UTTER UNSCRUPULOUSNESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 83, 3 September 1914, Page 4

UTTER UNSCRUPULOUSNESS.

When those who judged Germany by her displays of utter nnscrupulousness ill the past warned their British fellowcountrymen of the character of the great military and na"val Power which civilisation was permitting to grow in its midst, they were denounced by wellmeaning people who foolishly imagined that Germany had the same code as other civilised states (remarks , the Auckland Herald). During the past month it has been abundantly proved that Germany has no honor and no code. There is something pitiable in the mental attitude of the German Chancellor who could not understand why the British Ambassador thought it natural Mat the British Government should dare to light for only a "scrap of paper." To attack a weak neutral without the slightest provocation, and for no other reason than that it was convenient to traverse this neutral territory, seemed the most ordinary thing to this educated German statesman and has apparently seemed quite natural to the Germans themselves; that Prussia itself had guaranteed Belgian neutrality counted with them' so little that they could not possibly understand why a similar jjuiu'autee should count with Britain at all. To set mines adrift at sea, in erefiance of their agreements, was natural to this perverted Gcnnan mind the moment his ships were swept from the seas; no matter how many neutrals suffered he was content if lie could injure his enemy. To drop bombs 011 an invested city, fire 011 the Bed Crops, to use the Red Cross as cover, were but further steps in the swift descent of the German army to the pit of dishonor. To terrorise the Belgian, to avoid the. necessity for guarding transport lines, the German authorities considered it losirable to commit some moiwtvous wets

of blood-curdling brutality; the res.ut we hare in the destruction of Louvain. The Kaiser and his Ministers, the commanders and the army, the nation and the individuals that can do these things —against their written agreements, the laws of nations, and the dictates of humanity—are no more fit to have power than a criminal lunatic is to have a deadly weapon.