PRUSSIA'S TERRIBLE RECORD OF CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 July 1916, Page 10

PRUSSIA'S TERRIBLE RECORD OF CRIME.

TWO HOOKS OF THE WEEK AM) in Kill APPAi.UNH CONTEXTS. (liy William Purvis in the London < In-oiiiclc). Il I had my way every conscientious objector to (lie military service of the country thai bore and raised and feeds and clothes and protects him should bo umipclled to read right through (without, stopping a volume called "Herman Atrocities: An Official Investigation,'' by ■l. .11: Morgan, late Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force I Fislior I'nwin. Is net). When the conscientious objector had finished the resultant vomit. I would treat him to an equally sustaining reading of "Degenerate Hermany," by Henry do llalsalle (Werner Laurie, 2s lid). And. so aooii as he had recovered from bis further naeusea, I would ask the conscientious objector whether he still conscientiously objected: and, if he "did, 1 would put him ouictly but ipiickly. and more in sorrow than'in anger, through the soothing processes of the lethal cfiitmbrr. . Because any man who'thinks il is more :!e-' : rable to live peacefully in the same W>rld as the honors depicted in these, two bonks—not imaginary horrors, but horrors proved ly sworn testimouv and the cold facts of Herman, British and French ollicial documents—than to go . ? nd %ht against them must obviously be insane and incurably so. These books, indeed, would turn' the stomach of a conger eel: they must find the soul or the pluck even of a Deniowatie Controller, if he has, one. THE WHITE NIHHEHS OF EITItOPE. When this iva' began there were others besides the Spiritual Homers who found it very dillicult to believe the tales of atrocities that readied us from more or less credible sources oil the Continent. I'lauklv I was one of the sceptics myself. T could not imagine anv of tile Hermans kmnwi to me as murderers of bahios. raper- of young girls, shooters ot wounded soldiers, and I judged the mass by the sample. Whether one ought to have done <o is now he»ide tin' point; wlial is more pertinent is this—tlntt there is now no doubt whatever that the Hermans in Belgin m and Poland and the North of I'ranee, as well as out on the high seas, have been cpiilty of nameless brutalities. Some of these horrible doings were the outcome of callous orders from above; others arose spontaneously from the men ■ below. In how far they'are a manifestation of incorrigible racial barbarism must be a matter of speculation; but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Herman answers to the title recently bestowed upon him of "the white nigger of Europe," the savage who, being once a savage, must remain always a savage.. A hundred years ago we liad British soldiers, then lighting side by side with the Hermans, writing home that the disgusting cruelties of the Prussians revolted the more kindly English. In IK7O-71 the Hermans behaved abominably to the French women upon whom they were billeted during the period set for the payment of the indemnity. We ought to have expected that the Herman would behave true to type in this war; but somehow, his assumption of the, cloak of political idealist to cover the character of international brigand misled us. A Cl/UIOrS FACT. It may have struck us as curious that flic names ot most of tin* leading specialists on the less reputable forms of disease and misdoings were blatantly Herman: but the significance of this and cognate circumstances had not come home to us. These books of Professor Morgan and Mr. Henry dc Halsallc focus the shocking truth; and one's brain reels under the impact. This war is the last wild lling of the Herman madman: that is all. Germany is rotten, phvsically. mentally, and morally. The Kultur which she would soil the whole world with if we would let her is not that "nobler consciousness," that "moral exaltation," of which the Emperor William brags, but a mass of secret di-casc, and dirty literature, and filthy unnatural sin. All over Europe men of the world talk of a certain unwholesome perversion as *-|e vice Allemand." Perhaps the virtuous leaders of English Pacifism can tell us wlivV Ft might interest their Pleasant Sundav Afternoon audiences to hear. Of course. 