KILLING NO MURDER.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 209, 14 May 1915, Page 2

KILLING NO MURDER.

HOW IT PEELS TO SLAY IN BATTLE. (This article is one of a series of narratives describing life in the trenches of Europe, written by Phil Rader, son of the Rev. William Rader, of San Francisco. He served for a time with the French Foreign Legion, but is now in London.) London, March 29. —How it feels to kill a man is something I . cannot adequately describe. There are some millions of men in Europe who have had tins feeling during the past half year, but I venture to say that not one of them could faithfuly detail his emu Lon upon first taking a human life. After you see your victim drop, you first feel a sense of triumph. Then the ages of training in the Ten Commandments come to the front, and you feel like a murderer. 1 hen you want to run around among your mates and tell them the eircumr.anees of the killing and get them to tell you that you did the right thing.

SIGHTING THE GAME. 'r My experience was like that. I was standing beside my lieutenant one day. He had fastened a small mirror to a twig, and was looking at the German trenches, when suddenly he exclaimed: "Get your gun! A Boche has come 0.. t of his trench,” I ran down the trench, got my gun and came back to the loophole. I was so excited I could hardly aim. Through the hole I saiv a Germana standing on the edge of the trench. He had been carrying a huge board and had rested it against his back while lie tried to light his pipe. BRINGING HIM DOWN. "Get him! Get him!” said the lieutenant. I fired and missed. The German struck another match, and merely looked contemptuously at the spot in space where the bullet had whistled past him. He was only 4.5 feet away from me, but through the loophole I could see only part of his body, and I wanted to hit him low, if possible. I aimed again. He wheeled around and backed in a circle, like a drunken man, trying to keep his balance. Then he threw up both hands and fell forward on his face. I turned around to iook at the lieutenant. He had moved away. He was proud. Then a wave of remorse came over mo—it-was the "Thou_Shalt Not Kill’ that is buried in every sane man’s mind and heart. A COMRADE DISSENTS. "I got a German,” I shouted to a soldier near by. I told him how the man had been standing there, holding a board. "Did ho have a rifle?” asked the soldier. "Why, no,” T said. "And you shot an unarmed man?” "I had direct orders,” T answered. I felt like a dog. It seemed to me that I must find some human being who would say that I had done right. ' s I told another soldier about it. "Served him right,” said the soldier. "He’d have done the same thin;; to yOU.” Those were splendid words for me. I had slouched along the trench before I met him. After that I held up my head. , PRIDE AND REMORSE.

But the two feelings—the pride and tlie rcraorsa —fought in my mind. At lust I told an old Legion soldier. "My boy,” he said. "It-s war. Could you have refused to shoot under the eyes of the lieutenant? War is killing, and that’s all there is to it. Suppose every soldier in the French line wore to obey his own instincts about killing. None of the enemy would die. The French have brought you here to kill, and you must kill whatever you can.” Technically, I had done wrong, because all war is terribly wrong. I sat behind a machine-gun one day soonafter that and killed eleven German who had built a barricade in some near-by trees. They were shooting at us, and I felt much better about killing them than I did about killing the single German. And then later again on the bicycle seat of a machine-gun, and, at the rate of 700 shots a minute, I fired at advancing columns of Germans in dost* formation and watched them drop and squirm. They were coming to kill us if they could. It was only fair t« kill them under the rules of the war game. A terrific sense of power filled me; the rattle of that gun was sweeter and grander to me than the Hallcujah Chorus. I knew what it meant to be drunk with killing. Other machine-guns were going, too; but I felt at the time as if mine were the only one. The Germans turned and ran, their formation smashed, their dead and wounded strewing the hillside. But that night, after I had crawled into my mudhole hut to sleep, I didn’t dare to think of all the women and children whose hearts had been hit by that machine-gun fire. MERE BRUTAL KILLING. I had joined the French Foreign Legion expecting to be made a member of the flying corps. Instead, I had found my way to the trenches, where killing was our only job—brutal out .and out killing, with little science and less chivalry. .. ,