Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights. Kelly Miller

weeping old French peasants told how half a German regiment was occupied three days in barking trees to prevent the sap from mounting. The crushed pearl of architecture lies in a dying forest.

      At Le Novion, torch in hand, they burned 223 houses; but all the gutted walls are standing.

      What technical principles of war command the wholesale destruction of young fruit trees? In 20 orchards, by count, in sweet Leury (hidden at the bottom of a valley) every peach, plum, apricot and pear tree has been assassinated—hacked and standing, when the trunks are thick, and sprawling, severed by one blow of a sharp hatchet, young trees from the thickness of your wrists to your thumb. The French, with loving care, trained peach and pear trees against sunny walls, as if they were grapevines. The slender trunks are cut—and the garden walls left standing.

      DESECRATION OF TREES.

      The soldiers spared neither the orchards nor the single trees that took a generation to grow, and would have borne fruit for generations to come. Reapers and binders and other farming machines were collected and broken to pieces. One might see a measure of advantage that the deliverers would gain from these things if not destroyed, but it is an awful war doctrine that refuses to discriminate between the immediate and the eventual, the direct and the indirect, the important and the negligible advantage that would impoverish posterity to get a dime in cash. No military advantage is sufficient motive for such wanton ravishment. It is military fanaticism.

      Ambassador Sharp, after a 100-mile trip through the evacuated territory, declared that never before in the history of the world had there been such a thorough destruction by either a vanquished or victorious army.

      One thing alone was left, after the red-brick villages had been turned into heaps and the murdered fruit trees into black fagots, on the hill outside of St. Quentin. This was the log hut and shooting box of the Kaiser's son, Eitel Friederick. Its white-barked beech was unburnt, its glass windows unbroken, its inside adornments unlooted, the tables and chairs of its terrace beer garden remained. All around the works of man and God were destroyed. The contrast made this destroyer's lodge a sort of boast of his destruction.

      The shocking ruin to human life in the evacuated region is of even greater moment. The half-starved civilians of Bapaume were forced to make trenches there and later for the defense of Cambrai also. All men and boys strong enough to work were taken along with the retreating forces. Near Peronne some hundreds of old men, women and children were found locked in a barn. One woman pathetically asked of an English officer, "Are you many?" And he was able to answer, "We are two millions now," and see her anxiety turned to relief and joy. Children who had been slowly starving for a year wandered about the ruins of their homes, but soon found reasons for smiling at the soldiers who had rescued them.

      NEITHER MEAT NOR MILK.

      These children had had no meat for months and no milk for a year and had almost forgotten the taste of butter. They probably never received a quarter of the rations Americans sent. Girls were compelled to attend the market gardens, and then the Germans took all the produce. The region was desolated and left inhabited by women and children moribund with misery and starvation.

      At Noyon, where the Germans had concentrated 10,000 Belgian refugees, they promised to leave the American Relief Committee with sufficient supplies to feed them. But the last patrols completely sacked the American relief storehouses of all eatables and then dynamited the building. And it was from this place that fifty young women, from 18 to 25 years of age, were taken by the officers. Their distracted mothers were told that they were to be used as "officers' servants."

      At Ham, when a mother of six children, seeing her husband and two eldest daughters being carried away, remonstrated, she was told that as an alternative she might find their bodies in a canal in the rear of the house.

      Nothing could be more significant of the Government's attitude than the incident told by James W. Gerard. The people of a town were imprisoned or fined for their conduct toward a delayed train of Canadian prisoners. When he heard it he thought that at last the Government was going to put a stop to the maltreatment of prisoners. But he learned on investigation that the townsfolk had been punished for giving a little food and drink to the starving and fainting prisoners.

      And yet the most singularly brutal phase of this destruction of nature and wealth and art and life is the German defense of it. War is always hell and most of the awful things in this war have had their counterparts in other conflicts, though the Teutonic element has brought some peculiar refinements of cussedness and has given a thoroughness and "pep" and "kick" to the war business.

      BETTER PREPARED NEXT TIME.

      German writers, instead of making excuses for turning the nation into a war machine for forty years, complain that Germany was not prepared as she should have been and would be better prepared next time. Her professors do not regret that the soldiers at the front are so unrestrained in cruelty, but urge that they are too soft and kind to make effective war. The German correspondents all write enthusiastically of the devastation of the country they are leaving and of the desert created by German genius. Editors speak of the mercy which tempered the necessary hardness towards this once beautiful stretch of country and its inhabitants. The destruction of property which can serve no military purpose is defended on the ground that it is legitimate from a strategic point of view.

      This all amounts to saying everything must give way to the considerations of war. It is taking the argument in the fable of the wolf and the lamb as serious philosophy and accepting the position of the wolf. They fail entirely to see the humor of the fable, and hence the fallacy of the wolf's argument.

      The greatest hope of civilization, which trembled for a time before the spectre of German barbarity, is that frightfulness cannot endure the long and full test. The great initial advantages are more than offset by new opponents. The gain of the invasion of Belgium was canceled by England coming into the war. The advantage against England of the U-boat campaign was more than canceled by the entrance of the United States in the war.

      Irvin Cobb says that the trouble with the Germans is that they are not "good sports and lack a sense of humor. It is impossible to conceive of a group of German officers playing football or baseball or cricket and abiding by the rules of the game. If Barbara Frietchie had said to a Prussian Stonewall Jackson, 'Shoot, if you must, my gray old head,' he'd have done it as a matter of course."

CHAPTER VII.

       Table of Contents

      THE SLINKING SUBMARINE.

      A Voracious Sea Monster—The Ruthless Destructive Policy of Germany—Starvation of Nations the Goal—How the Submarines Operate—Some Personal Experiences.

      Almost the entire story of the world war is written around the development of the submarine. One can scarcely think of the terrible conflict without bringing to mind the wonderful "underseas" boat which has made infamous Germany famous. The truth is that, in so far as America is concerned, the conflict was precipitated by the ruthless submarine warfare which Germany waged as part of her plan to starve out England, France, Belgium—and all nations which opposed her.

      The slinking submarine proved an efficient instrument, whose activities clearly indicated the diabolical intent and purpose of Germany to make the whole world suffer, if necessary, to the end that she might gain her point and perpetuate the Hohenzollern dynasty. It was not so much that her submarines wrought havoc—for death and disaster stalk always with war—but the methods by which Germany waged their warfare and disregarded all the rules which had been laid down for the guidance of civilized countries at war proved conclusively that even the innocent could expect no quarter from her.

      The story of the sinking of the brave ocean steamship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, contains in its brief recital a typical illustration of Germany's lack of humanitarian instincts.