1 do not give here in this paper. liberal though the editorial rule may be in all matters of public moment, a tithe of the details vouched for, bv witnes-cs in Professor Morgan's hoo4 or the statistical data contained in Mr. Halsalle's Those who read the Brvce report will .know how nnstv the Herman, soldier can be when he tries, or rrrtbrr when he follows bis natural bent. Professor Morgan shows us still more cleariv. But there is one very important difference between the Bryee and the Morgan conclusions, Professor Bryee is, or was once, just the smallest bit of Spiritual Homer: and be tried to make out a ease for excluding the Herman people from the condemnation that must fall ! upon the Herman Uovormnent and the Cermnn army. The Herman peasants, . lie said, lie knew from travelling among them, and they were this, that and the , other. Professor 'Morgan shows us that | such a plea is all nonsense. It is not very long since the Herman peasant was a crude serf, crawling about his native , woods and swamps. He has never been • ci'.'lised (Mr. Halsallc tries to prove ' scientifically that he never can be) any | more than his kings and rulers have been. "BUXPIXH AN'n SEAIiIXH INFAMIES." What can we say of soldiers who tie i ii]) a priest and "use him as a lavatory Mid a latrine until he is covered with filth"/; who smear the face of a young girl jn.-t reaching womanhood with her own blood ami send her mad; who "peg out" a virgin in the shape of a crucifix! . before ruining her; who violate a .Sister ■ ot Mercy; who ravish children in the presence of their mothers; who take lassies ' in their teens, strip them and make them the centre of a drunken orgy and , outrage them with the lust of half a company of soldiers; who criminally asfault wives with child iu the presence of their little babies, whilst their husbands r.re held down at bayonet point? These are only some of the blinding and scaring infamies of which we read in Professor Morgan's volume, and whose truth he has jirohcd to the bottom. The young Englishman who is not moved to vengeance by their recital is a gutless worm, onlv fit for the dunghill—-or for the inner life of Berlin. Xow hire is an interesting point. In the course of his hook, which contains fifty-six newly reported cases of breach of the laws of war by the Hermans—testimony first hand from British s.oidifijt- I'rptWor Morgan makes some tli&inight very well have

| "If tlio render is astonished, as well lie may lie," says the professor, "at these disgusting stories of rape and sodomy let liini study the statistics of crime in (Jermany during the first decade of this ceni tury issued by the Imperial Government. He will lind in them much to confirm the impression that the whole, German people is infected with some kind of mural distemper. . . . The seduction of a people !>y its rulers is impossible. . . It is not in their ignorance but in their turpitude that t-lie clue of these bar- „ barities is to be found." j a i:<rmx civilisation. Professor Morganjgoes on to discus; ini sensibility to the feelings of others exhif luted by the Prussian, an insensibility only equalled by his eW.reme sensitive- ' ! l( ' ss H" to his own. "This morbid ! insensibility is. ~f course, the secret of - •''ormnn terrorism , U id of the immense i n . i lluencc wliiefi it ha- excrted on the |henry • and practice of war anion? the '.'ernian nation. It explains their singular ingenuity in finding means to an end; I and between ihe German trooper who ' dips a baby's head into scalding water ' in order to j«ol more eoll'ee from its mother and in the commandant who, at I the point ot the bayonet, thrusts a livin« | screen of priests. old men, and women with babies at tlie breast between his own troops and those of the enemy there ! IS a dill'crenee of degree rather than of ' kind." There never was a form of civilisation • so completely rotten as this German Kultnr on the eve of the war. Mr. Halsulle proves this from (iernmn authorities—not s<p>ealing persons of the kind we are so sick of in |],is ooiuitrv. who spend their whole lives in an aimless soiliii" of the national nest, but scientists "and statesmen of eminence, notably Kraft and Bebel. A koltur to be pushed r.iund the world by a mental and physical defective liks the Kaiser, an aged rogue like the Kmperor of Austria, a .lew-Coburg adventurer like Ferdinand of Bulgaria anil a nonentity like the present Sultan of Turkey (with Knvor, the TTebrcw, behind linn), must naturally be suspect in all intelligent neutral countries. lint it ""gilt be worth the while of our Foreign I 'less Bureau to get the more instructive passages of "Degenerate (iei- ' many transited for South American and South kuropran consumption. A lIKADI.V SI'MMAIiY. ' The summary in the last chapter of Mr. Ilalsalle's volume might be done first us a pamphlet. If does not tell the travelled, well-informed man very milch ! that he did not