The twice-a-week Twin Falls times. (Twin Falls, Idaho) 1916-1918, 1918-01-15
URGED TO STAY
And SPARE NOT
German Soldiers lncited to Acts
of Cruelty by General Won
Kissing.
TERMINATION OF HIGH KULTUR'
Governor General of Belgium on Rec
ord as Declaring the Innocent Must
Suffer With the GuIty-Irvin
cobb's Tale of Horrors.

The horrors deliberately and SyS-
tematically inflicted upon the people
Of Belgium By the German soldiers,
under the orders of their command
ing officers, are Shown IN all their
hideousneSs by official documents
and the testimony of eye-witnesses
as weU 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 shown. QUO
tations giUen 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. G. Walcott of the Belgian re-
lief commission tells in the Geograph-
ical Magazine for May, 1917, Of meet
ing Gen Won Bernhard:
"As I walked out, Gen. Won Bern
hardi came into the room, an expert
artilleryman, a professor in one OF
their war colleges. l met him the
next morning. and he asked me If 1
had read his book, Germany in the
Next War
81 said I had. He said: DO you
know, my friends nearly ran me out
of the country for that?' They said,
You have let the cat out of the bag
1 said No, I have not, because UObody
will believe It, What did you think
of itT
81 said, General, 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 he spared,
and If isolated houses, fiOurlshing vii
lagos, and even entire towns are ami
hilated, that is assuredly regrettable,
but 1t must not excite ill-timed senti-
mentality. All this must not in our
eyes weigh as much as the life Of n
single one of our brave soldiers-the
rigorous accomplishment of duty is the
emanation of a high kultur, and in
that, the population of the enemy
countries can learn a 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 a Dutch journalist. The inter
view is published in the Dusseldorfer
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 of
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 a wholesale basis by or
der of officers of rank. and must have
been carried out under their personal
supervision, direction, and approval
taking the physical evidence offer
ed before our own eyes, and buttress-
ing 1t with the statements made to us
not only by natives, but German sol
diers and German officers, we could
reach but one conclusion. which was
that here, in such and such Il place
those In command had said to the
troops: Spare this town and these
people And there they had said
Waste this town and shoot these PEG.
ple.' And here the troops had discrim-
inately spared, and there they had in
discriminatory wasted. in exact &C
cordance with the word Of their supe-
riors. Irwin Cobb, Speaking of Prus-
SLAMS, New York, 1917, PIP. 1924.
Hoodwinked German People.
These ideas, then, were systemat
ically impressed upon the military and
official classes. 1t was necessary,
however, to work upon the minds OF
the German people, so that they might
lend themselves to the inhuman poll
cies advocated by the military leaders
To do this was difficult, for, as has
been shown often, many of the civil
ian leaders of public opinion, time ant
again, expressed their horror of the
new spirit which was animating thu
military authorities. The reichstai
debates give ample evidence of this
and the task of the military leaders
would have been still more difficult 1
the reichstag had any real power
(See War Information Series No. 3
''The Government Of Germany; ;" SCI
also Gerards my Four Years in Ger
| many" chapter d