RAEMAEKERS’
CARTOON
HISTORY OF THE WAR
RAEMAEKERS’
CARTOON
HISTORY OF THE WAR
COMPILED BY
J. MURRAY ALLISON
Editor of Raemaekers’ Cartoons, Kultur in Cartoons,
The Century Edition de Luxe Raemaekers’ Cartoons, etc.
VOLUME ONE
THE FIRST TWELVE MONTHS OF WAR
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
The Century Co.
FOREWORD
In all the welter of the tragic upheaval which is shattering
institutions once thought immutable, condemning millions to physical
death and awakening other millions to spiritual life, making staggering
discoveries of unexpected human strength or weakness,
thrusting men into fame one day or to oblivion the next, there has
been nothing more dramatic than the sudden manifestation of the
genius of the Dutchman, Louis Raemaekers, who, as Europe recoiled
from the first shock of German barbarity, threw down his
brush for his pencil and by the intensity of his spirit aroused the
compassion and fired the anger of the world with his cartoons of the
Belgian violation.
He, more than any other individual, has made intensely clear to
the people the single issue upon which the war is joined. More
than cartoonist, he is teacher and preacher, with the vision, faith,
and intensity of a St. Francis, a Luther, or a Joan of Arc.
On August 1, 1914, we find him a quiet, gentle man, the son
of a country editor, happy in his family, devout, contemplative,
loving beauty and peace, contentedly painting the good and lovely
things he saw among the tulip-fields and waterways, the cattle and
the wind-mills of his own native Holland before the gray-clad
millions of the Kaiser burst into the low countries with fire and
sword.
Then comes the miracle of his transformation; the idyllic is
thrust aside by the hideous reality; beauty is drowned in a bestial
orgy of force; and in place of the passive painter arises the fiery
preacher; the brush is discarded for the pencil, and the pencil in
his hands becomes an avenging sword, because by it millions of
people have been aroused to a clear-cut realization of the fact that
the issue of this war is no less than Slavery and Autocracy versus
Freedom and Democracy.
The very first of his war cartoons indicated the prophetic vision
of the man, and gave the first evidence of his inspiration and
genius. It is called “Christendom after Twenty Centuries” and
shows a bowed and weeping figure crouching under the sword
and lash. It was drawn on that fateful day August 1st, 1914.
The intensity of emotion shown in this drawing revealed his power
for the first time. To Raemaekers himself it came as a vision and
a summons. The landscape painter disappeared, and in his place
arose a champion of civilization, throbbing with sublime rage and
pity, clothed with authority, and invested with a weapon more powerful
than the ruthlessness it indicts.
When the stories of the Belgian horror began to circulate in Holland,
Raemaekers, like the rest of the humane world, refused to
credit them. His own mother was German; he had spent many
happy years in Germany; he knew the German peasant as a kindly
and happy, if rather stupid fellow; it was incredible that such men
could have done the awful things alleged. But the tales persisted,
and although the evidence of the wracked and broken refugees who
poured into his country by tens of thousands seemed irrefutable,
he could not believe it, and readily seized upon the common supposition
that the terrible stories were the product of the imagination
of an overwrought and panic-stricken people. At length he could
remain in doubt no longer, and quietly slipped over the frontier to
verify for himself the truth or falsehood of the accusations that had
already made Germany guilty of the foulest crimes ever perpetrated
in the name of war since the dawn of civilization.
What he actually saw with his own eyes he does not tell. But
a hundred of his early cartoons bear witness to the burning impression
made upon his soul. Raemaekers, like others who have
seen them, cannot speak of these unnamable horrors, but can only
express his consuming pity or his white-hot rage in the medium
that lies nearest his hand. On one occasion only has he publicly
referred to his experiences in Belgium. It was at a dinner given
him by the artists and literary men of London at the Savage Club,
where, pointing to the portraits and trophies of Peary, Scott, Nansen,
Shackleton, and other explorers which hang on the walls, he
said: “I, too, have been an explorer, Gentlemen. I have explored
a hell, and it was terror unspeakable.”
It did not take long for the High Command in Berlin to learn
through its agents in Holland of the impression that was being
created in the public mind by Raemaekers’ cartoons. The publication
of his first series of cartoons in the Amsterdam Telegraaf,
reflecting the unspeakable horror of the atrocities in Belgium and
denouncing with burning scorn the Kaiser and his infamous captains,
gave such offense to the “All-Highest” in Potsdam that the
German Government offered twelve thousand guilders for his
body dead or alive! Further magnificent testimony to the hurt
he inflicted on our common adversaries lies in the fact that the
German Government, not content with offering a reward for his
body, induced the Dutch Government to prosecute him for endangering
the neutrality of Holland! He was actually tried on this
charge, but although he had not spared the burghers and junkers
of his own country for what he considered their criminal laxity
in the matter of preparedness and their greed in aiding Germany
by the smuggling of foodstuffs, etc., across the frontier, the jury
acquitted him and the court tacitly confirmed his right to express
his opinions.
It was after this that the Cologne Gazette in an editorial addressed
to the Dutch people, obviously seeking to intimidate what
its government could not suppress, said: “After the war Germany
will settle accounts with Holland, and for each calumny, for
each cartoon of Raemaekers, she will demand payment with the interest
that is her due.” German wrath followed him further. His
life was constantly endangered at the hands of German agents
infesting Holland, and he had to be always on his guard, especially
during his periodical excursions into Belgian territory occupied
by the enemy. Even before he crossed to England, his wife
received anonymous letters warning her that any ship he might
sail on would surely be torpedoed.
As late as November, 1916, an exhibition of his cartoons in
Madrid was forbidden by the Spanish Government upon the insistence
of the German embassy in that capital.
It is significant to note that these attempted persecutions had an
effect directly opposite to that intended. They not only failed to
stop the publication of his cartoons but were largely instrumental
in drawing the attention of the Allies and neutrals to the great
champion that had arisen.
For eighteen months his cartoons had been appearing in the
Amsterdam Telegraaf without exciting a more than mild interest
outside Holland.
American and British war-correspondents returning to London
from Amsterdam talked enthusiastically of the “Great Raemaekers”
and a few stray cartoons appeared in the press of London and
Paris. But he was practically unknown outside of Holland until
Christmas week in December, 1915, a year and a half after his
first war-cartoon had appeared.
A two-line advertisement announced his arrival in the British
metropolis. “Exhibition of war-cartoons by Raemaekers, Fine
Arts Galleries, Bond Street, admission one shilling,” was all it said.
While Londoners are generally interested in new artists, Raemaekers
appeared at an inopportune time. For one thing, the public
had been rather surfeited with war-literature and war-pictures and
the work of an unknown foreign artist was scarcely likely to attract
them, and for another, it was within a few days of Christmas,
everybody was leaving London, and those who remained in town
were bent on giving the troops and the war-sufferers as merry a
time as possible.
It was quite by chance that the art critic of the London Times
visited the Bond Street Galleries a day or so before Christmas, and
Raemaekers’ world-wide fame as it exists to-day may be said to
date from the day that the Times in a two-column notice said,
among other things, “this neutral is the only genius produced by
the war.”
The campaign of publicity launched by the Times was taken
up by the British and French press. The public flocked to view,
and were stunned as they had never been before by the damning
record. The cumulative effect of such pictures as “The Shields of
Rosselaere,” showing men, women, and children forced to march
in front of the German armies, “Men to the right, women to the
left,” in which women and children are being beaten with the butts
of rifles; “The Exodus from Antwerp,” “The Mothers of Belgium,”
“The Widows of Belgium,” and others which revealed unimaginable
depths of human agony, impressed the London crowd
as by a solemn ritual. They saw with a vividness hitherto unapproached
the hideousness of the war, the unequivocal brutality of
the German method, and the naked, insatiable greed in the German
purpose. Not now could the timidest soul believe that Germany
was fighting a war of defense. Here was the fact inescapable that
civilization itself was threatened; here was the whole carnival of
lust and conquest as mercilessly depicted on the faces of its agents
as they themselves had trampled onward to their shocking goal.
The exhibition was crowded daily for twenty weeks. From
nine in the morning till six at night the galleries were packed with
people of every grade of society. It is not too much to say that
no oration, no literature, no art had brought the real meaning of the
war home so convincingly to Londoners as these cartoons. Parents
who had already given their sons, wives who had given husbands,
were strengthened in their resignation and comforted in their sorrow;
those who yet had the sacrifice to make were fortified in
their resolve. As I have said, the cumulative effect of these hundred
and fifty cartoons on the emotions of a people just awakening
to and suffering from the desperate realities of the war was almost
overwhelming, and many a man and woman quivered and cried
under this pitiless revelation of the stupendous suffering that had
been and was yet to be.
The exhibition was carried from London to the principal English
and Scottish cities, and thence to Paris. Everywhere the
story was the same. Crowds flocked to see and heed the artist’s
fiery records; statesmen, soldiers, artists did him honor. In London
he was received by the Prime Minister and the artistic and
learned societies; in Paris he was made a Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor and given a reception at the Sorbonne—the highest
purely intellectual honor that can be bestowed upon any man.
France, equally with England, acclaimed him as the new champion
of humanity. In the provincial cities of England, as in
London, crowds thronged the galleries daily for weeks at a time.
In Liverpool alone five thousand persons visited the exhibition in
one afternoon; Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh
told the same story of the people being aroused and inspirited
as though a new evangel had come to tell them that their
cause was sacred and their sacrifice not vain.
In a few months his genius was universally recognized and his
position as the supreme cartoonist of the war firmly established.
