EVIL SHEPHERDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 February 1916, Page 7

EVIL SHEPHERDS.

THOSE WHO LET LOOSE THIS WAR. "HISTORY WILL DO JUSTICE TO THE SLAYERS OP THE PEOPLE. Ramain Rolland, the great French novelist, has just been awarded the Aobel Prize for Literature. This remarkable writer has recently published an article in the Journal *de Geneve (translated by the Cambridge Magazine), in which he gives some striking glimpses of the mentality of men lighting in the German trenches. And his reason for doing so is very powerfully stated in these words:— WHY PUBLISH THESE? "'Why publish these things?' I shall be asked by some in France. What good it is, when we arc launched on a, war, to attach pity to the enemy at the risk of blunting the ardour of the fighters? "I will answer, 'Because it is the truth; and because it is the truth which justifies our judgment and the judgment of the world against 'the rulers of Germany and against their policy. What their armies have done we know; but that they could have done it when they contained elements such as those shown by the confessions we have just heard, is a circumstance that still further incriminates their masters. From the depths of the battlefield these voices of a sacrificed minority arise as a condemnation crying vengeance on the oppressors.' TO KILL OHartS SOUL. " "To the accusations levelled against the predatory empires and their inhuman pride in the name of violated law and of outraged humanity by the victimised peoples, and by the !fighting men, is added a cry of grief from these noble squls amongst their own people, who have been led out and forced to murder and to madness by those evil shepherds who have let loose this war.

"To sacrifice the body is not the worst of sufferings; but to sacrifice, to deny to kill one's soul as well . . . ! You who at least die for a just cause, who are overflowing with zeal and faith, fall as it were a ripe fruit; how happy is your fate as compared with this torture!

"But we will act so that those sufferings may not be wasted. Let the conscience 'of humanity hear and receive their complaint! It will resound in the future above the glory of the battlefield; and, whether or not they would have it so, it must be recorded in the pages of history. History will do justice to the slayers of the people. And the people will learn to deliver themselves from their slayers." Here are some of the original documents Romain Rolland quotes to prove his points. They show vividly that even to the German officers war is a terrible thing. HORRORS OF WAR. "In the Friedens-AVarte, edited at Berlin by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, may be found an 'Appeal to the German people,' written at the end of October by Baron Marschell von Biberstein, Landrat of Prussia, captain in the first infantry regiment reserve. This article was written in a trench north of Avra, where Biberstein was killed. He fitpresses his unconcealed horror at the war, and his desire that it should be the last:—

"'This is the conviction reached by those at the front who have witnessed the unspeakable sufferings of a modem war.' With a candour even more meritorious Biberstein determines to begin with an admisson and a mea culpa for the sins of Germany.

" 'War has - opened one's eyes.' he writes, 'to our terrible unbeliebtheit (i.e., faculty for not being loved). Everything has a cause; we must have caused this hate; we have even in some degrees justified it. . , Let u s hope that it will not be the least gain of this war that Germany will turn her eye. inwards, will seek to recognise her faults and to correct them.' Unfortunately, even this article is spoilt by the German pride which, desiring the peace of the world, aims at forcing it upon the world.

"BEFORE THE DECISION." "Tint, here, from another office:, (lie poet Frit,'/ von Unnih, first lieutenant of thp uhlans on the western front, are some dramatic scenes in verse and prose, which recently appeared under the 'title, 'Vor der Entsehcidunp' (before the Decision). Tli is is a dramatic popm in which the author has recorded his own impressions and his mora! transformation. The hero, who, like himself, is an officer of the uhjnns, passes through different centres of the war and remains everywhere a foreigner, a soul detnehefl from murderous passions, who sees th? horrid reality, and who suffers to the point of agony. 'The two scenes reproduced by the Neiie Zurcher Zeitung are laid in a 'muddy, blood-stained trench where some German soldiers, like beasts in a slaughter-house, are dying or are nearing death with bitter words, some officer* are making themselves drunk with champagne round a heavy gun, laughing and stagscring until they full, overcome with fatigue and slumber. From the first scene T take these terrible words, spoken by one of those who are wailing in the trench under grape-shot fire. 'Dricssigjahriger (a man of thirty years old): —"In the country thev are laughinc; thev celebrate each victory. They kill us iike cattle in the slaughter-house, and they say, 'This is war'. When this is over 'they will act spitefullv; they will fete us for three years. But the first cripple will not have grown grey before thev are already laughing at his white hair.'