know, but it may open ' the eyes of a few simple people here and 1 there who are not so certain as the 1 Germans are that you spread true civili- 1 sation by increasing tile supply of doubtfii' i«»d abominable diseases, and 1 "mackerel" and homo-sexual degenerates ' and unwholesome books in the ends of the earth. i Here are a tew of the paragraphs of 1 this summary:— I In Germany vice in the shape of ] prostitution has assumed colossal proportions, Professor Moll, of the t'ni- ! versitv of Berlin, estimating the number of prostitutes in the empire at no 1 less than 1 ~->OO,OIIO. Bebel states that (iermany supplies half the prostitutes , ot the world, and his statement still remains unrcfuted. !l Unnatural vice also has assumed the t gravest dimensions. In Berlin alone t: it has been estimated by an authority 11 that there are :iO,OOO persons all'lictcd with the disease, and that 2,000 male j 1 nrcverts are known to the Berlin poliee, who tolerate forty resorts frequented by these individuals. The vice is known to exist in all the large ' towns of Germany, where there are !l clubs and other resorts frequented " solely by perverts. Venereal disease in Germany has risen to colossal figures. In l!)j:i it was publicly announced that in Prussia b alone, for a period of live years, there a had been an annual average of 773,- t 000 cases, Tt has also been publicly n announced in Berlin that III) per cent, h of the male Berliner* have at one time a or another been afflicted with sexual n disease. ~ In various parts of Germany parents t. of the working and peasant class roar t their daughters for the specific purpose ti of prostitution, sending them on the h streets when they are no more than children that they may support their t : parents in idleness. In Berlin pandering is a profession 0 for male and female, and the Herman s capital is the centre of tile White Shu c Tratlic of the world. Pornographic literature of the worst „ kind is siill'ered to be on sale in all the booksellers' windows, and is purchasalile by girls and boys. Apart from pornographic literature, <Jerniany *.• lias a literature of pathological import. 0 A few of these degenerate productions have been briefly reviewt-d in this. bor>k. ISleihtreu, Tnvute. liahr, Conradi, mid Sadicr-Masoeh are, perhaps, the most 1 striking examples of degenerate an- I thorship. : KVK.N TOI.STiiV Won.l) HAVE ]' TURNED. 1 A nice race this to talk about expert ... ing its Kiiltur and making the world fj stronger and more beautiful! w Possibly this article may oH'cud the super-refined taste of a few' of the kind 0 friends who are indulgent enough to read v Illy elfusions week by week. I hope not; „ but one never knows. But it is entirely r necessary that these young men of ours |, w ho have so finely taken up arms merely because they love Kngland should be lol'i something ol the wider import of the tight they arc lighting: that the oilier young men whom nothing apparently can enlighten or inspire should at least be aware of tile sort of raiue they aid by their lethargy and lack of spunk. ' Had Tolstoy been alive to-day and r v read what 1 have read this week he ' would have "taken up the sword of jus- r lice and have done his best to leave the world a little cleaner than he found it. !1 Of that 1 am sure. d *i ou ~mav hear fools say that the liermans are as good as lli'e English, and f that it really does not matter much ivho " wins. .Mr. TTalsalle. i take it, is not an * Englishman; he writes like, a French 1 •lew. Well, he says the Knglish are the T salt of the earth; ami being half Knglish 11 myself. T am happy to agree with liini, 1 We have our plague spots in K'ngland. ' ! admit; our Smart Set and the swine ' on two legs who hung about certain I West End bars, and other phenomena ' wre not without their word of menace. ' lint degeneration only moved on the 1 surface of our Society: it didNiot pierce s very far below. The English stock is < not only the best in the world in its I composition, but it remains the health- 1 iest. the most vigorous, the longest- s lived, the least criminal. :i in loi:! one (i: rnian in every sixteen 1 was a criminal. Burke .-.aid that one 1 could not indict a nation. But (iermany >■ 11a/, indicted her-elf; alike by her own i statistics, her medical and scientific t writers, and her actions/in this war she 1 stands condemned, the Boss K.vporter of f Kultur and the White' Slave and the i 'third Nc.\ More Germans have tpirinitled suicide every year in proiHHioit to j. population than the people of|*l& other t nation. Xow ( iermany lii|t> doraltliti job (