THE UNCHANGED HUN

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 49, 22 November 1918, Page 4

THE UNCHANGED HUN

It might hnve been thought, that in the hour of defeat and with retribution in near prospect, even a nation like Germany would have desisted from crimes and atrocities. Such an expectation, however, would have made much too light of the innate brutality of the German character. One last opportunity of playing tho brute remained, and horrifying ovidcnce is no\y available that tho Huns have made the most of it. Sickening storic3 have been unfolded during the last day or two of the sufferings of thousands of Allied soldiers who wero turned out of the German prison camps, ill clad and without food, to live or die. Thousands of the unfortunates thus exposed to fearful privations in the depths of a bitter winter were too ill to move. Of those that were able to travel many must have died in vainly attempting to reach tho. Allied lines. ]t is recorded that hundreds have been discovered dying of hunger and fatigue. As yet the ghastly story has been told only in, part, Vit far moro than enough has been told to constitute a final and damning indictment of the German nation. AVhile the German armies were still able to point to illusory successes frightfulness was a. weapon of war. It was the foulest weapon ever invented, but it was used with an object. The spectacle now presented to the worlcl is that of frightfulness indulged in for its own sake, as a matter of incurable and ineradicable habit.

The Allies, fortunately, are in a position to bring speedy relief to the last victims of German savagery, and to avenge their fate and sufferings. Unless they are content to see mora] order overthrown in the world, the Allied nations are bound to seize the commandants of German prison camps and ■ other blood-guilty individuals and subject them to the extreme punishment they have earned.a'thousand times by their barbarous crimes." So far, in regard to this final crime as to all the others of which Germany has been guilty the line of duty for the Allies is plainly drawn. It is a vital matter that murderers and the authors of more dreadful crimcs than murder should be brought to a stern reckoning, and the Allied nations would themselves incur infamy if they failed to perform this duty. But though the Allies arc concerned first of all with guilty individuals, the matter does not end there. _ Like many other atrocities of which Germany has been guilty, thp barbarous treatment of prisoners of war brands the whole German nation. The circumstances of this latest abomination constitute in fact a deadlier indictment of tho German people than anything that, has gone before. While the Kaiser still reigned at Berlin apologists for the German people could argue that German atrocities were, tho work of a guilty few, and that tho mass of the nation played at most a passive and helpless part. No such plea can be advanced to-day. Militarism is overthrown in Germany. The people are free to speak and act as thoy think fit, and thero is nothing to indicate that the position is complicated by. any serious outbreak of disorder or anarchy. Yet there is not the faintest suggestion that _ tho people of Germany have any idea of calling to account tho authors of the fiendish crimes committed in their name. Neither is there any suggestion that thev lifted a finger to prevent the hideous crimes against helpless prisoners of war which now stand revealed. Where their own interests are at stake the German people show no such inert indifference. Something of the character of a national appeal has been imparted to the application _ made to the Allies for a modification of the armistice terms. The women of Germany have been particularly outspoken'on the subject...- ' But neither the women of Germany nor the people of the country in general have had anything to say about the murderous maltreatment of prisoners of war, or about any other .of the thousand and one crimes against _ humanity for which their late military masters are primarily responsible. The Gcrman people have shown that they are able to whine piteously on their own behalf, but they have shown also that they lack such elementary instincts of humanity as might be looked for even in the members of a savage tribe. In their new-won freedom thoy have revealed themselves as debased and degraded to an almost incredible degree, and it it evident that the Allies must take all possible, account of this revelation in dictating conditions of peace.