And now that he had the appreciation and the scope that were his
due, he threw himself into his work with even greater ardor. He
made recruiting posters for the army and navy; he depicted the
shortage of shells and called on men and women to man the munition
factories; he contributed posters to stimulate thrift and industry
and contributions to the Government funds; he worked for
both the British and the French Red Cross, and for private and
public charities innumerable; his pen never flagged. While the
wrongs of Belgium had been the first incentive to his genius, he
now dealt with the war in all its later phases, and found subjects
wherever the blight of Kaiserism traveled—in France, Russia,
Serbia, Rumania, Italy, and the Far East; and in the Zeppelin
raids, the Armenian massacres, the Belgian and French deportations,
the Red Cross outrages, and the submarine infamies.
As a mere material record of industry, Raemaekers’ is probably
unique in the world’s history. Since the beginning of the war he
has drawn nearly 1000 cartoons. There is not a single phase
of the war,—military, naval, or political,—that has not formed a
basis for his artistic comment. Some three hundred of the cartoons
have been reproduced in facsimile form, and in that state
have been exhibited in hundreds of cities throughout the world.
In book form his work exists already in a dozen editions, from
the sumptuous edition-de-luxe at one hundred dollars to the popular
(British) edition at four cents.
Post-card editions of the cartoons run into many millions; his
cartoons have been filmed, exist as lantern-slides, and leading
actors and actresses have reproduced them in the form of tableaux.
But it is in the world’s press that the greatest distribution has taken
place. He is cartoonist to half a hundred newspapers, and literally
thousands of different publications have reproduced his
pictures at one time or another. He has been translated into a
score of languages, the writer having seen one edition in Basque
and another in Arabic. In the United States alone his cartoons
in one year have reached a newspaper circulation of over 300,000,000,
and exhibitions have been held in over one hundred of
the leading cities.
And all this gigantic distribution has grown during the two years
that have passed since his cartoons were first exhibited in London.
It is a record that has never yet been equalled. What is the secret
of this man’s appeal to men and women in all stations of life, to
people of every creed and nationality? In Europe nearly all, and
in America a great many, of the leading writers and thinkers have
acclaimed the genius of Raemaekers, but none have been able to
tell us why it is that his pictures appeal with equal intensity to the
Briton, the Latin, the Slav, and the American. A writer in the
Boston Transcript perhaps comes nearest to the truth. He says:
“The mantle of Dante has fallen upon Raemaekers; he leads the
conscience of the world to-day through an inferno of wrong.”
This world-wide recognition is conclusive testimony to the universality
of his genius. Raemaekers appeals to all mankind.
The value of his contribution to the cause of civilization in this
war lies in the fact that he has seen and depicted with the directness
and clarity of genius the truth that the issue is joined between the
forces of evil and good. For him there are no other considerations,
no qualifications, no compromises. He has but one enemy, and
that is the destroyer of peace and civilization; he has but one hero,
and that is the defender of them. He sees in war itself no pomp
and glitter, but only the burning village, the devastated home, the
agonized women and children, and the brave and faithful dead.
He depicts militarism as hideous, brutal, coarse, and cunning.
His one thought seems to be that those things which all kindly and
gentle men and women hold dear and sacred are being trampled
upon and threatened by a monstrous wrong; and that the ideals of
justice, order, and human liberty which have been established in
the conscience of humanity after centuries of painful struggle are
in danger of annihilation. In thus narrowing the issue, in thus
resolving all doubt, he has, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt,
“rendered the most powerful of the honorable contributions by neutrals
to the cause of civilization.” Raemaekers’ name and work
will live long after many of the men and their achievements in this
war have faded from the general mind. Future generations will
look at his cartoons and will find in them at once the cause and
the justification of the rising of the world’s free peoples to give
their lives for freedom and the safety of democracy.
The historical value of the cartoons have frequently been insisted
upon by critics and reviewers and I have been urged to publish
them in the form of a cartoon History of the War. The present
attempt is the outcome of these suggestions.
It has not been possible to adhere to any very definite method
of arrangement. Many of the cartoons were drawn long after the
events with which they deal took place, as, for instance, the Wittenberg
pictures. The typhus outbreak amongst the prisoners at
Wittenberg happened in December, 1914, but the facts were not
made public until May, 1916. On the other hand, the cartoon
depicting Count von Bernstorff’s dismissal from Washington was
published two years before he was handed his passports. It was
a cartoon based upon the activities of Dumba. A great number
of cartoons, particularly those published during the early months
of the war, have no direct historical significance. The Belgian
cartoons constitute a general indictment of the German method of
warfare, while the Nurse Cavell drawings (Vol. II.) represent a
specific comment upon an actual example of that method.
The letterpress has been compiled mainly from official communiques
and reports, and from the speeches and public statements
of the leading men of the belligerents and some of the neutrals. I
have also quoted freely from newspapers, magazines, and books,
and whenever possible I have made acknowledgment of these
sources. My object has been not to explain the cartoons, but to
show their great value as historical documents and to make sure,
so far as is possible, that the basis of truth upon which they rest
shall not be forgotten.
J. Murray Allison.
New York, Christmas Day, 1917.
NOTE ON THE BELGIAN CARTOONS
The cartoons which appear on the following pages up to and
including page 86 call for special reference.
They represent Raemaekers’ impression of the behaviour of the
German troops in Belgium during the first weeks of the invasion.
The great majority of them were drawn long before any Official
Reports were published, and not, as would seem natural, as illustrations
of the Reports which were eventually published by the
Belgian, French, and British Governments. The cartoon on page 86
was drawn after the publication of the British Government’s
Official Report. It is important to realise this. It is also necessary
to remember that the German atrocities began actually at the
moment that the German troops crossed the frontier on the evening
of August 3rd and continued in unabated violence until the defeat
at the Marne.
After the retreat of the Germans from Paris the German General
Staff appear to have altered its cold-blooded policy in Belgium
and France. From that moment, when the carefully prepared
blow at the heart of France had failed and when the possibility of
defeat began to dawn upon the Potsdam mind, organised robbery,
murder, arson and rape were discontinued or at least toned down
as a feature of German warfare. Whilst that method—the Official
Reports of the Allied Governments’ Commissions of Enquiry
prove conclusively it was a method—continued, Raemaekers concentrated
his pencil upon it and neglected the strictly military and
political happenings. That is why I have grouped the Belgian
cartoons at the beginning of this volume. They do really represent
the first phase of the war. With regard to the extracts that
I have selected to face the Belgian cartoons I would ask the reader
to remember that they have been taken largely from Official Reports
issued after the drawings were published. Raemaekers’ pictorial
indictment came first. He was justified later by the sworn
evidence of eye-witnesses.
I think perhaps that it is necessary to make these observations
in case the letterpress facing the Belgian cartoons should not in
many cases be considered quite apt.
J. M. A.
CHRISTENDOM AFTER
TWENTY CENTURIES
Raemaekers’ first war cartoon, originally
published on the first of August, 1914.
THE HARVEST IS RIPE
On the evening of August 3 the German troops
cross the frontier. The storm burst so suddenly
that neither party had time to adjust its mind
to the situation. The Germans seem to have expected
an easy passage. The Belgian population,
never dreaming of an attack, were startled and
stupefied.
From the very beginning of the operations the
civilian population of the villages lying upon the
line of the German advance were made to experience
the extreme horrors of war. “On the 4th of
August,” says one witness, “at Herve I saw at
about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, near the station,
five Uhlans; these were the first German troops I
had seen. They were followed by a German officer
and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the
car called out to a couple of young fellows who were
standing about thirty yards away. The young men,
being afraid, ran off and then the Germans fired
and killed one of them named D.” The murder of
this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the
burning and pillage of Herve and of other villages
in the neighborhood, to the indiscriminate shooting
of civilians of both sexes, and to the organized military
execution of batches of selected males.
British Government Committee’s Report.
I CRUSH WHATEVER RESISTS ME
The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing
we will endeavor to make good as
soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody
who is threatened as we are threatened, and
is fighting for his highest possessions, can have
only one thought—how is he to hack his way
through.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg.
Reichstag, August 4, 1915.
With a clear conscience Germany goes to the
battlefield.
The Kaiser, August, 1914.
“THIS IS HOW I DEAL WITH SMALL FRY”
We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity
knows no law. Our troops have occupied
Luxemburg and perhaps are already on
Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the
dictates of international law. It is true that the
French Government has declared at Brussels that
France is willing to respect the neutrality of Belgium,
so long as her opponent respects it. We
knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion.
France could wait, but we could not wait. A
French movement upon our flank upon the lower
Rhine might have been disastrous. So we were
compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg
and Belgian Governments.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg,
Reichstag, Berlin, 4th August, ’14.
GOTT MITT UNS
Remember that the German people are the
chosen of God. On me, the German Emperor,
the spirit of God has descended. I am His
sword, His weapon and His vicegerent. Woe to
the disobedient and death to cowards and unbelievers.
From The Kaiser’s speech to his
soldiers on the way to the front.
SATAN’S PARTNER
Bernhardi: “War is as divine as eating and drinking”
Satan: “Here is a partner for me”
The inevitableness, the idealism, the blessing
of war as an indispensable and stimulating
law of development must be repeatedly emphasized.
… War is the greatest factor in the furtherance
of culture and power. Efforts to secure peace are
extraordinarily detrimental as soon as they influence
politics.
… Efforts directed toward the abolition of war
are not only foolish, but absolutely immoral, and
must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race.
… In fact, the State is a law unto itself. Weak
nations have not the same right to live as powerful
and vigorous nations.
“Germany and the Next War.” 1911.
Gen. von Bernhardi.
MON FILS. BELGIUM, 1914
“Ah! was your boy among the twelve this
morning? Then you’ll find him
among this lot”
When the German cavalry occupied the village
of Linsmeau not a man of the civilian
population took part in the fighting. Nevertheless
the village was invaded at dusk on August
10 and all the male inhabitants were compelled to
come forward and hand over whatever arms they
possessed. No recently discharged firearms were
found. The invaders divided these peasants in
three groups, those in one were bound, and 11 of
them placed in a ditch, where they were afterwards
found dead.
