NO SENSE OF HONOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1915, Page 10

NO SENSE OF HONOR.

PROFESSOR MORGAN'S STRONG SAYINGS. London, .Not. 5. ► Professor J. H. Morgan, a great authority on international law, makes these remarkable statements in the Graphic: "I attach little importance to the tbsence or presence of formal inquiries i'i the ease of German military proceedings. I long ago came to tile contlusion, in the course of lriy official inquiries on behalf of His Majesty's Govw/nment, that the German outrages were part of one vast premeditation, and I have little doubt that Miss Cavell's fate was a foregone conclusion from the moment of her arrest. "The German Staff has always treated the laws of war as 'laws' of' very imperfect obligation, to be violated at will. The German staff officers who levy predatory fines under the pompous pretext of 'requisitions' are no better and no worse than the ordinary German requisitioning officer who does lip-service to the Hague Convention by giving a receipt and then adds a forged or illegible signature. Among themselves they do not pretend that their oflicia! signatures are worth anything at all. 'Eine Quitfziag die Bicherlich gar niehts wert ist,' Fwrites a German officer of one of his jpwn requisition-forms ('a receipt which iis, of course, quite illusory'). Their brutality is not more revolting than i'heir cynicism. "It is this tremendous fact—the fact, that, as one of the our most distinguished Ambassadors and one of our highest Staff Officers both testified to mo in almost the same words, each speaking from;profound experience, 'The Germans have 110 .sense of honor'—which make* any words of criticism, any thoughts of redress, any plans for the re-establish-ment of international law, idle and impotent. "Although I have some claims to write ay), jurist, I see absolutely no hope of a re-establisliment of a comity of European nations. I can see no way out of the present travail except an armed truce with the permanent elimination of Germany from the counsels of Europe as its basis. "This is not the time to develop that theme; enough if I say to the idealogues who arc already talking of more Hague | Conventions and a new Federal Court that in this age uf iron there is no room for such academic conceptions. There can be 110 hopf for Europe except in ' grinding Germany to powder, ' even though the ta/ik ;takes ten years. "The diaries of the German soldiers in the ranks—and I have seen hundreds of them in the 'Direction du Contentienx' of the French Ministry of War— ] almost uniformly betray a common sentiment of lust, rapine, and ferocious ! credulity. Nothing is more instructive . than to observe how each lays the blame for the worst outrages upon other units, ' while incidentally admitting those of ' his own."