THE USES OF HATE
■WHY WE SHOULD NURSE OUR WRATH
FOR THE HUN BLACKGUARDS
; _ The world is so crowded with events just now that people are in danger of ; forgetting that the war on the Ger- ' mans is a personal matter as well as an international one. Thoso of our sons, of our brothers, who have fallen into the hands, of the Germans and endured what is the common experience of all British prisoners will never forgeithem. Nor will wo. With equal intensity of hatred for the perpetrators we should remember the fate of the women and children of Belgium. TVhy should wo nurse our wrath to keep it warm? Because (says Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the London "Times") hate has its uses in war, as the Germans have long . discovered. "It steels the mind and sets the reso- . lution as no other emotion can do. So 1 much do they feel this that the' Germans are constrained to invent all sorts of reasons for hatred against us, who have in truth never, injured them m any way save that history and geography both place us between them and their ambitions. To nourish hatred they invent every lie against us, and so they attains certain national solidity. We have the true reasons for this emotion; we have suffered incredible things from a. foe who is) void of all chivalry and humanity. Yet though we have this material we do little to Use it and to spread it. How powerful it is can best be told, by looking into our own hearts." "I had occasion recently to talk with a British officer, who had .endured capthity in Germany. With a voice whicn was husky with passion, trembliug with the violence of his own feelings, he told me what he and his comrades had gone through. I had read such things in cold print, but to hear them from , one who had seen and felt ihem had an indescribable effect. I was trembling as he was before he had finished. This officer, of senior regimental rank, a man of dignity and refinement, was taken wounded at the end of 1914. With his , comrades in captivity he was starved during the long two days' journey from the front tii his prison. At one spot, he thinks that it was Cologne, a soup canteen upon wheels was rolled up to their compartment in order, to mock them. Still starving and suffering tortores from their wounds, they, reached the town of their captivity. Weak, shaken, nnd unnerved, they assembled outside ■ the station, hardly able to stand after tbeir dreadful journey.. What ensued can only be described in his own forcible words. 'They kicked our beliinds all the way up the street. There was not one of us who had not his hebind These were' British officers, honourable gentlemen, m#ny of them wounded; now helpless under circumstances which have in all ages appealed to the chivalry of. the captors. _ "And we,' when a German flier is caught red-handed with his apparatus ready for the murder, of the civilians of London, hurry him away that he may have a hot "This officer was, as I was told bv a third party, a witness of a dreadful incident or the burning hut. One of th'e huts iii the prison camp took fire. It was night and _ the door had been iocked on the outside.. The_key could not be found-. One of the inmates, a sailor, tried to get out through the .narrow window. 1 The sentry of the hut rushed forward. The' prisoners who were spectators thought that he was going to draw , the man through. What he. actually did was po pass his bayonet through the sailor's throat. I am told that the horrified onlookers dropped on their knees, men' of all the Allied countries, and swore to God that so long as they lived they would ■never , show mercy to any man of 'German blood. Can we blame' them? Would we not have felt the same? .
"Many" of us," says the- writer, "could conceive of a peace which included some compromise upon _ frontiers, so long as Belgium was intact. Many also would be content to sacrifice Russia, if she persisted in her treason. But not one who knows the facts but .would fight to the last gasp in order to ensure stern justice being done to the murderers of our women and to tbe men who tortured our helpless prisoners. "What then should wo do ? We should have. a statement drawn up, not coldly official but humanly moving, signed by the officers who saw and endured these things. This document should be translated into German and put under the no3e of every prisoner in England, that they may at least appreciate the contrast in the culture of the two countries. At present we are so pedentically correct in our treatment of these prisoners that when, at an earlier stage of the war I made the suggestion that we place a copy of "J'accuse" in every prison, it was refused on the grounds •that it was against international law to proselytise prisoners. This was about the time when Casement and l the Germans were 1 trying to • starve the Irish prisoners into enlistment against Great Britain.
"This statement should be served out broadcast in our munition shops and among our troops. The munition ■workers have many small vexations to endure and their nerves get sadly frayed. They need strong elemental emotions .to carry them on.. Let pictures he made of theße and other incidents. Let them'he hung up in every shop. Let them be distributed thickly 5n the Sinn Fein districts of Ireland and in the hothbeds of Socialism and Pacifism in England and Scotland. The Irishman has always been a man of chivalrous nature, and I cannot believe that even the wrong-headed Sinn Feiner has got down lo the level of his allies of Prussii and Turkey. Let his eyes rest upon the work of his friends and perhaps ho will realise more clearly how he stands and the position which ho has taken up in the world's fight for freedom.
"The bestiality of the German nation has given' us a driving power which we are ■ not using, and which would be very valuable in this stage of the war. Scatter the facts. Put them in red-hot fashion. Do not preach to the solid South, who need no conversion, but spread tho propaganda wherever there lare signs of enemy intrigues, on tho Tyne, the Clyde, in the Midlands, above all in Ireland and in French Canada. - Let us pay no attention to platitudinous Bishops or gloomy Deans, or any. other superior people who preach against '■'retaliation or whole-hearted warfare. We have to win, and we can only win by keeping up the spirit and resolution of our own people."
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Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 144, 7 March 1918, Page 5
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1,144THE USES OF HATE Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 144, 7 March 1918, Page 5
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