Belgian Gov. Commission’s Report.
THE SHIELDS OF RÖSSELAERE
In a café, lower down, near the canal, I saw a
number of German soldiers, and was successful
in having a chat with the inn-keeper, at the farthest
corner of the bar. I asked, of course, what they
meant by burning the village, and he told me that
the Germans had made a number of successful attacks
on Fort Pontisse, until at last they had reduced
it to silence. They were now so near that
they could open the final assault. They were
afraid, however, of some ambush, or underground
mine, and the Friday before they had collected the
population, whom they forced to march in front of
them. When they had got quite near they dared
not enter it yet, and drove the priest and twelve of
the principal villagers before them.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
“THEY SHOT HER AS A FRANC-TIREUR”
We ourselves regret deeply that during these
fights the town of Loewen has been destroyed
to a great extent. Needless to say that these consequences
are not intentional on our part, but cannot
be avoided in this infamous franc-tireur war being
led against us.
Whoever knows the good-natured character of our
troops cannot seriously pretend that they are inclined
to needless or frivolous destruction.
German General Staff.
Berlin, August, 1914.
AERSCHOT AND AFTERWARDS
The German troops penetrated into Aerschot, a
town of 8,000 inhabitants, on Wednesday,
Aug. 19, in the morning. No Belgian forces remained
behind. No sooner did the Germans enter
the town than they shot five or six inhabitants whom
they caused to leave their houses. In the evening,
pretending that a superior German officer had been
killed on the Grand Place by the son of the Burgomaster,
or, according to another version of the story,
that a conspiracy had been hatched against the superior
commandant by the Burgomaster and his
family, the Germans took every man who was inside
of Aerschot; they led them, fifty at a time, some distance
from the town, grouped them in lines of four
men, and, making them run ahead of them, shot
them and killed them afterward with their bayonets.
More than forty men were found thus massacred.
Belgian Gov. Commission’s Report.
BERNHARDISM:
“It’s all right. If I hadn’t done it someone
else might”
As regards private property, respect among German
troops simply does not exist. By the
universal testimony of every British officer and soldier
I have interrogated the progress of the German
troops is like a plague of locusts over the land.
What they can not carry off they destroy. Furniture
is thrown into the street, pictures are riddled
with bullets and pierced by sword cuts, municipal
registers burnt, the contents of shops scattered on the
floor, drawers rifled, live stock slaughtered and carcasses
left to rot in the fields. Cases of petty larceny
by German soldiers appear to be innumerable;
they take whatever seizes their fancy, and leave the
towns they evacuate laden like pedlars. Empty
ammunition wagons were drawn up in front of private
houses and filled with their contents for despatch
to Germany.
I have had the reports of local commissions of
police placed before me, and they show that in
smaller villages like those of Caestre and Merris,
with a population of about 1,500 souls or less, pillaging
to the extent of £4,000 and £6,000 was committed
by the German troops.
Professor J. H. Morgan in “German
Atrocities,” an Official Investigation.
FROM LIEGE
TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE
SPOILS FOR THE VICTORS
They sang, shouted and waved their arms.
Most of them carried bottles full of liquor,
which they put into their mouths frequently, smashed
them on the ground, or handed them to their comrades,
when unable to drink any more themselves.
Each of a troop of cavalry had a bottle of pickles,
and enjoyed them immensely.
Other soldiers kept on running into the burning
houses, carrying out vases, pictures, plate, or
small pieces of furniture. They smashed everything
on the cobbles and then returned to wreck
more things that would have been destroyed by the
fire all the same. It was a revelry of drunken vandalism.
They seemed mad, and even risking being
burned alive at this work of destruction. Most of
the officers were also tipsy; not one of them was
saluted by the soldiers.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
SEDUCTION
“Ain’t I a lovable fellow?”
There is very strong reason to suspect that
young girls were carried off to the trenches
by licentious German soldiery, and there abused by
hordes of savage and licentious men. People in
hiding in the cellars of houses have heard the voices
of women in the hands of German soldiers crying
all night long until death or stupor ended their
agonies. One of our officers, a subaltern in the
sappers, heard a woman’s shrieks in the night coming
from the German trenches near Richebourg
l’Avoue; when we advanced in the morning and
drove the Germans out, a girl was found lying naked
on the ground “pegged out” in the form of a crucifix.
I need not go on with this chapter of horrors.
To the end of time it will be remembered, and from
one generation to another, in the plains of Flanders,
in the Valleys of the Vosges, and on the rolling
fields of the Marne, the oral tradition of men will
perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong.
Professor J. H. Morgan in “German
Atrocities,” an Official Investigation.
THE HOSTAGES
“Father, what have we done?”
The municipal Government of Liège remind
their fellow citizens, and all staying within
the city, that international law most strictly forbids
civilians to commit hostilities against the German
soldiers occupying the country.
Every attack on German troops by others than
the military in uniform not only exposes those who
may be guilty to be shot summarily, but will also
bring terrible consequences on the leading citizens
of Liège now detained in the citadel as hostages by
the commander of the German troops.
We beseech all residents of the municipality to
guard the highest interests of all the inhabitants and
of those who are hostages of the German Army,
and not to commit any assault on the soldiers of this
army.
We remind the citizens that by order of General
commanding the German troops, those who have
arms in their possession must deliver them immediately
to the authorities at the Provincial Palace
under the penalty of being shot.
The Acting Burgomaster,
V. Henault.
Liège, August 8th.
HUSBANDS AND FATHERS
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like
manner been deported to the prisons of Germany
to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At
Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were
numbered. History will tell of the physical and
moral torments of their long martyrdom.
Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess
no complete necrology; but I know there were
ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under
pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled
to dig their graves. In the Louvain group of communes
176 persons, men and women, old men and
sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness,
were shot or burned.
Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop
of Malines, Belgium.
IT’S FATTENING WORK
In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on
fire and many corpses were seen, some in houses,
some in back yards, and some in the streets.
Several examples are given below.
Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a
young man pierced by bayonet thrusts with the
wrists cut also.
On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen
on his doorstep with a bayonet wound in his stomach,
and by his side the dead body of a boy of 5 or 6
with his hands nearly severed.
The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at
the blacksmith’s. They had been killed with the
bayonet.
In a café a young man, also killed with the
bayonet, was holding his hands together as if in the
attitude of supplication.
Two young women were lying in the back yard of
the house. One had her breasts cut off, the other
had been stabbed.
A young man had been hacked with the bayonet
until his entrails protruded. He also had his hands
joined in the attitude of prayer.
In the garden of a house in the main street bodies
of two women were observed, and in another house
the body of a boy of 16 with two bayonet wounds in
the chest.
British Government Committee’s Report.
KULTUR HAS PASSED HERE
It is nothing but fanaticism to expect very much
from humanity when it has forgotten how to
wage war. For the present we know of no other
means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the
deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of
murder with a good conscience, the general ardour
of the system in the destruction of the enemy …
can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to
enervated nations as is done by every great war.
Kultur can by no means dispense with passions,
vices and malignities.
Friedrich Nietzsche.
PEACE REIGNS AT DINANT
In short, the town of Dinant is destroyed. Of
1,400 houses only 200 remained standing. The
factories where the laboring population got their
bread and butter were wrecked systematically.
Many inhabitants were sent to Germany, where they
are still kept as prisoners. The majority of the
others are scattered all over Belgium. Those who
stayed in the towns were starved.
The Belgian Committee has a list of victims. It
contains 700 names, and is not complete. Among
those killed are seventy-three women, thirty-nine
children between six months and fifteen years old.
Dinant has 7,600 inhabitants, of whom ten per
cent. were put to death; not a family exists which
has not to mourn the death of some victims; many
families have been exterminated completely.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
LES BEAUTÉS DE LA GUERRE
Folk who do not understand them
It is only in war that we find the action of true
heroism, the realization of which on earth is the
care of militarism. That is why war appears to us,
who are filled with militarism, as in itself a holy
thing, as the holiest thing on earth.
Prof. Werner Sombart.
During the three months of invasion, more than
21,000 houses had been burnt down in five alone of
the nine provinces of Belgium, and a far greater
number pillaged—more than 16,000, for instance,
in the single Province of Brabant. Of the civilian
population, between 5,000 and 6,000 men, women,
and children had been massacred, some singly and
some in batches, some by clean killing and some
after lingering tortures, some in frenzy and some in
cold blood, but all with the object of terrorization
and with that result. Fleeing before the terror,
many hundreds of thousands of Belgians, especially
of the middle and upper classes, had taken refuge
in Holland and the British Isles.
Times History of the War.
DINANT: “I SEE FATHER”
An hour later the women and children were
separated and the prisoners were brought back
to Dinant, passing the prison on their way. Just
outside the prison the witness saw three lines of
bodies which he recognized as being those of neighbors.
They were nearly all dead, but he noticed
movement in some of them. There were about 120
bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the
top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay
there till eight o’clock in the morning. On the following
day they were put into cattle trucks and
taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they
remained prisoners in Germany.
Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other
places near the prison. About ninety bodies were
seen lying on the top of one another in a grass
square opposite the convent.
British Government Committee’s Report.
MATER DOLOROSA
The inhabitants fled through the village (near
Blamont). It was horrible. The walls of
houses are bespattered with blood and the faces of
the dead are hideous to look upon. They were
buried at once, some sixty of them. Among them
many old women, old men, and one woman pregnant—the
whole a dreadful sight. Three children huddled
together—all dead. Altar and arches of the
church shattered. Telephone communication with
the enemy was found there. This morning, Sept.
2, all the survivors were driven out; I saw four little
boys carrying on two poles a cradle with a child
some five or six months old. The whole makes a
fearful sight. Blow upon blow! Thunderbolt on
thunderbolt! Everything given over to plunder.
I saw a mother with her two little ones—one of them
had a great wound in the head and an eye put out.
