The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1916. AN OUTLAW ENEMY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 38, 19 May 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1916. AN OUTLAW ENEMY.

If thoac simple-minded people who still plead that it would he wrong Joins to cherish feelings of anything but! brotherly love towards our enemies after the incredible brutality ot the bestial Mini, could but experience a few months as prisoners of war in the hands of gentle Germany, we make bold to say that even right reverend Bishops would make at least a mental reservation that there is a limit to all things—even Christian endurance' and charity.- Surely Germany lias reached and over-stepped the outside limit in everything opposed to humanity, and nothing but bitter retribution ought to be meted out to our despicable and treacherous iocs. Those who still softly think otherwise should read Professor J. H. Morgan's "Gorman Atrocities," just published. Professor Morgan was sent to France last year by the Home Secretary to investigate the alleged outrages by German soldiers in French towns and villages which they occupied before the Battle of the Maine. Professor Morgan is a famous jurist. He has an almost academic regard for the value of direct evidence. He lias rejected everything that was only backed by hearsay, however widespread that hearsay might have been. Ho has now published the result of his enquiries, including in the same volume a. detailed examination of the German apology* for the; outrages in Belgium. The result is a. document as terrible as the Bryce report. Professor Morgan, say:' an English paper, has the courage to deduce the obvious moral from the fearsome story he has to tell. Fie is not content to saddle responsibility for a, series of unspeakable crimes on the shoulders of the Prussian militarists. He indicts the Ger-, man nation. "It is the fondest of delusions," he says, "to imagine that all this blood-guiltiness is confined to! the German Government and the (Sen-,

oral Staff. The whole people is stained with it. The innumerable diaries of common soldiers in the rr.nk? which I have road betray a common sentiment of hate, rapine, and ferocious

! cruelty The progress of | French, British, and Russian prisonI ers, civil as well as military, through Germany lias been a veritable Calvary. The helplessness which in others would 'excite forbearance, if not pity, has'in ' the German populace provoked only derision and insult. The old genilc- ! man with the grey beard and gold 1 spectacles who broke his umbrella over the back of a Russian lady, the loafers who boarded ;. train and under the eyes of the indulgent sentries poked ! their fingers in the blind eyes of a j wounded Irishman who had half his i face shot away, the men and women j who spat upon helpless prisoners and | threatened them with death, the 1 | guards who prodded them with bayo-j j nets, worried them with dogs < in<{ I despatched those who could not keep

up—these were not a Prussian caste, j but the Gorman people. I have been, told that there are still some indivi-j duals in England who cherish the idea, that this vast orgy of blood, lust, rapine, hate, and pride is in some pecu-j liar way merely the Bacchanalia on troops unused to the heavy bouquet of the wines of Champagne, or, stranger still, that it is the mental aberration!

of a people seduce'd by idle tales into these courses by its rulers. If the reader is astonished, as well'he may be, at the disgusting repetition of stories of rape, let him study the statistics of crime in Germany during the first decade of this century, lsued by the imperial Government; he will find in them much to confirm the impression that the whole people is infected with some kind of moral distemper." And so Professor Morgan goes on to show that the Gorman nation of to-day, as a whole must be regarded as a "moral pervert." "J can see little hope," he adds, "except in a sentence of. outlawry. Mere blacklisting of the names of responsible German commanders, although worth doing (and 1 have reason to believe that at the French War Office it is being done), with a view to retribution, is not going to change the German character. We shall have to revise our notions of both municipal and international law as regards her." "The dilemma is inexorable; we can readmit Germany to international society and lower our standard of international law to her level; or Ave can exclude her and raise it." There is no third course; for we are face to face with a Power which "is more completely alien to Western ideals than the tribes of Afghanistan." Again he tells Us that: —"A hybrid nation of this type, which, is intellectual without being refined, which can discipline its mind but cannot control its appetite, which can acquire the idiom of Europe and yet retain the instincts of Asia, or rather of some preAsiatic horde, presents the greatest problem that has ever perplexed the civilisation of man." There is nothing in extenuation to be said, and it is simply amazing to find weakminded sentimentalists, shufflers and shirkers who dare talk of reconciliation when the war is Avon.