The Tabor independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1913-19??, 1918-01-10
Atrocious Treatment of the Help.
less Part of Campaign Plans
of Military Leaders.
POLICY OF FRIGHTFULNESS
Terrorism Declared a Necessary Prin.
clple In National Warfare-Bru.
talities May Be Said to BE Di.
rectIy Attributable to the
Emperor Himself.

nation, appointed by the president,
and consisting of the secretary of
state, secretary of war, secretary of
the nary, and George Creel, official
censor, has made public a mass Of
euidence dealing Nth German wdr
practices which shows the kaiser's
Headers in the field and in command
of captured points to be directly re-
sponstble for the beastliness which
has characterized the operations of
the Huns" in the present conflict.
Quotations from the pamphlet fol-
IOW:
For many years leaders in every civ.
tlized nation have been trying to make
warfare less brutal. The great land
marks In this movement are the Ge-
neva and Hague conventions. The for
mer made rules as to the care of the
sick and wounded and established the
Red Cross. At the first meeting at Ge-
neva. in 1864. 1t was agreed, and until
the present war 1t has been taken for
granted. that the wounded, and the doc
tors and nurses who cared for them.
would be safe from all attacks by the
enemy. The Hague conventions.
drawn up in 1899 and 1907, made addi-
tional rules to soften the usages of war
and especially to protect noncombat-
ants and conquered lands. Germany
took a prominent part in these meet
ings. and with the other nations SOL
emily pledged her faith to keep all the
rules except n article in the Hague
regulations. This was article A.
which forbade the conqueror to force
any Of the conquered to give informa-
ton. All the other rules and regula-
tons she accepted in the most binding
manner.
But Gefmany's military leaders had
no intention Of keeping these solemn
promises. They had been trained
along different lines. Their leading
generals for many years had been urg-
Ing a policy of frightfulness. In the
middle of the nineteenth century Won
Clausewitz was looked upon as the
greatest military authority, and the
methods which he advocated were used
by the Prussian army in its successful
wars Of 1S86-1S71. Consequently be-
cause these wars had been successful,
the wisdom of Won Clausewitz' meth
DDS seemed to the Prussian army to be
fully proved.
Policy Of FrishtfuIness.
Now, the essence of Won Clausewitz'
teachings was that successful war in
wolves the ruthless application of force.
In the opening chapter of his master
work, "vom Kriege" ("On War;. he
says:
violence arms itself with the inven-
lions Of art and science. Self
imposed restrictions, almost impercep-
tible and hardly worth mentioning,
termed usages of international law,
accompany 1t without essentially i'm
pairing its power. . l.. Now, philan-
thropic souls might easily imagine that
there is a skillful method of disarm-
ing or subduing an enemy without
causing too much bloodshed, and that
this is the true tendency of the art OF
war. However plausible this may ap-
pear, still It Is an error which must be
destroyed; for In such dangerous
things as war, the errors which pro-
coed from a spirit of 'good-natured-
ness are precisely the worst. AS the
use OF physical force to the utmost ex-
tent by no means excludes the CO.
operation of the intelligence, 1t follows
that he who uses force ruthlessly, with
out regard to %bloodshed, must obtain
a superiority, If his enemy does not
so use It,"
In 1S77-7S, in the course of a series
Of articles upon military Necessity
and Humanity" General Won Hartmann
wrote, In the same spirit as Won Clau-
sewitz:
'The enemy state must not be spared
he want and w~retchedness of war;
these are particularly useful In shat
tering its energy and subduing its WILL"
Individual persons may be harshly
dealt with when an example Is made
Of them, intended to serve as a warn
ing. Whenever q national war
breaks out, terrorism becomes a nec-
essary military principle" ut is a
gratuitous illusion to suppose that
modern war does not demand far more
brutality, far more violence, and an
action far more general than was for
merly the case"
In 1885, Won Moltke, who had been
commander in chief Of the Prussian
army in the Franco-Prussian war, de.
clared:
perpetual peace is a dream and not
ever a beautiful dream. War is an ele-
ment in the order of the world estab-
ished by God. BY 1t the most noble
j, virtues of man are developed, courage
and r~enunciation, fidelity to duty and
the spirit of sacrifce-the soldier gives
his life. Without war, the world would
degenerate and lose itself in material.