From the Diary of
Gefreiter Paul Spellman,
Capt. First Brigade of Infantry Guard
(Prussian Guards).
IS IT YOU, MOTHER?
A corporal named Houston narrated that
while he lay wounded on the ground, after
the battle of Soissons, he saw a young English soldier
lying near him, delirious. A German soldier
gave the poor lad water from his flask. The young
Englishman, his mind wandering, said, “Is it you,
mother?” The German comprehended, and to
maintain the illusion, caressed his face with a
mother’s soft touch. The poor boy died shortly
afterwards and the German soldier, on getting to his
feet, was seen to be crying.
MEN TO THE RIGHT, WOMEN
TO THE LEFT
On Sunday, August 23rd, at half past six in the
morning, the soldiers of the 108th regiment
of the line drove worshippers of the Premonstratensian
Church, separated the men from the women,
and shot about fifty of the former through the head.
Between seven and nine o’clock there was house to
house looting and burning by soldiers who chased
the inhabitants into the street. Those who tried to
escape were shot off-hand.
At about nine o’clock the soldiers drove all who
had been found in the houses in front of them by
means of blows from their rifle-butts. They
crowded them together in Place d’Armes, where
they kept them until six o’clock in the evening.
Their guards amused themselves by telling the men
repeatedly that they would soon be shot.
At six o’clock a captain separated the men from
the women and children. The women were placed
behind a line of infantry. The men had to stand
alongside a wall; those in the first row were told
to sit on their haunches, the others to remain standing
behind them. A platoon took a stand right
opposite the group. The women prayed in vain for
the mercy of their husbands, their sons, and their
brothers; the officer gave the order to fire. He had
not made the slightest investigation, pronounced no
sentence of any sort.
Belgian Gov. Committee’s Report.
A PITIFUL EXODUS
In many groups were to be seen old, old people,
grandfathers and grandmothers of a family,
and these in their shaking frailty and terror, which
they could not withstand, were the more pitiable
objects in the great gathering of stricken townsfolk.
This pathetic clinging together of the family was
one of the most affecting sights I witnessed, and I
have not the slightest doubt that in the mad rush for
refuge beyond the borders of their native land many
family groups of this sort completely perished.
All day and throughout the night these pitiful
scenes continued, and when I went down to the
quayside early Thursday, when the dawn was
throwing a wan light over this part of the world, I
found again a great host of citizens awaiting their
chance of flight.
London Daily Chronicle on
The Fall of Antwerp.
October 11, 1914.
SYMPATHY
“If I find you again looking so sad, I’ll
send you to Germany after your father”
WE WAGE WAR ON DIVINE
PRINCIPLES
The names of the priests and monks of the
diocese of Malines, who, to my knowledge,
were put to death by the German troops, are as
follows: Dupierreux, of the Company of Jesus;
Brother Sebastien Allard, of the Society of St.
Joseph; Brother Candide, of the Society of the
Brothers of Our Lady of Pity; Father Vincent,
Conventual Carette, a professor; Lombaerts, Goris
de Clerck; Dergent, Wouters, Van Bladel, curés.
At Christmas time I was not perfectly certain
what had been the fate of the Curé of Hérent.
Since then his dead body has been discovered at
Louvain and identified.
From a letter from Cardinal Mercier,
to The Kreischef of District of Malines.
December, 1914.
The Cathedral of Rheims has many companions
in distress. The German army, when it invaded
the north of France, destroyed, totally or partially,
by bombardment or incendiarism, churches and
chapels at Albert, Serres, Vieille-Capelle, Etavigny,
Soissons, Hébuterne, Ribécourt, Suippes, Montceau,
Barcy, Revigny, Souain, Maurupt, Berry-au-Bac,
Mandray, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Sermaize-les-Bains,
Doncières, etc.
From “Is War Civilization?”
By Prof. Christophe Nyrop,
University of Copenhagen.
PROSPERITY REIGNS IN
FLANDERS
Four hundred and eighty millions of
francs have been imposed as a war tax
but soup is given gratis
PROCLAMATION
A War Contribution, amounting to 480,000,000
francs, to be paid in monthly installments
over the course of a year, is imposed on the population
of Belgium.
The payment of these sums devolves upon the
Nine Provinces, which are held collectively responsible
for the discharge of it.
The two first installments are to be paid up, at
latest, on January 15, 1915, and the following installments
on the 10th, at latest, of each following
month, to the Field Army Treasury of the Imperial
Governor-Generalship at Brussels.
In case the Provinces have to resort to the issue
of bonds in order to obtain the funds necessary, the
form and terms of these bonds will be settled by the
Imperial Commissary-General for the Banks in
Belgium.
Baron von Bissing,
Governor-General in Belgium.
Brussels, December 10, 1914.
A FACT
This brutalism by Major Tille of the
German Army on a small boy of Maastricht
was vouched for by an eye-witness.
TO YOUR HEALTH,
CIVILIZATION!
CONCLUSIONS
It is proved—
(i.) That there were in many parts of Belgium
deliberate and systematically organized massacres
of the civil population, accompanied by
many isolated murders and other outrages.
(ii.) That in the conduct of the war generally
innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered
in large numbers, women violated, and children
murdered.
(iii.) That looting, house burning, and the wanton
destruction of property were ordered and countenanced
by the officers of the German Army, that
elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism
at the very outbreak of the war, and that
the burnings and destruction were frequent where
no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed
part of a system of general terrorization.
(iv.) That the rules and usages of war were frequently
broken, particularly by the using of civilians,
including women and children, as a shield for
advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by
killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent
abuse of the Red Cross and the white flag.
British Government Committee’s Report.
A CONFLICT OF TESTIMONY
“Sire, it’s quite easy; for every witness
who swears we’ve murdered innocent
people we will produce two who will
swear they did not see it”
All that I care to say about the Belgian charges
is that I have officially informed the State Department
in Washington that there is not one word
of truth in the statements made to the President yesterday
by the Belgian Commission.
Count von Bernstorff, German Ambassador,
at Washington, September 17.
THE MOTHERS OF BELGIUM
Christian mothers, be proud of your sons.
Of all griefs, of all our human sorrows, yours
is perhaps the most worthy of veneration. I think
I behold you in your affliction. Suffer us to offer
you not only our condolence, but our congratulation.
Not all our heroes obtain temporal honors,
but for all we expect the immortal crown of the elect.
For this is the virtue of a single act of perfect charity—it
cancels a whole lifetime of sins. It transforms
a sinful man into a saint.
Cardinal Mercier,
Archbishop of Malines.
KREUZLAND, KREUZLAND
ÜBER ALLES
“Where are our fathers?” Belgium, 1914
THE WIDOWS OF BELGIUM
FAMINE IN BELGIUM
In Belgium I saw this:
Homeless men, women, and children by thousands
and hundreds of thousands. Many of
them had been prosperous, a few had been wealthy,
practically all had been comfortable. Now, with
scarcely an exception, they stood all upon one common
plane of misery. They had lost their homes,
their farms, their workshops, their livings, and
their means of making livings.
I saw them tramping aimlessly along windswept,
rain-washed roads, fleeing from burning and
devastated villages. I saw them sleeping in open
fields upon the miry earth, with no cover and no
shelter. I saw them herded together in the towns
and cities to which many of them ultimately fled,
existing God alone knows how. I saw them—ragged,
furtive scarecrows—prowling in the shattered
ruins of their homes, seeking salvage where
there was no salvage to be found. I saw them living
like the beasts of the field, upon such things as
the beasts of the field would reject.
Irvin S. Cobb.
New York Times.
December 2, 1914.
BLUEBEARD’S CHAMBER
Our function is ended when we have stated
what the evidence establishes, but we may be
permitted to express our belief that these disclosures
will not have been made in vain if they touch and
rouse the conscience of mankind, and we venture to
hope that as soon as the present war is over the nations
of the world in council will consider what
means can be provided and sanctions devised to
prevent the recurrence of such horrors as our generation
is now witnessing.
Bryce,
F. Pollock,
Edward Clarke,
Kenelm E. Digby,
Alfred Hopkinson,
H. A. L. Fisher,
Harold Cox,
Concluding words of the Report of the Committee
appointed by
the British Government to investigate alleged German atrocities
in Belgium.
THE PRISONERS
In the first days of the war it was undoubtedly and
unfortunately true that prisoners of war taken
by the Germans, both at the time of their capture and
in transit to the prison camps, were often badly
treated by the soldiers, guards or the civil population.
The instances were too numerous, the evidence too
overwhelming, to be denied…. From him (U.S.
Consul at Kiel) I learned that some unfortunate
prisoners passing through the town (in a part of
Germany inhabited by Scandinavians) had made
signs that they were suffering from hunger and
thirst, that some of the kind-hearted people among
the Scandinavian population had given them something
to eat and drink and for this they were condemned
to fines, to prison and to have their names
held up to the contempt of Germans for all time.
I do not know of any one thing that can give a
better idea of the official hate for the nations with
which Germany was at war than this.
James W. Gerard
in “My Four Years in Germany.”
THE EX-CONVICT:
“I was a ‘lifer’; but they found I had so
many abilities for teaching civilisation
amongst our neighbours, that I am now a
soldier”
Crimes against women and young girls have
been of appalling frequency. We have
proved a great number of them, but they only represent
an infinitesimal proportion of those which we
could have taken up. Owing to a sense of decency,
which is deserving of every respect, the victims of
these hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them.
Doubtless fewer would have been committed if the
leaders of an army whose discipline is most rigorous
had taken any trouble to prevent them; yet, strictly
speaking, they can only be considered as the individual
and spontaneous acts of uncaged beasts.
French Government’s Official Report,
September, 1914.
WAR LOAN MUSIC
“Was blazen die Trompeten Moneten
heraus?”
