KILL GERMANS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1533, 8 April 1916, Page 4

KILL GERMANS.

FATHER VAUGHAN’S LETTER.

Father Bernard Vaughan, replying in the Daily Graphic to letters from the Rev. F. B. Meyer and the Rev. J. H. NewshamTaylor, blaming him for advising our troops to kill the enemy instead of being killed by him, says;—

Truth to tell, till I read Dr. Meyer’s letter I had no notion that we considered it a “ misfortune” to kill Germans. In my stupidity I had always felt it was a misfortune to miss them ; I had no idea that soldiers in war were to be regarded as police on their beat; in my simplicity I was under the impression that our troops had gone to the front, not to take up and handcuff the aggressor, but, on the contrary, to wipe him but and do for him. Indeed, in my reading of the situation, I had never regarded the enemy in the light of a burglar bent on ‘swag’ only, but rather as an assassin under orders to murder, massacre, and mangle widows and children, leaving them nothing but their eyes to weep with.

Of course, if Dr Meyer’s contention is right, I must confess to being quite wrong. In other words, if our artillery is not out primarily to find the range for killing our foe, but only to shoot or frighten black beetles, rabbits and mosquitos, my advice to kill Germans is altogether out of place. If our guns happen to riddle and kill the enemy, then we can always say with Dr Meyer, it was a “misfortune,” and we no more meant it than the Germans mean killing us! “SPEAK THE TRUTH.”

As for our friend, the Rector of St. Peter’s, Hatton Garden, the Rev Newsham-Taylor, and his rooted conviction that it ill beseems ecclesiastical lips to advise killing Germans, I must make bold to say to him in reply that the only reason that I can discover for the unseemliness of such advice is that it is unbecoming a minister of religion to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In a day when the nation is economising in the truth more than in anything else, the eloquent rector will probably charge me with belonging to an old-fashioned Church which refuses to compromise where principle Is involved. But I cannot help it. I am built and trained on those lines ; and, to be candid, as an Englishman and a patriot, I much prefer to be set down as a publican and sinner than as a Pharisee and hypocrite. Sir, with Joffre and Kitchener, French and Haig, 1 beg once more to raise my voice reminding my countrymen that victory can be ours in one way only : by artilleryattrition. And I find that the chief reason why our war-lords today are so sanguine about peace rooted in triumph over the foe is that our artillery is now better than his. As a plain blunt Epglishman, I understand this to mean we can kill off the enemy quicker than he us. If our Nonconformist ministers had only exhorted their followers to join the colours in the language of Joffre and Roberts, instead of in the hesitating terms of Meyer and Newsham-Taylor, I venture to think we should now still be under the voluntary system instead of saddled with a Compulsion Bill.

Sir, unless our troops are out at the front to kill Germans, let them come home and get killed with us. They won’t have to wait long.