Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 14

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 a.s.sa.s.sinated--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.

Amba.s.sador 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 f.a.gots, 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 gla.s.s windows unbroken, its inside adornments unlooted, the tables and chairs of its terrace beer garden remained. All around the works of man and G.o.d 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 b.u.t.ter. 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 ca.n.a.l in the rear of the house.

Nothing could be more significant of the Government's att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l 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.

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 steams.h.i.+p Lusitania on May 7, 1915, contains in its brief recital a typical ill.u.s.tration of Germany's lack of humanitarian instincts. The vessel, torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, went to the bottom of the ocean, carrying to death more than 1150 persons, many of them prominent Americans. With an audaciousness which has no counterpart in the history of civilized warfare, German agents in the United States had caused advertis.e.m.e.nts to be printed in the public press, warning citizens against sailing on the vessel, and advised that she was in danger of being destroyed.

The world stood aghast and believed it impossible that Germany should carry out her threat, but they were soon to be disillusioned. Because the handsome vessel pa.s.sed through a zone of the seas which the Teuton war lords declared blockaded, they sent a torpedo from an underseas boat into her bowels. The horrors of that event are still fresh in the minds of millions. No such ruthless and wanton destruction of innocent human beings had been accomplished by a so-called civilization at war.

THE DUTIES OF WAR CAST ASIDE.

Articles of The Hague agreement defining the rights and duties of nations at war, and which Germany had accepted, were thrust aside and disregarded by Imperial Germany. The Hohenzollern dynasty was above rules and regulations. International law and the rights of non-combatants at sea were as nothing. That all nations had agreed that the enemy s.h.i.+p must give the captain of the vessel attacked opportunity to land innocent pa.s.sengers was forgotten. There had not been a word of warning.

And Germany, and the adherents of the Imperial Government, expressing regret that Americans should have been sacrificed, professed deep sorrow on one hand and on the other shouted with glee. America protested vigorously, quoting the laws and demanding that Germany recognize them--not merely that she leave American vessels alone--and give a.s.surance that no such further acts would be committed.

Contending that the sinking of the s.h.i.+p was justifiable, in the exigencies of war, Germany ceased for a short time her wanton sinking of boats without warning. For almost a year her underseas crafts had been preying upon the small British coasting vessels, and sunk hundreds of fis.h.i.+ng boats, trawlers and steams.h.i.+ps. England's mercantile marine was the object of the Teuton's attacks, and no one had antic.i.p.ated any danger to Americans or American interests.

Germany had no reasons for desiring to attack American boats and she promised to mend her ways. There followed a brief period in which no vessels were sunk on which were Americans, and then without warning the campaign against all vessels was renewed. A dozen were sunk on which were American seamen or non-combatant pa.s.sengers, none of whom was given warning or time to land before a torpedo sent the boat to the bottom of the ocean. Threats on the part of President Wilson to take action against Germany finally brought another cessation.

GROWING DISTRESS AND AMAZEMENT.

"The sinking of the British pa.s.senger steams.h.i.+p Fabala and other German acts const.i.tute a series of events which the Government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress and amazement," said President Wilson in a note on the submarine warfare. "This Government cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American s.h.i.+pmasters or American citizens, bound on lawful errands as pa.s.sengers on merchant s.h.i.+ps of belligerent nationality. It must hold the Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, international or incidental.

"The objection to their present method of attack lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity which all modern opinions regard as imperative.

"American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their s.h.i.+ps and traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas.

"No warning that an unlawful and an inhuman act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act, or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission. * * *

"The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty or the inalienable rights of the United States and its citizens, and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."

WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF VESSELS.

Apparently Germany modified her submarine policy for a period of upward of a year, or until in February, 1917, when to the astonished world she threw aside all pretense and declared her intention of destroying any vessel which attempted to cross or sailed into a zone which she established along the English coast and around English and French ports.

America's further protests availed not; her citizens, many of them, went to the bottom of the seas, and some of them suffered almost unbelievable cruelties or neglect, when the captain of a German sea raider with some humanitarian instincts permitted these innocent pa.s.sengers or seamen to be rescued from the torpedoed vessels on which they were.

Even the Red Cross vessels and Belgian relief s.h.i.+ps carrying supplies and food to the maimed or sick at war and the starving children of Belgium did not escape the torpedo from the submarine. English hospital s.h.i.+ps were attacked, and men unable to protect themselves were subjected to danger because the Germans feared that something might be carried on the boat which would prove valuable to the Allied forces in making war.

Dozens--even hundreds of vessels of all sorts--were sunk from week to week. Food and supplies for the Allied forces were destroyed, until both England and France were threatened with starvation.

All this was the work of the submarine.

One smiled twenty-five years ago when he read that highly imaginative story of Jules Verne, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and wondered if it would ever be possible for man to create such a marvelous underseas craft as that which the famous French writer described. Today the imaginative detail of the submarine which the novelist described has been crystallized, and the world has learned that dreams sometimes come true.

Marvelous things have been developed by the war which is involving the peace and security of the world, but no single device has had such an effect upon the warfare and upon the methods of waging it as the diabolical submarine, which, like an a.s.sa.s.sin in the night, sneaks upon the great s.h.i.+ps along the water highways of the world and sends them with their human freight to the bottom of the ocean.

TORPEDO'S DEADLY WORK.