Early in September, 1914, the Government
made the first War Loan issue. It took the
form of £50,000,000 of 5 per cent. Treasury Bonds
with a five years’ currency, and a 5 per cent. Loan
of undefined amount, irredeemable until 1924.
The price of both the Treasury Bills and the Loan
was 97½. During the ten days in which the lists
remained open, a tremendous propaganda was carried
on in the Press—this quotation is typical:
“The victories which our glorious Army has already
won in the west and east justify the hopes
that now, as in 1870, the expenses and burdens of
the war will fall ultimately upon those who have
disturbed the peace of the German Empire. But
first we must help ourselves. Great interests are at
stake.
“German capitalists, show that you are inspired
by the same spirit as our heroes, who shed their
hearts’ blood in the fight. Germans who have saved
money, show that you have saved, not only for yourselves,
but also for the Fatherland. German corporations,
companies, savings banks, and all institutions
which have blossomed and grown up under the
powerful protection of the Empire, repay the Empire
with your gratitude in this hour of fate. German
banks and bankers, show what your brilliant
organization and your influence on your customers
are able to produce.”
Times History of the War.
LIBERTÉ! LIBERTÉ CHÈRIE!
Soldiers,—Upon the memorable fields of
Montmirail, of Vauchamps, of Champaubert,
which a century ago witnessed the victories of our
ancestors over Blücher’s Prussians, your vigorous
offensive has triumphed over the resistance of the
Germans. Held on his flanks, his centre broken,
the enemy is now retreating towards east and north
by forced marches. The most renowned army
corps of Old Prussia, the contingents of Westphalia,
of Hanover, of Brandenburg, have retired
in haste before you.
This first success is no more than a prelude.
The enemy is shaken, but not yet decisively beaten.
You have still to undergo severe hardships, to
make long marches, to fight hard battles.
May the image of your country, soiled by barbarians,
always remain before your eyes. Never was
it more necessary to sacrifice all for her.
Saluting the heroes who have fallen in the fighting
of the last few days, my thoughts turn towards
you—the victors in the next battle.
Forward, soldiers, for France.
Franchet d’Esperey,
General Commanding the Vth Army.
Montmirail, September 9, 1914.
THE JUNKER
“What I have most admired in you, Bethmann,
is that you have made Socialists our
best supporters”
England is playing a perfectly shameful
rôle in this war. Even though France were
allied to Russia by an unfortunate treaty, England
was not so allied! But England, who has ever
been jealous of the industrial development of our
country, used the violation of our treaty of neutrality
with Belgium, which was incurred only in dire
need and which was yielded openly and honestly in
the Reichstag by the Chancellor, as a pretext to declare
war against us.
Philipp Scheidemann,
Socialist ex-Vice-President
of the Reichstag.
THE HIGHER POLITICS
The Kaiser: “We will propose peace
terms; if they accept them, we are the
gainers; if they refuse them, the responsibility
will rest with them”
Germany has suggested informally that the
United States should undertake to elicit from
Great Britain, France, and Russia a statement of
the terms under which the Allies would make peace.
The suggestion was made by the Imperial Chancellor,
von Bethmann-Hollweg, to Ambassador
Gerard at Berlin as a result of an inquiry sent by
the American Government to learn whether Emperor
William was desirous of discussing peace, as
recently had been reported.
The Associated Press.
Washington, September 17, 1914.
LUTHER-LIEBKNECHT IN THE REICHSTAG
“It is a War of Rapine! On that I take my
stand. I cannot do otherwise”
I understand that several members of the
Socialist Party have written all sorts of things
to the press with regard to the deliberations of the
Socialist Party in the Reichstag on August 3 and 4.
According to these reports there were no serious
differences of opinion in our party in regard to the
political situation, and our own position and decision
to assent to war credits are alleged to have been
arrived at unanimously.
In order to prevent the dissemination of an inadmissible
legend I feel it to be my duty to put on
record the fact that the issues involved gave rise to
diametrically opposite views within our parliamentary
party, and these opposing views found expression
with a violence hitherto unknown in our deliberations.
It is also entirely untrue to say that assent to the
war credits was given unanimously.
Dr. Carl Liebknecht,
Member of the Reichstag.
September 18, 1914.
THE LAND MINE
THE VERY STONES CRY OUT,
“Thou art the man”
The German Government states officially in
contradiction of the report made by the
Havas Agency that German artillery purposely destroyed
important buildings at Rheims, that, on the
contrary, orders were given to spare the Cathedral
by all means.
Count von Bernstorff.
Washington, September, 1914.
On Sept. 19 the cathedral was fairly riddled by
bombs during the entire day, and at about 3:45
the scaffolding surrounding the north tower caught
fire. This fire lasted about one hour, and during
that time two further bombs struck the roof, setting
it also on fire.
The monument, about which no troops were
massed, towers above the rest of the town; to avoid
it, in view of the uselessness of destroying it and
because it was serving as a hospital, would have
been an easy matter.
It would seem that the only explanation which
can be offered was blind rage upon the part of the
besieging army.
Mr. Whitney Warren’s
Official Report to the French Government.
September, 1914.
THE BRAGGART
“It was I who opened fire on Rheims
Cathedral”
My dear Sir, how is it possible to fight these
people? They seem to have no mercy, no
decency. It really seems impossible to know how
to meet them.
General Castelnau to
Mr. Whitney Warren.
The bells sound no more in the cathedral with
two towers. Finished is the benediction!…
With lead, O Rheims, we have shut your house of
idolatry!
M. Rudolf Herzog
in Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger. Jan., 1915.
RHEIMS—WAR AND CHRIST
The commonest, ugliest stone put to mark the
burial-place of a German grenadier is a more
glorious and venerable monument than all the cathedrals
of Europe put together.
Gen. von Disfurth
In Hamburger Nachrichten.
Reduce to ashes the basilica of Rheims where
Klodovig was anointed, where that Empire of
Franks was born—the false brothers of the noble
Teutons; burn that cathedral!
Written in the year 1814 by
Jean-Joseph Goerres
in the “Rheinische Merkin.”
LIQUID FIRE
In October, 1914, the headquarters of the second
German army at St. Quentin had issued an Order
regulating the use of fire-squirts ejecting inflammable
liquid. A special Corps of Pioneers, attachable
to any unit which might need them, had been
organized to handle this novel weapon. The Order
explained that the instrument could squirt a
flame which would cause mortal injury and which,
owing to the heat generated, would drive the enemy
to a considerable distance. It was recommended
particularly for street fighting.
Times History of the War.
WE ARE ON OUR WAY TO CALAIS!
In those days the German headquarters gave continuously
the order, “To Calais, to Calais,” and
the staff considered no difficulties, calculated no
sacrifices, in order to achieve success.
What these frenzied orders have cost in human
lives history will tell later on.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
Then the “seventy fives” were brought up at a
gallop and poured a hail of shell at the demoralized
German infantry wading frantically through the
water towards the canal. Rifles and machine guns
joined the work of destruction, and the placid lake
between the railway and canal was soon dotted with
drowning Germans fallen from the demoralized
crowds struggling to reach a haven of safety over
the bridges of St. Georges, Schoorbakke, and Tervaete.
The crisis of the battle of the Yser was over; the
Germans had made their great effort and had failed.
The Times History of the War.
Battle of the Yser. October, 1914.
WRITE IT DOWN, SCHOOLMASTER
William: “Write it down, Schoolmaster.
Monday shall be Copper Day; Tuesday, Potato
Day; Wednesday, Leather Day; Thursday,
Gold Day; Friday, Rubber Day; Saturday, no
Dinner Day, and Sunday, Hate Day!”
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow,
Ye reckon well, but not well enough now,
French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
And the time that is coming Peace will seal,
You we will hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate,
Hate by water and hate by land,
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of seventy millions choking down,
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone,
england!
Hymn of Hate, by Ernst Lissauer.
Translation by Barbara Henderson.
New York Times, Oct., 1914.
BARBED WIRE
THE SEA MINE
Take the very first incident of the war, the
mine laying by the Königin Luise. Here was
a vessel, which was obviously made ready with
freshly charged mines some time before there was
any question of a general European war, which was
sent forth in time of peace, and which, on receipt
of a wireless message, began to spawn its hellish
cargo across the North Sea at points fifty miles from
land in the track of all neutral merchant shipping.
There was the keynote of German tactics struck at
the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the
effect that it was a mere chance which prevented the
vessel which bore the German Ambassador from being
destroyed by a German mine. From first to
last some hundreds of people have lost their lives
on this tract of sea, some of them harmless British
trawlers, but the greater number sailors of Danish
and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they
had every right to do. It was the first move in a
consistent policy of murder.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In “The German War.”
HIS MASTER’S VOICE
The Vlaamsche Stem (Flemish Voice), a Flemish
newspaper, was bought by the Germans,
whereupon the whole of the staff resigned, as it no
longer represented its title.
THE PROMISE
We shall never sheathe the sword which we
have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers
in full measure all and more than she has
sacrificed, until France is adequately secured
against the menace of aggression, until the rights of
the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon
an unassailable foundation, and until the military
domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.
H. H. Asquith,
Prime Minister of England.
November, 1914.
THE RAID
“Do you remember Black Mary of Hamburg?”
“Aye, well.”
“She got six years for killing a child, whilst we
get the Iron Cross for killing twenty at Hartlepool.”
This morning a German cruiser force made a
demonstration upon Yorkshire coast, in the
course of which they shelled Hartlepool, Whitby,
and Scarborough.
A number of their fastest ships were employed
for this purpose, and they remained about an hour
on the coast. They were engaged by patrol vessels
on the spot.
During the bombardment, especially in West
Hartlepool, the people crowded in the streets, and
approximately twenty-two were killed and fifty
wounded.
British Admiralty report.
December, 1914.
THE TYPHUS INFERNO AT WITTENBERG
They were received in apathetic silence (Dec.,
1914). The rooms were unlighted, the men
were aimlessly marching up and down, some were
lying on the floor, probably sickening for typhus.