A UHLAN'S PRAYER. ■"And the uhlan, seized with horror in the midst, of the massacre, falls on his knees and prays: "Thou Who pivest life, Thou Who ta'kest it, how shall one recognise Thee? In these trenches, strewn with mutilated hodies, I do not find Thee. The lacerating cry of these thousands, which is stifled by the. terrible constraint of death, does it not reach Thee, or is it lost in the frozen space. For whom are the splendour of Thy suns? Oh, for whom, my God, I ask Thee in the name of all those whose mouths are closed by courage aid by fear before the horror of Thy dajftness: What warmth have I in myself/ What truth enlightens me? Can Jmis massacre be Thy will? \J it Thy "(He loses consciousness and falls). i THE FLOWER OF/MANHOOD. "Marked by a grtef less lyrical, less excited, and in a,' stylo more simple, more reflectwie and nearer to us, the series of letters from the front by Dr. Albert Klein, professor at Oberrealschule, in Giessen, and lieutenant in the Reserve, who was killed in Champagne.

"The first describes with rare frankness the moral condition of the German

"'Who amongst us is brave, and regardless of death? We all realise our position too well; we are in the flower of manhood, of physical and spiritual strength; and as none would dia> willingly none are brave (Tapfer) in the usual sense of the word; or at any rate such bravery is exceedingly rare. It is precisely because bravery is so rare in life that we make so much of religion, of poetry, of thought, beginning early in the school, and hymning death for one's country as the highest lot of man; until it attains its height in the false heroism that rings so noisily in our newspapers and discussions, and is so cheap—and also in the true heroism of a small number who expose themselves and carry others with thein. . . . We do our duty, we do what we ought to do, but these are passive virtues. . . •„■ " 'When we read in the papers, in the scribblings of those who suffer from an evil conscience because they are left behind in safety, when I read those boastful outbursts which make a hero of every soldier, it makes me feel sick. Heroism is a rare plant, and does not flourish in a citizen army (Volksheere). In order to preserve it a man must have respect for and even more fear of his superiors than of the enemy; and these superiors must have a conscience, must do their duty well, must know their business, must be swift in action, and must be in control of their nerves. When we read these eulogies on ourselves, written by those who are left behind, we blush. Thank heaven! The robust shame of earlier days is not dead amongst us. . . ■, , "IF I RETURN." "My friends, men out here do not speak so calmly of fleath, of sacrifice or of victory as do those who are left beTiind, and who ring their bells, deliver their patriotic speeches, and rant in the papers. Here a man adapts himself as best he can to the bitter necessity of suffering, and death, if so it must be; but he knows and sees what noble sacrifices, what countless 1 sacrifices, have already been offered. He sees that there has already long been enough destruction on our side and on the other. It is precisely when one is face to face with suffering, a-s I am, that a link is forged which uniteß me with those in the enemy camp (which unites you with them, too—do you not feel it?'). " 'lf I return, of which I have begun to despair, my dearest task will be to devote myself to the study of the thought of those who have been our enemies. I would reconstruct my existence on a broader foundation. . . And I believe that after this war it will be less difficult than after any other to be human.'

"The second fragment is a moving account of a meeting with a French prisoner:—

"'Yesterday I was strangely moved. I chanced to see a transport of prisoners, and I chatted with one of them—a Professor of Philogy at the college of F , a man most frank, most intelligent, and .with a fine soldierly bearing like all his companions, although they had just passed through a terrible experience—the fire of mitrailleuse. To me it was * proof of the absurdity of the war.

THE TWO PHILOLOGISTS. «T'ir,ijj P( i to be a friend of these men so near 'o m e by education, by their maimer o.' lio, by their thought and by their interests, " ,7 e began to talk about one of Rousseau's works, and to argue like old philoligista. TT "w alike we were; and how false are those tale 9 of French troops broken v id exhausted —as false as those which the' French papers publish about us! My French friend' showed evidence of much reflection in the comprehension and admiration of German thought. To think that we were meant to be friends and that we imi3t yet be forced apart! I was quite overcome. I sat down prostrated. I meditated, and no sophism could deceive me longer. Oh, for any end whatever to this war, which for'six months has engulfed men, fortune, and happiness. This feeling is the same both amongst us and our enemies. Always the same picture. We do the same things, wc suffer the same agonies, we are made of the same stuff—and it is precisely for this reason that we are such bitter foes."