Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1917 — TO PUNISH GERMANY FOR GENERATIONS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TO PUNISH GERMANY FOR GENERATIONS

The world will not soon forget Teutonic terrorism visited on women and children—the rape, murder, enslavement, torture, vandalism, air raids,plots and insults of Junkerdom

N important part of the German gospel of making war is the program of spreading terror among non-combat-ants of enemy nations. How has this policy been carried out? We all know the black

history made by the Teutons the last three years in Belgium and northern France, in Serbia and Russian Poland. It has been a cowardly warfare of the most outrageous kind, against women and children and old men —an unspeakable record of rape, murder, deportation into slavery, torture, savage vandalism, that will never be forgotten or forgiven. The United States knows official Germany for its plots against us and conspiracy within our borders against friendly nations, . while protesting friendship for us. It knows official Germany for its secret attempt to incite Japap and Mexico to make war on us with promise of aiding them. It knows official Germany for swinish insults to our diplomatic representatives in Germany time and time again. It knows official Germany as a liar, a murderer, a thief, a home-wrecker, a child-killer —in short, a criminal government of the most degenerative type. For these crimes the world will punish Germany through many generations. Germany will have no friends outside her border lines. Germany as a nation will be shunned and mistrusted. German individuals will be snubbed and suspected for a hundred years to come. We shall listen to the German’s story. We shall hear his solemn protestations of sincerity. We shall give ear to his assertions of high honor. • But we shall remember our bitter experience with all his kind. And we shall refuse to accept his pledges. We will refuse his proffers of■ friendship. We will refuse him our hospitality. We will refuse to visit him or trade with him or aid him. Come decades of reckoning for him that has poisoned our minds, our hearts and our bodies. Do you doubt?

Then read here how German airplanes have sown a heritage of hate in London: ... “I should like German people to know that raids of this kind are preparing for them an ordeal which will •try their souls for a generation." So wrote Harold Begbie, English author, in the London Daily Chronicle two days, after the raid of July 7 that killed and wounded 178 persons, sev-enty-six of them women and children. ••They will find themselves, after the peace," the writer continues, “confronted by a social boycott such as no nation has ever experienced. They are proud of themselves now: they think that the whole world must be full of admiration for their valor, their discipline, their patriotism; but when the barriers of armed men are removed, and they begin to move about among other nations, they will come up against a spiritual barrier which will be likely to break their hearts. There are some memories which nothing can destroy. “I have heard opinions expressed in London during this raid which lighted up for me the social future of the German people. They" have sung their Hymn of Hate till they are hoarse, and now perhaps they are ashamed of such emotionalism. But other nations, colder and more restrained, have a hate in their hearts for the German spirit Which is too deep for ballad singing and too real to pass away. The Englishman does not rave and

The picture is reproduced from a drawing printed in Black and White, an English magazine, In October, 1908. The artist illustrated an article describing the development of Zeppelin airships by the Germans, and he aimed to picture the horrors of an air attack on London if Germany and Great Britain should ever engage In war. He was more prophetic that he knew, for six years later Zeppelins dropped bombs on the English capital with deadly effect.

does not call upon Jehovah, and does •not fuss; but there are some things he never forgets. Truly, I do not think it will be safe for any German to go about the world after the war for many years.” It is asserted in England that the raids have done no military damage. Hall Caine writes that in a tour of the city following the raid he saw no property damage that could not be repaired by the mason, the street paver and the glazier within six days. Materially, the raid was contemptible. London has seven hundred square miles of territory. Miles and miles of streets were untouched. London stands where it always did. By the slaughter of a comparatively few civilians the Germans have succeeded only in piling up a heritage of hate for the future. London has seen women and children crushed and blown to bits and mangled bodies in the streets. The memory will linger with English men and English women. It is not well to have a nation feel as one old charwoman expressed it: “By God, I wish some of them Germans would come down Mare street ! Hackney’d give it to ’em. Ah, wouldn’t it. I’d tear the eyes out of them.” There is talk of reprisals. Sections of the enraged populace demand it, but the official mind is all against it. English hands will be cleaner if they disdain German methods. The authorities have said there would be no retaliation unless there was. a military object to be obtained. , London newspapers for several (lays after the raid were crammed with details of it. When the airplanes came a little group huddled in an arch formed by the juncture of two threestory buildings. A bomb dropped on the roof and the debris, pouring through the shattered floor, burled the victims. Four men were killed. Three children and a woman were severely injured. Horses were killed In the streets and vans took fire. In One short street where the houses are occupied by working people the bombs killed eight; another is missing and a tenth was driven insane. Literally, scores of women and children suffered injuries, more or less severe. Twelve small houses .were demolished. A woman who lived in what is now the shattered remnant of a little home told a pathetic story: “As soon as I heard an explosion,” she said, “I ran into my neighbor’s. There I found her, another woman, hnd five or six children. They were all in the kitchen, and one woman was trying to comfort the other. Then a bomb burst in the middle of the road and the whole front of the house seemed to come in. I saw one of the women fall and the terrible wounds revealed to me even in that glance showed that she could not be alive. I called for help and a man came in and covered the poor mangled body. I had one of the children in my arms. Fortunately, we were both uninjured.” A torpedo fell in the play yard of a large school. As it was Saturday no children were present; otherwise, there probably would have been many casualties. Horses bolted in the streets and there were cries of anguish from the wounded. In West London at the height of the raid three motor lorries of soldiers' were proceeding eastward. They continued their journey uncon-

cernedly, singing “Keep On Carrying On.” In one district four wounded soldiers strolled along the pavement, and a woman invited them into the shelter of her house. “Thanksrbut It doesnT’taatter,” replied a tall guardsman. “One of these bombs is not half as bad as a Jack Johnson." “To the present writer,” said an article in the Chronicle, “they were no dragon flies or fluttering birds._They were huge, sharply defined, mobile magazines of death.. They came to the metropolis, down and down, searching with contemptuous deliberation. After the first bomb a piecemeal avalanche followed. The demons who drove and dealt death cared as little for us as the earlier Zeppellnists cared.” The London Globe published a Berlin dispatch, by way of Amsterdam, in which the Teutons said they had hit Charing Cross station, the great railway station, several times. The claim is printed without comment. Only the people in London can vouch for the truth of it. One of the bitterest estimates of the bombing was written by Hall Caine: “I think of what war was in the days when, with all its brutalities, it had the virtue of courage and the splendor of bravery,” he wrote. “I remember the battles recorded in the old Norse sagas when it was only glorious to fight a man who coyld fight back, when It was a disgrace to take one’s adversary unawares, and an everlasting shame to attack the weak, the disabled, or the unarmed. “And then I think of these young German airmen, hiding behind the clouds, until they come upon the enemy unprepared, striking him with an arm that can be long or short, according to conditions of their own safety, and then sailing off In the comparative security of the illimitable sky. “War? It is manslaughter and murder. Brave men? In the category of soldiers the creatures who condescend to such methods of assault ought only to be classed among the bullies and cowards.” The papers were filled with articles demanding an improvement in the air defense. In the successful raid —if it can be called a success —the enemy escaped with slight loss. It is estimated that there were twenty-five attacking planes. The English say that four of the raiders were downed, while admitting the loss of one of their own craft. The government, however, de-: nies that the English airmen deserve the abuse that was theirs after the raid.