When they got into the open air again Major Fry
broke down. The horror of it all was for the moment
more than he could bear.
Major Priestly saw delirious men waving arms
brown to the elbow with fæcal matter. The patients
were alive with vermin; in the half light he
attempted to brush what he took to be an accumulation
of dust from the folds of a patient’s clothes,
and he discovered it to be a moving mass of lice.
In one room in Compound No. 8 the patients lay
so close to one another on the floor that he had to
stand straddle-legged across them to examine them.
What the prisoners found hardest to bear in this
matter were the jeers with which the coffins were
frequently greeted by the inhabitants of Wittenberg
who stood outside and were permitted to insult their
dead.
Report of the British Committee.
REMEMBER WITTENBERG
These medical officers protested with the camp
commander against the herding together of the
French and British prisoners with the Russians, who,
as I have said, were suffering from typhus fever.
But the camp commander said, “You will have to
know your Allies”; and kept all of his prisoners together,
and thus as surely condemned to death a
number of French and British prisoners of war as
though he had stood them against the wall and ordered
them shot by a firing squad. Conditions in
the camp during the period of this epidemic were
frightful. The camp was practically deserted by
the Germans.
At the time I visited the camp the typhus epidemic,
of course, had been stamped out. The Germans employed
a large number of police dogs in this camp
and these dogs not only were used in watching the
outside of the camp in order to prevent the escape of
prisoners but also were used within the camp.
Many complaints were made to me by prisoners
concerning these dogs, stating that men had been
bitten by them. It seemed undoubtedly true that
the prisoners there had been knocked about and
beaten in a terrible manner by their guards.
James W. Gerard
in “My Four Years in Germany.”
THE WONDERS OF CULTURE
On January 29, 1915, the first Zeppelin raid
upon Paris took place. Twenty-four people
were killed outright by the exploding bombs and
over 30 were injured. With one exception all the
dead and injured were civilians and the majority
were women and children.
TIRPITZ’ LAST HOPE—PIRACY
The waters around Great Britain and Ireland,
including the whole English Channel, are declared
a war zone on and after February 18, 1915.
Every enemy merchant ship found in this war
zone will be destroyed, even if it is impossible to
avert dangers which threaten the crew and passengers.
Also neutral ships in the war zone are in danger,
as in consequence of the misuse of neutral flags ordered
by the British Government on January 31,
and in view of the hazards of naval warfare, it cannot
always be avoided that attacks meant for enemy
ships endanger neutral ships.
Shipping northward, around the Shetland Islands,
in the eastern basin of the North Sea, and a
strip of at least thirty nautical miles in breadth
along the Dutch coast, is endangered in the same
way.
German Navy Official Communication.
Berlin, February 4, 1915.
ALCOHOLISM—BRITONS NEVER WILL BE SLAVES
The vast majority belong to a class we can
depend upon. The others are a minority.
But, you must remember, a small minority of
workmen can throw a whole works out of gear.
What is the reason? Sometimes it is one thing,
sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid.
It is mostly the lure of the drink. They refuse
to work full time, and when they return their
strength and efficiency are impaired by the way in
which they have spent their leisure. Drink is doing
us more damage in the war than all the German
submarines put together.
D. Lloyd George at Bangor.
February 28, 1915.
The Crown Prince: “Isn’t it an enjoyable war?”
William: “Perhaps, but hardly as
much so as I anticipated”
To sum up, the German General Staff has placed
upon its record since the beginning of the
campaign—apart from the failure of its great plan,
which aimed at the crushing of France in a few
weeks—seven defeats of high significance, namely,
the defeat of the sudden attack on Nancy, the defeat
of the rapid march on Paris, the defeat of the envelopement
of our left in August, the defeat of the
same envelopement in November, the defeat of the
attempt to break through our centre in September,
the defeat of the coast attack on Dunkirk and
Calais, and the defeat of the attack on Ypres.
French Official report, February, 1915.
A LETTER FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES
“We have gained a good bit: our cemeteries
now extend as far as the sea”
The wastage of German effectives is easy to
establish. We have for the purpose two
sources—the official lists of losses published by the
German General Staff and the notebooks, letters,
and archives of soldiers and officers killed and
taken prisoners. These different documents show
that by the middle of January the German losses on
the two fronts were 1,800,000 men.
These figures are certainly less than the reality,
because, for one thing, the sick are not comprised,
and, for another, the losses in the last battle in
Poland are not included. Let us accept them, however;
let us accept also that out of these 1,800,000
men 500,000—this is the normal proportion—have
been able to rejoin after being cured. Thus the
final loss for five months of the campaign has been
1,300,000 men, or 260,000 men per month.
French Government Official Report.
March, 1915.
NEUVE CHAPELLE
Order of the Crown Prince of Bavaria: “You
must give those English heavy blows.”
Tommy to prisoners after Neuve Chapelle:
“Weren’t they heavy?”
Soldiers of the Sixth Army! We have now
the good luck to have also the Englishmen
opposite us on our front, troops of that race whose
envy was at work for years to surround us with a
ring of foes and to throttle us. That race especially
we have to thank for this war. Therefore,
when now the order is given to attack this foe, practice
retribution for their hostile treachery and for
the many heavy sacrifices! Show them that the
Germans are not so easily to be wiped out of history.
Show them that, with German blows of a
special kind. Here is the opponent who most
blocks a restoration of the peace. Up and at
him!
Crown Prince Rupprecht.
After several days of severe fighting the British
captured Neuve Chapelle, on the 11th March, 1915.
The German loss was estimated at 18,000.
THE MUNITION SHORTAGE
Fired at but unable to reply
We have unfortunately found that the output is
not only not equal to our necessities, but does
not fulfil our expectations…. I can only say that
the supply of war material at the present moment and
for the next two or three months is causing me very
serious anxiety, and I wish all those engaged in the
manufacture and supply of these stores to realize that
it is absolutely essential not only that the arrears in
the deliveries of our munitions of war should be
wiped off, but that the output of every round of ammunition
is of the utmost importance and has a large
influence on our operations in the field.
Lord Kitchener.
House of Commons, March 15, 1915.
SUBMARINE BAGS
On March 18 a month had passed since the beginning
of our sharp procedure against our
worst foe. We can in every way be satisfied with
the results achieved in the meantime! In spite of
all steps taken before and thereafter, the English
have everywhere had important losses to show at
sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the
war, according to the latest statements of the Allies.
In the innocent exalted island kingdom many a
fellow is already striking; why should not even the
recruit strike, who is also beginning to get a glimmer
of the truth that there are no props in the ocean
waves?
The more opponents come before the bows of our
ships and are sunk, the better! Down with them to
the bottom of the sea; that alone will help! Let us
hope that we shall soon receive more such cheerful
news.
Vice-Admiral Kirchoff.
Hamburger Framdenblatt.
March 19, 1915.
“I had such a delightful dream that the
whole thing was not true”
The strategic retreat of the French Army, the
facility with which the German armies were
able to advance from August 25 to September 5,
gave our adversaries a feeling of absolute and
final superiority, which manifested itself at that
time by all the statements gleaned and all the documents
seized.
At the moment of the battle of the Marne the first
impression was one of failure of comprehension and
of stupor. A great number of German soldiers,
notably those who fell into our hands during the
first days of that battle, believed fully, as at the
end of August, that the retreat they were ordered to
make was only a means of luring us into a trap.
German military opinion was suddenly converted
when the soldiers saw that this retreat continued,
and that it was being carried out in disorder,
under conditions which left no doubt as to its cause
and its extent.
French Government Official Report.
March, 1915.
FOX TIRPITZ PREACHING TO THE GEESE
“You see, my little Dutch Geese, I am
fighting for the freedom of the Seas”
On March 25, 1915, the Dutch vessel Medea,
on the way from Valencia to London, was
sunk by a German submarine, U 28, near Beachy
Head, after the crew had had time to save themselves
in the boats. The submarine towed the two
boats for a quarter of an hour and then left the
occupants to their fate.
The German Government considered that the
Declaration of London gave it the right to sink
neutral prizes laden with contraband. The Dutch
Government held firmly to its standpoint that the
destruction of a neutral prize was in all circumstances
an illegal act and that the prescription of
the Declaration of London allowing, by way of
exception, destruction of neutral prizes, could not
be regarded as established international law.
Its offer to submit the case to international arbitration
was rejected by the German Government.
Times History of the War.
“IRON CROSSES”
“You laugh, Muller! but there are still
people who like them, and besides it gives
me exercise”
From the very beginning there was a wholesale
distribution of Iron Crosses. Before the
war the possession of an Iron Cross was a rare distinction
and a cherished memory of the war of 1870.
Iron Crosses soon became as plentiful as blackberries.
According to official statistics there had
up to the end of March, 1915, been distributed five
Grand Crosses, 6,488 Iron Crosses of the First
Class, and 338,261 Iron Crosses of the Second
Class. During the whole of the war of 1870 only
1,304 Iron Crosses of the First Class and 45,791
Iron Crosses of the Second Class had been distributed.
Times History of the War.
BETHMANN-HOLLWEG AND TRUTH
“Truth is on the path and nothing will
stay her”
A German has written this book.
No Frenchman, no Russian, no Englishman.
A German who is unbribed and unbribable, not
bought and not for sale.
A German who loves his Fatherland as much as any
man; but just because he loves it, he has written
this book.
Opening lines of “J’accuse”—a German to Germans—published
in Switzerland, April, 1915.
The book sets out to prove that the war had long
been planned and prepared by Germany and Austria,
not only from the military but from the political
point of view.
That it had long been determined to represent this
aggressive war to the German people as a war of
liberation, since it was known that only thus could
the needful enthusiasm be aroused.
