sugarless days,
good women knitting, benefits for the
Red CrOss-or all your social diver
sions with a charitable object sand
NiChed in!
when you are out on a shell-swept
hill and the shells are going by like
bats out of hell, as the soldiers say,