Perth Amboy evening news., 1918-08-03
Soldiers and Fighting Armies

What is the real lesson of the atrocities Germany has committed
in the warY
Do they prove that Germans are a different species of human
This would do violence to the observations 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. Ger
tainly 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 defenders of German crime have con-
tinued to whisper. "Oh, all soldiers ar alike, if the allies had been
on German soil they would have done just as bodily"
This is a SANDER on 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 Shermans march across Georgia today
there is not a tradition of anything like the hellish things which
nam Su 'e oerm"h INe through DGIeWm' ne AIrhcdi
war there was not one instance of a British soldier eve insulting a
black or white woman.
The Germans in 1870 did not do such things in France. To
match the atrocities of 19l41917 one must travel back to the mas
sacres and rapine of the religious wars of the 10th and 18th centuries.
The answer to the whole anomaly is very simple and doubly
damning to the ruling caste in Prussia today.
All soldiers are very much alike, but ARMIES and OFFICERS
Any army contains a percentage of men who will, if not held by
rigid discipline, perpetrate 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 800 years back, ex-
cept the German army, has been controlled by a set of officers and
system of discipline, which held such troops in check and kept them
under the control of the decent majority:
The fact that the German army, with its iron discipline, did not
do so, proves that the German crimes were DELIBERATELY EN-
C0URAGED, and ORDERED by the government through its officer
class.
That is the real lesson of the German 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 system the German people and the German private soldiers
must bear full blame.
In that sense all soldiers are not alike. We can hardly imagine
the clean minded and Independent young fellows now gathered in
our training camps committing any such acts as theioot of Louvan,
even if their officers told them to. Military discipline in the Ameri
can, French and British armies has w~elkdefned limits, because Amer
assns SnAthe;r allies are not reared to believe that any set men on
Gods earth has any divine rights.
And this is the real difference between the soldiers of the fight
ing armies-a difference which explains atrocities and everything
else.