New-York tribune., 1918-05-06
Prussian Manners
Archaic Ego of the Hun
c. Journezle, in The atlantic Monthly
os.nrA,. 1917. l,....u4.a s... s4rr~

the officers hunt, and those who refuse are
imprisoned in cellar three DAYS for each
such refusal
The period of actual assaults has passed.
Dut there remains the pleasant pastime Of
frightening young girls by discharging
firearms at close range. And firearms held
IN whose hands? In those of the assassins
OF Tamnes and Dinan!
Since January 1, 1917, the civil mobiliza-
tlon mas exhibited this female slavery in
all It's hldeousness. Even before that the
women had been forced to wait upon the
eincers at table and to wash their linen
Inc German authorities had already laid
upon them all possible tasks-taking no
account OF social position or of physical
slrengtn. Mlddle-class women of Lille and
i, ia + ere were sent to dig potatoes a hundred
kilometres from their homes. The widow
CT French colonel killed in action was in
turn chambermaid and farm laborer in
Germany. In the region about I,aon one
could see women working under the lash
worse still they are sent out to work in
close proximity 20 the firing line. where
the Germans themselves find it unsafe 70
go. or, again, when aircraft are passing
over, the women are forbidden to leave
'helr work, while their keepers run to
cover. Mrs Edith Wharton even saw
elderly women whose arms or legs Roche
Minor Atrocities
The harassng and insulting of women
take also another turn. Women and eirls
OF good social position arc comnelled to
undress on the pretext of search or medical
examinations. The German has no respect
lof girls; he has torn them from their
1amllles by thousands Nor does he re-
spect maternity; in 1915, the wife of the
Mayor of LIE Cateet, sentenced to three
months confinement for not MAKING known
her husbands presence in her house was
separated from the infant she was nursing
ana LED away between two policemen. In
many piaces mothers were torn from their
children in arms, from sobbing and desperate
llttle girls, VINO threw themselves on their
knees without avail
1t is as if one were LOOKING on 81
general prescription of souls which arc
pelng hunted down all sides The bar
parlans carry their outrages so far as to
cast ooloquy upon our reverence for our
DEAD Not content with erecting over the
charnel houses OF the battlefield carved
monuments insulting to our gallant troops.
they even profane The cemeteries and mar
them with obscenitics; they empty graves
ny the thousands, in order to carry pill
i"se W VIC Iihlt. At Laon they actually
stole the flowers which the people had laid
on the cofins of three children killed in a
bombardment from the air on December
21, 1916.
Ihe dignity of the Priesthood in its
turn, has been dragged in the mire with
the same craving to outrage sentiments
most worthy of respect. In October. 1915
they derisivcly enveoped in green
gown and sentenced to hard labor the
cure of Saint Michel, in whose house thev
had found the toy rifle of child So
too, IN 1914, the cure of LIE Catelet. HAVING
been maltreated and beaten a false sus
plclon OF assault, had to look while the
soldiers arrayed dead horse in his priestlv
robes amid laughter and hooting.
Hereditary Peruersity
All the brutality, perfidy and savagerv
manifested by Germany from day to dav
is not to be explained by any philosophic
theory or as a systematic policy. Tenn
permanent is an essential part of it. More
over, there must be a special lack of the
moral sense, an inherent deficiency of tho
sentiments of justice, honor and charity
mere must be an hereditary perversity.
Intellectual perversion by the sophisms ~
Fichte or Haeckel would not have suf.
feed to make Huns or to change man "a
wolves. Grated upon a sound trunk the
pan-Germanlc heresy would never have
sprcnted Never would Germany--leaders
and ffocks~-have been able to sink so dean
into her violent self-worship, her terror
ism and her unmitigated brigandape in
war If she had not gided into it bv de-
grees through weakness Of conscience and
latent criminality. In reality, behind
false cloak of philosophy and policy one
can detect in her nothing moro than re-
voting organs of the carnivora, retarded
In their human develnnnnnt