That the object of this war is the establishment
of German hegemony on the Continent, and in due
course the conquest of England’s position as a world
power on the principle “Ote-toi de là que je m’y
mette.”
THE FALABA
“We have better luck with passenger
boats than with war ships, for
they cannot shoot”
On March 28, 1915, the British steamer Falaba
was torpedoed by a German submarine. The
torpedoes were fired while the crew and passengers
were entering the small boats. More than 100 persons,
including Mr. Thrasher, an American citizen,
perished with the ship.
While some of the boats were still on their davits
the submarine fired a torpedo at short range. This
action made it absolutely certain that there must be
great loss of life and it must have been committed
knowingly with the intention of producing that result.
British Official Press Bureau.
April 8, 1915.
THE GAS FIEND
At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. (22d April)
the Germans started operations by releasing
gases with the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor
rolled swiftly before the wind from their trenches
toward those of the French west of Langemarck,
held by a portion of the French Colonial Division.
Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to take full
effect on the troops facing them, the Germans
charged forward over the practically unresisting
enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating
through the gap thus created, pressed on silently and
swiftly to the south and west.
British Official Eyewitness.
April 27, 1915.
“We shall not allow these wonderful weapons,
which German intelligence invented, to grow rusty.”
The Cologne Gazette.
Germany was a signatory to the declaration at
the Hague Conference of 1899, and an article in
that Declaration ran as follows: “The contracting
Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles
the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating
or deleterious gases.”
SLOW ASPHYXIATION
These men were lying struggling for breath
and blue in the face. On examining the
blood with the spectroscope and by other means,
I ascertained that the blueness was not due to the
presence of any abnormal pigment. There was
nothing to account for the blueness (cyanosis) and
struggle for air but the one fact that they were
suffering from acute bronchitis, such as is caused
by inhalation of an irritant gas. Their statements
were that when in the trenches they had been overwhelmed
by an irritant gas produced in front of
the German trenches and carried toward them by a
gentle breeze.
Official Investigation by
Dr. J. S. Haldane, F.R.S.
“Hullo! Potsdam? Did you thank
your dear old God for this new success?”
The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, 13th
Battalion, and the 48th Highlanders, 15th
Battalion, were more especially affected by the discharge.
The Royal Highlanders, though considerably
shaken, remained immovable on their ground.
The 48th Highlanders, who no doubt received a
more poisonous discharge, were for the moment dismayed,
and, indeed, their trench, according to the
testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable.
The Battalion retired from the trench, but for a
very short distance and for a very short time. In a
few moments they were again their own men. They
advanced on and reoccupied the trenches which they
had momentarily abandoned….
The sorely tried Battalion (the 13th) held on for
a time in dug-outs, and, under cover of darkness,
retired again to a new line being formed by reinforcements.
The rearguard was under Lieut.
Greenshields. But Major McCuaig remained to
see that the wounded were removed. It was then,
after having escaped a thousand deaths through the
long battle of the night, that he was shot down and
made a prisoner.
Sir Max Aitken,
in “Canada in Flanders.”
“THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI”
ALL IS QUIET IN BELGIUM
I asked General von Bissing if there was much
need for this military tribunal (The Feld Gericht).
I shall not forget his reply.
“We have a few serious cases,” he said. “Occasionally
there is a little sedition but for the most
part it is only needle pricks. They are quiet now.
They know why,” and, slowly shaking his head,
von Bissing, who is known as the sternest disciplinarian
in the entire German Army, smiled.
From an interview given by the
Governor-General of Belgium to
Edward Lyall Fox,
New York Times, April, 1915.
Germany: “Gott strafe England! or I
will do it myself”
NOTICE!
Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic
voyage are reminded that a state of war
exists between Germany and her allies and Great
Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes
the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in
accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial
German Government, vessels flying the flag
of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable
to destruction in those waters and that travellers
sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or
her allies do so at their own risk.
Imperial German Embassy.
Washington, D. C., April 22, 1915.
Advertisement published in New York newspapers.
“Well, have you nearly done?”
The Cunard liner Lusitania was yesterday torpedoed
by a German submarine and sank.
The Lusitania was naturally armed with guns.
Moreover, as is well know here, she had large quantities
of war material in her cargo.
Berlin Official Report, May 8, 1915.
This report is not correct. The Lusitania was
inspected before sailing, as is customary. No guns
were found, mounted or unmounted, and the vessel
sailed without any armament.
Collector Port of New York, May 9, 1915.
The sinking of the British passenger steamer Falaba
by a German submarine on March 28, through
which Leon C. Thrasher, an American citizen, was
drowned; the attack on April 28 on the American
vessel Cushing by a German aeroplane; the torpedoing
on May 1 of the American vessel Gulflight
by a German submarine as a result of which two
or more American citizens met their death; and,
finally, the torpedoing and sinking of the steamship
Lusitania, constitute a series of events which the
Government of the United States has observed with
growing concern, distress, and amazement.
From United States Note to Germany,
May 13, 1915.
THE LUSITANIA—HEROD’S NIGHTMARE
“Are they crying ‘Mother’—or ‘Murder’?”
This represents not merely piracy, but piracy
on a vaster scale of murder than old-time
pirates ever practiced. This is the warfare which
destroyed Louvain and Dinant and hundreds of
men, women, and children in Belgium. It is a
warfare against innocent men, women, and children
traveling on the ocean, and our own fellow-countrymen
and countrywomen, who are among the sufferers.
It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from
taking action in this matter, for we owe it not only
to humanity, but to our own national self-respect.
Col. Theodore Roosevelt.
May 7, 1915.
VICTIMS OF GERMAN KULTUR
Whatever be the other facts regarding the
Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great
steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers,
and carrying more than a thousand souls
having no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was
torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge
or a warning, that men, women and children were
sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in
modern warfare.
United States Government’s
Note to Germany.
THE VERDICT
“It is the Hour, come”
We find that this appalling crime was contrary
to International law and the conventions
of all civilized nations, and we therefore
charge the officers of the said submarine, and the
Emperor of the Government of Germany, under
whose orders they acted, with the crime of wilful and
wholesale murder before the tribunal of the civilized
world. We desire to express our sincere condolence
with the relatives of deceased; the Cunard Company;
and the United States of America, so many of
whose citizens perished in this murderous attack
on an unarmed liner.
The unanimous verdict of the Irish jury at
the inquest of the “Lusitania” victims.
“THIS IS TOO BORING, DO SUGGEST
SOMETHING NEW”
Some German achievements in the first months
of the Great War:
The violation of Belgium and Luxemburg.
Massacre of civilian populations in Belgium and France.
Bombardment by warships of open towns.
Murder of civilians by air raids.
Murder of civilians on the high seas.
The introduction of liquid fire and poison gas.
Enslavement of conquered civilian communities.
“HAVE ANOTHER PIECE?”
Without a drop of blood flowing, and
without the life of a single Italian being
endangered, Italy could have secured the long list
of concessions which I recently read to the House—territory
in Tyrol and on the Isonzo as far as the
Italian speech is heard, satisfactions of the national
aspirations in Trieste, a free hand in Albania, and
the valuable port of Valona.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg.
Reichstag, May 28, 1915.
THE WOLF-TRAP
Italy: “You would make me believe that
I shall have my cub given back to me,
but I know I shall have to fight for it”
The discussion continued for months from the
first days of December to March, and it was
not until the end of March that Barion Burian offered
a zone of territory comprised within a line
extending from the existing boundary to a point
just north of the City of Trent.
In exchange for this proposed cession the Austro-Hungarian
Government demanded a number of
pledges, including among them an assurance of entire
liberty of action in the Balkans. Note should
be made of the fact that the cession of the territory
around Trent was not intended to be immediately
effective as we demanded, but was to be made only
upon the termination of the European War.
Signor Sonnino.
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
May 25, 1915.
THE BROKEN ALLIANCE AND ITALY
“Twenty years and more you’ve forced
me to wear this chain”
For the guardianship, therefore, of these treaties
the government of the kingdom of Italy found
itself constrained to notify the Imperial Austrian
Government on the fourth of this month, May,
1915, that it must withdraw all of its proposals
of agreement, denounce the treaty of the alliance,
and declare its own liberty of action. Nor, on the
other hand, was it more possible to leave Italy in
isolation without security and without prestige, just
at the moment in which the history of the world was
taking on a decisive phase.
Everything else we must forget from this moment,
and remember only this: to be Italians, to
love all Italy with the same faith and fervor. The
forces of all must be cemented into one single heart;
only one single will must guide all toward the
wished for end; and force, and art, and will must
find their expression one, alive, and heroic in the
army and navy of Italy and in the august leader
who conducts them toward the destiny of the new
history.
Antonio Salandra.
President of the Ministerial Council.
Rome. May 20, 1915.
GOTT STRAFE ITALIEN
Neither Serbia nor Russia, despite a long
and costly war, is hated. Italy, however,
or rather those Italian would be politicians and
business men who offer violence to the majority of
peaceful Italian people, are so unutterably hated
with the most profound honesty that this war can
produce.
The Frankfurter Zeitung, May 25, 1915.
THE LATIN SISTERS
Italy: “Indeed she is my sister”
Giuseppe Garibaldi with a corps of
Italian soldiers went to the defense of the
French Republic in the war of 1870 against the
Prussians, performing heroic deeds at Dijon worthy
of an epopee.
Ricciotti Garibaldi, living son of the Hero, with
a corps of Italian volunteers went to the defense of
Greece against Turkey in 1897, performing heroic
deeds worthy of an epopee at Domokos.
Peppino Garibaldi, living son of Ricciotti, with
a corps of Italian volunteers went to the defense of
the French Republic in the present war against Germany,
performing heroic deeds worthy of an epopee
in the Argonne.
From “Why Italy entered the Great War.”
Luigi Carnovale.
THE ZEPPELIN TRIUMPH
“But Mother had done nothing wrong,
had she, Daddy?”
