Iron County record. [volume] (Cedar City, Utah) 1893-1982, 1918-02-22
URGED TO STAY
and SPARE NOT
German Soldiers melted to Acts
Of Cruelty by General Won
Kissing.
'EMANATl0N OF HIGH KULTUR'
Governor General Of Belgium on Rec
ord as Declaring the Innocent Must
Suffer With the Guilty--irvin
Cobb's Tale OF Horrors.

The horrors deliberately and sys-
temotically 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 weH as by letters written By Ger
man soldiers in the field. The bra
zen effort of Emperor William to
cast the odium of the fearful deeds
on the BelgianS is also shown. Quo
tations given are from documents
already made public or IN the pos
session Of the government at Wash
ington.
This interview was reproduced In
the Berlner Tageblatt of November
90 1914.
Mr.. f. c. Walcott Of the Belgian re-
zeal Magazine for May, 1917, Of meet
ing Gen Won Bernhard:
"As / walked out, Gen. Won Bern
hardi came into the room, an expert
nrtilleryman, professor In one Of
their war colleges / met him the
next morning, and he asked me II 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 thatT They said,
you have let the cat out of the bag
said, NO, have not, because nobody
will believe It. What did you think
of it,
81 said, General I did not believe n
word of ii when / read 1t, but l now
feel that you did not tell the whole
truth and the old general looked
actually pleased
Speaking on August 20, 1914. at
Munster Of the extreme measures
which the Germans felt obliged to take
GUM, Gen. Won Kissing said:
"The innocent must suffer with the
guilty. In the repression Of
infamy. human lives cannot be spared.
and If Isolated houses. flourishing VII
lagos, and even entire towns are ami
hilated, that is assuredly regrettable,
but II must not excite ill-timed senti-
mentality. All this must not In our
eyes weigh as much as the life of a
single one of our brave soldiers-the
rigorous accomplishment Of duty Is the
emanatlon of high kultur, and In
that, the population of the enemy
countries can learn n 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 q 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, coult
ever have been or can ever be; be
cause these crimes individually were
instlgated on n wholesale basis by or
der of officers of rank, and must have
been carried out under their persona
supervision, direction, and approval
"Taking the physical evidence offer
ed before our own eyes, and buttress
ing II with the statements made to us
not only by natives, but German sol
diers and German officers, we coult
reach but one conclusion, which wa
that here, in such and such place
those in command had said to tn
troops: Spare this town and thes'
people.' And there they had said
Waste this town and shoot these PEG
ple.' And here the troops had dlscrim
inately spared, and there they had In
discriminatory wasted, In exact &C
cordnnce with the word of their supe
riors."-Irvln Cobb, Speaking OF Prus
slams New York, 1917, PIP. 1924.
Hoodwinked German People.
These ideas. then, were systema'
ically impressed upon the military an
official classes. 1t was necessary
however, 10 work upon the minds q
the German people, so that they Nigh
lend themselves tn the inhuman pol
cies advocated by the military Leaders
TO do this was difficult, for as ha
been shown often many of the CIV
ian leaders of public opinion, time an
again, expressed their horror OF IN
new spirit which was animating IN
military authorities. The reichsta
debates give ample evidence of thi
and the task of the military leader
would have been still more difficult
the reichstag had any real powe
(See War Information Series No.
t"The Government of Germany; Sc
< 20 also Gerards "My -Four Years In &c
many" chapter 20
The military authorities and tho'
in sympathy with them have done a