The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1918-12-12
CANNOT FORGIVE
CANNOT FORGET
THE CRIMES THAT GERMANY HAS
COMMITTED ARE PAST
HUMAN MERCY
SOLDIERS At FRONT HOLD THIS VIEW
Evans Says In Letter That Our Boys
And Those OF other Nations Are
Agreed On This Point
By H. c. EVANS
(COpyright 1879

Oh IN q Iioht, a. " lOoi
years the very foundation of interna-
tional law have reeled before a savage
and almost successful assault. A
great nation repudiated public law,
declared it void, and the contracts
and treaties sacredly agreed to be-
tween nations scraps of paper. Where
there is no law there is anarchy, and
for four years there has been inter
national anarchy. Germany, with
drawn sword, has run amuck among
the nations of the world. The tragedy
has been long and the agony Of the
world has passed imagination.
The judgment day for Germany is
near. With terrifying inevitableness
the law, which she tried to destroy,
is closing about her, and there must
be in the minds of the guilty some
sense of their impending doom.
The guilty? Who are they? The
list is long. Heading the list is the
chief international anarchist, the
kaiser. The future of civilization de-
mands that the authority Of public
law shall be reasserted with as much
notoriety as it was challenged, and
that it's criminals be punished. The
punishment must be so memorable
that the offense will not soon, if ever,
be repeated. international law does
not exclude the punishment of guilty
men. however highly placed, who GRIM
inally violate it.
Do you recall that cry of the dead
from Flanders fields by Dr.. McCrea.
If we keep faith with those who
die, we shall punish those who I'M
lawfully condemned them to death. If
we keep faith with those who live,
whose Drawn and brain and courage
glorifed even the bloody trenches,
and who have delivered the Grimm
ais over to the judgment of the
world-if we Seep fai,h With them,
the conspirators against the peace of
the world will be punished as surely.
as certainly, as completely as their
hirelings were punished on the field
of battle by u soldiers of freedom.
For fifty years the nations Of En-
rope have had reason to trembie
when Germany ratified her sabre. That
sabre is now being broken across the
knee of the allied governments. For
four years Germany has broken the
laws of God and man. Now that she
is about to be called before a world
tribunal to answer for her crimes, she
is protesting her innocence and in
the same breath confessing her sins.
Hindenburg has ordered that no more
towns be burned; the war lords have
directed that no more passenger ships
be ~torpedoed; no more people are to
be sent out of Belgium to slave in the
munition factories of Germany; cleo
tion reforms are promised the voters
of Germany: the prison doors Of the
empire are to be thrown open, and
rotting in dungeons because they
dared express the opinion that men
should be free, are to be liberated.
And all this in the hope of saying
her army and military prestige. But
the world must be made secure, and
security can only be won by taking
away from Germany not merely the
desire, but the power, to renew the
conflict.
Let us not make the mistake Of
considering the concessions the Cen
trail Powers are making as repent
ance for their sins. Bulgaria has not
repented. She was simply whipped.
There being no repentance, there can
be no forgetting or forgiving until she
has been punished for her sins. Aus
tria has promised autonomy to the
various peoples she has so long en-
shaved, and offers to free Poland.
Why, Not because she has %repented,
but because she is whipped. Austria
must pay.
The chiefest criminal of them all,
Germany, must learn that the wages
of sin is death! And the military
powers of Germany, and her war
chiefs who began the war, and who
have prosecuted it in all it's frightful-
ness, must die, If a man, with malice
aforethought, plans the death of his
neighbor and takes mis- life, he is ar
raigned before the courts and must
take the consequences. That's the
law of states and nations. II a state
like Iowa may hang a man because
he has violated her laws, why should
not the nations of the world hang a
man for violating their laws? Every
killing by a submarine was In fragrant
violation of the laws of nations, which
Germany herself helped make. Shall
the men who committed these crimes,
or the officers who directed them to
be committed, or the kaiser himself,
who is responsible for all atrocities.