The first Zeppelin attack on London was made
on the evening of the last day of May, 1915.
Zeppelins passed over Colchester at 10 o’clock, and
at twenty-three minutes past ten the people in one
of the poorest and most crowded quarters of East
End were startled to find bomb after bomb, mainly
of incendiary type, dropping among them. A large
number of civilians including many women and children
were killed.
By shell from sea, by bomb from air,
Our greeting shall be sped,
Making each English homestead
A mansion of the dead.
And even Grey will tremble
As falls each iron word;
“God punish England, brother?
Yea! Punish her, O Lord!”
A Hymn of Hate by Herr Hochstetter.
Translated by
Capt. G. Valentine Williams.
London Daily Mail.
MY SON, GO AND FIGHT FOR
YOUR MOTHERLAND
IS YOUR CONSCIENCE CLEAR?
Ask your conscience why you are staying comfortably
at home instead of doing your share
for your King and Country.
1. Are you too old?
The only man who is too old is the man who is over 38.
2. Are you physically fit?
The only man who can say honestly that he is not
physically fit is the man who has been told so by a Medical Officer.
3. Do you suggest you cannot leave your business?
In this great crisis the only man who cannot leave his
business is the man who is himself actually doing work
for the Government.
If your conscience is not clear on these three
points your duty is plain.
ENLIST TO-DAY
God Save the King
Newspaper advertisement in
British Press, May, 1915.
THE SACRIFICE—FOR HUMANITY’S SAKE
The women of Great Britain will never forget
what Belgium has done for all that women
hold most dear.
In the days to come mothers will tell their children
how a small but great-souled nation fought to
the death against overwhelming odds and sacrificed
all things to save the world from an intolerable
tyranny.
The story of the Belgian people’s defense of
freedom will inspire countless generations yet unborn.
Emmeline Pankhurst,
in “King Albert’s Book.”
ON TICKET-OF-LEAVE
“Next time I’ll wear a German Helmet and
plead ‘Military Necessity’”
The German went into this war with a mind
which had been carefully trained out of the
idea of every moral sense or obligation, private,
public, or international. He does not recognize
the existence of any law, least of all those he has
subscribed to himself, in making war against
women and children.
All mankind bears witness to-day that there is no
crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of
man can conceive which the German has not perpetrated,
is not perpetrating, and will not perpetrate
if he is allowed to go on.
These horrors and perversions were not invented
by him on the spur of the moment. They were arranged
beforehand. Their outlines are laid down
in the German war book. They are part of the
system in which Germany has been scientifically
trained. It is the essence of that system to make
such a hell of countries where their armies set foot
that any terms she may offer will seem like heaven
to the people whose bodies she has defiled and whose
minds she has broken of set purpose and intention.
Rudyard Kipling,
at Southport, England, June, 1915.
ANOTHER GERMAN “VICTORY”
In June the Germans once more turned to the East
and the North-East Coast. On June 4, 1915,
there was a raid, doing some slight damage; and
two days later there was another, by far the most
serious of any that had yet happened. The raiders
succeeded in reaching a town on the East Coast
during the night and bombed it at their leisure.
One large drapery house was struck and was completely
wrecked, the entire building—a somewhat
old one—collapsing. Some working-class streets
were very badly damaged, a number of houses destroyed,
and many people injured. It was one of
the peculiarities of this raid that, unlike most of the
others, all the people injured were struck while indoors.
The total casualties here were twenty-four
killed, about sixty seriously injured, and a larger
number slightly injured.
Times History of the War.
“He was a brave ‘Zepp,’ he had
already killed over one hundred women and children”
The outrage (see preceding page) was quickly
avenged by a young British naval airman,
Flight Sub-Lieut. R. A. J. Warneford, in one of
the most brilliant aerial exploits of the war.
On the morning of June 7 at 3 a.m. he encountered
a Zeppelin returning from the coast of
Flanders to Ghent, and chased it, mounting above
it and sailing over it at a height of 6,000 feet.
Zeppelin and aeroplane exchanged shots, and when
the Zeppelin was between one and two hundred feet
immediately below him he dropped six bombs on it.
One bomb hit the Zeppelin fairly, causing a terrific
explosion, and setting the airship on fire from end
to end. Warneford’s aeroplane was caught by the
force of the explosion and turned upside down, but
he succeeded in righting it before it touched the
ground. He was forced to alight within the German
lines. Nevertheless he restarted his engine,
though not without great difficulty, and in due
course returned to his station without damage.
Only the framework of the Zeppelin was left, the
crew being all burned or mangled, and the body of
the machine being completely destroyed.
Times History of the War.
THE GREAT SURPRISE
Moses II. leads his chosen people through
the channel to the promised (Eng.) land
From a military or political or economic point
of view one should look at the matter (the
capture of Calais) with the eyes of Great Britain
and define the Calais idea as a possibility for a
seafaring continental power to conduct a war
against Great Britain from the continental coast
channel and with all military resources while holding
open communication between the Atlantic Ocean
and the North Sea.
Count von Reventlow.
June, 1915.
BOTHA TO BRITAIN
“I have carried out everything in accordance
with our compact at Vereeniging”
On July 9, 1915, a despatch from General
Botha was published stating that he had
brought his campaign in South-West Africa to a
triumphant close, and had received the unconditional
surrender of Governor Sietz and the German
forces of 3,500 men. The campaign, commencing
in February, had lasted five months. The patriotic
devotion of General Botha and the loyalty of the
great majority of the Dutch people to the cause of
the British Empire were a magnificent vindication
of the Liberal Cabinet’s policy of reconciliation
after the close of the South African war.
THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH IN ARMS
The self-governing Colonies in the British Empire
have at their disposal a ‘militia,’ which
is sometimes only a process of formation. They
can be completely ignored so far as concerns any
European theatre of war.
Von Bernhardi, 1911.
Our thoughts naturally turn to the splendid
efforts of the Oversea Dominions and India, who,
from the earliest days of the war, have ranged themselves
side by side with the Mother Country. The
prepared armed forces of India were the first to take
the field, closely followed by the gallant Canadians—who
are now fighting alongside their British and
French comrades in Flanders. In the Dardanelles
the Australians and New Zealanders—combined
with the same elements, have already accomplished
a feat of arms of almost unexampled brilliancy. In
each of these great Dominions new and large contingents
are being prepared, while South Africa, not
content with the successful conclusion of the arduous
campaign in South-West Africa, is now offering
large forces to engage the enemy in the main theatre
of war.
Lord Kitchener, Guildhall speech, July 9, 1915.
There are now in training or in the field 350,000
troops of the overseas dominions alone, while this
country, on estimate, has at least 2,775,000 men in
the field or in training.
Sir Gilbert Parker, July, 1915.
JOHN BULL: “COME ON,
MICHAEL, I’M AWAKE NOW”
Rightly or wrongly, we have in the past devoted
our energies and our intelligence, not to
preparations for war, but to that social progress
which makes for the happiness and contentment of
the mass of our people. And this, no doubt, is the
reason why other nations imagine that we, as a nation
of shopkeepers, are too indolent and apathetic
to fight for and maintain these priceless liberties
won by the men who laid the foundation of our vast
empire.
But they are entirely mistaken in forming any
such estimate of the temperament or determination
of our people. Great Britain hates war, and no nation
enters more reluctantly upon its horrible and
devastating operations; but at the same time no
nation, when it is driven to war by the machinations
of its foes who desire to filch from it or from
its co-champions of liberty any portion of their inherited
freedom, is more resolved to see the matter
through, at whatever cost, to a successful issue.
Sir Edward Carson, British Attorney-General.
Statement on first twelve months of war.
L’AVENIR
The only peace which the republic can accept
is that which guarantees the security of Europe
and which will permit us to breathe and to live
and to work to reconstruct our dismembered country
and repair our ruins, a peace which will effectively
protect us against any offensive return of the
Germanic ambitions.
The present generations are accountable for
France to posterity. They will not permit the profanation
of the trust which their ancestors confided
to their charge. France is determined to conquer;
she will conquer.
President of the French Republic.
From speech on the conclusion of the
first year of war.
ORANJE BOVEN
German Oculist, trying on spectacles:
“What do you read now?”
Dutchman: “Deutschland über Alles.”
German Oculist: “That is right: that
pair exactly suits you.”
“Oranje Boven” is the Dutch cry which answers to the
German “Deutschland über Alles.”
The cartoons reproduced upon the opposite
and following pages are selected examples
of the series drawn for and published in “The
Amsterdam Telegraaf,” at the time when Holland
was invaded by an army of spies and secret agents
who carried on a vast system of pro-German propaganda.
These cartoons represent Raemaekers’ reply.
It was during the publication of these pictures
that a price was set upon his head by the German
Government, and he was charged by the Dutch
Government, at the instance of the representatives
of the Central Powers with “endangering the neutrality
of Holland,” a form of persecution which
had an effect quite opposite to that intended, as it
resulted only in drawing the attention of the Allies
and other Neutrals to the power and significance of
Raemaekers’ cartoons, which was followed by a
much wider distribution of his work.
THE ENVOY TO HER MAJESTY
“Madam, your soldiers will get splendid
Prussian uniforms and Your Majesty will
have a place of honour in the retinue of
the Kaiser”
BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LION
The Driver: “You are a worthy
Dutchman. He who lies in that grave
was a foolish idealist”
THE DUTCH JUNKERS
“At least we shall get posts as gamekeepers
when Germany takes us after the
war”
THE EAGLE IN THE HEN RUN
German Eagle: “Come along, Dutch
chicken, we will easily arrange an agreement.”
The Dutch chicken: “Yes, in your
stomach.”
OUR CANDID FRIEND
“I shall have to swallow you up if only
to prevent those English taking your
Colonies”
THE FREE SEA
Germany’s idea of what it would make
of it for Holland
