German offensive

“ A man may, to his own entire satisfaction, come to the conclusion that given the Spring and sufficient munitions that the German resistance will crumble. The [Pg 232] German resistance will never crumble; it will fight as fine a defensive campaign as it has fought a series of offensive campaigns. To under-rate an enemy is to undermine your own chances of victory. ”

“ The French General Staff consider a German offensive possible—even probable—in the near future. The Germans are certainly making new formations; the 38th Corps has been identified in Bavaria.
"3. Our front must therefore be made absolutely secure. If broken, for example, about Roye and Montdidier, the consequences for the Allies would be of the most serious description.
"4. In addition to (3) we must place ourselves in the position of being able to assume the offensive. ”

“ Yet it has not found them irresolute or without strength to protect their homes. As we write, they are fighting the Turk, and may success follow their efforts!
Then let us turn to the active centre of the world-wide contest—to France. We have already set down the outline of the German offensive which [Pg 225] commenced on 21st March, 1918, when Bill and Larry and Jim and Nobby and their comrades were engulfed. We can conveniently, then, follow this offensive to its end, and, advancing the story a stage or two, describe events that followed. ”

“ Extract from the Diary of a German Soldier forwarded by the Extraordinary Commission of Enquiry instituted by the Russian Government.
“When the offensive becomes difficult we gather together the Russian prisoners and hunt them before us towards their compatriots, while we attack the latter at the same time. ”

“ A moment later, all helmets, German and French alike, disappeared behind the trenches. Silence rested on No Man's Land, and events went on as before. But for France the world will never be the same again. German crimes have lighted a flame of sacred anger that will never burn out until German cruelty has been utterly consumed. That is why the fire sparkles in the eyes of the Allied soldiers whenever you suggest peace by negotiation, or a peace without victory. ”

“ The peril to the Allies is the greater because of the vicious methods used by Germany. All military experts know that wars are fought incidentally with guns at the trenches, but in reality with granaries at the rear. Better a million well-fed men with naked fists than two million of armed men who are starving, for the starving men will soon be too weak to lift the guns and the well-fed men will grasp the weapons. ”

“ In the nature of the case, one brigand with his revolver is equal to a hundred business men and manufacturers in a railroad car. In the nature of the case also, Germany, with her military preparedness, should have been equal to a score of countries like Belgium and France and Great Britain and the United States—industrious, hard-working, but unmilitary, peacefully disposed. The deadly virus of avarice and militarism has burned like a fever in Germany's soul, even as avarice burned in the soul of Judas Iscariot, and made him a traitor that crucified not Belgium, but Jesus upon the cross. ”

“ Every proclamation of an aim that repulses those who are of the most use for us in the Eastern area today, which makes them resent the German leadership, is, from a soldier's point of view, a mistake which has to be continually rectified by the commitment of German blood. ”

“ But must we not, we whose throat the enemy is seeking to cut, we whose defeat by hunger and by lack of war material nearly every one would witness complacently as an unavoidable fate, must we not defend ourselves from this dreadful danger, which still threatens us, with all our might and with all the means that the German spirit can invent and which the honor of the German people recognizes as legitimate weapons? ”

“ The Entente, therefore, considered the preliminary condition of any peace, or even of a discussion of terms, to be the certainty of the abolition of German militarism. I replied that nobody wished for more war, and that I agreed with the Entente that a guarantee in that connection must be secured, but that a one-sided disarmament and disbanding of men by Austria-Hungary and Germany was an impossibility. It might be imagined what it would be like if one fine day an army, far advanced in the enemy country, full of confidence and hope and certain of victory, had to lay down arms and disappear. ”

“ Beaten back by the Allied forces, which gathered strength and inspiration from the irresistible American troops, the German army weakened all along the line from Holland to the Swiss border. The press of power exerted against the German strongholds on every side was felt within the domains and produced internal strife and dissension which undermined and weakened the military organization. ”

“ Germany certainly has not the right to speak of a war of defense, but France and England have little more justification. They too, are protecting, not their national, but their world-political existence, their old imperialistic possessions, from the attacks of the German upstart. ”

“ The fact that Germany began the slaughter of babies and women in defiance of the rules of war, and has kept it up in frequent raids by warships, Zeppelins, and aeroplanes, whereas the Allies have very seldom attacked open towns, and then only as occasional reprisals following peculiarly barbarous German attacks, has won for Germany the condemnation, and for the Allies the commendation of the civilised world. ”

“ The Germans, in the mass, are regarded as having been dehumanised and transformed into a process of ruthless destruction. In any case, they are the enemy. As such, there is a satisfaction—nay, a positive delight—in sweeping them out of existence. That is war. But the rage for killing them is impersonal. Against the German soldier individually it may be said that, on the whole, there is no rancour. ”

“ It is always dangerous to underrate the enemy, truth is, that the Germans have won a great victory, and that it will be a heavy task to defeat them. How, then, is that defeat to be accomplished?
The first phase of the German defeat would be accomplished, when they will have to retire from the occupied territories; after that the second phase would follow, the invasion of the Allies into Germany, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria. If the first task is difficult the second will be even more so. Especially the Germans will fight very desperately to prevent the occupation of their territory. ”

“ No, they proceeded to prosecute the war to the utmost and tried to drive the invader off the soil of France. And even if in this war a succession of defeats should overthrow the German Kaiser and his Government, do you think the Germans would submit forthwith, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Allies? No, they will fight to the last man, woman and child to prevent the Rhine being crossed. So we should realise that, for our own safety's sake, we must reduce the German military forces to a position of helplessness—in fact, utterly destroy them, if we are to have any settlement. ”

“ I reply—and my words are borne out by official evidence published in my recent book "German Atrocities"—that the most shameful and brutal deeds of the German Army, which, be it remembered, is the German people in arms, are cordially approved by the mass of that degenerate nation. ”

“ From the Allied view-point, the very thought of Germany's asking other nations to produce property while once in a generation, with her standing army, she goes forth to pillage and loot the wealth that industrious French or Belgians have created, is for us a monstrous thought. From the German view-point, however, atrocities represent [23] military efficiency. Just as the German War Staff perfected in advance rifles and cannon as legitimate warfare, so they prepared in advance certain outrages from which they expected the greatest possible results, in terms of conquered territory. ”

“ The same methods may be used against them if they are attacked by Germany or by some other nation which sees that Germany has used them with impunity. If the public opinion of the world does not condemn these methods, war will become an even greater curse than it has been heretofore. ”

“ Take my word for it: the solution of Germany's deliverance is not to be found in the simple antidote of political assassination, for only men bound up in the success of the German arms, or their terrorized creatures of our own sex, are near enough to throw the bomb. ”

“ Therefore, German Army, German Homeland, if one of these thrown-out pieces of poison in the form of leaflet or rumour comes before your eyes and ears, remember that its originates with the enemy. Remember nothing comes from the enemy which is not harmful to Germany. Every one must be mindful of this, whatever his position or party. If you meet anyone whose name and origin indeed are German, but who by nature stands in the enemy's camp, keep him at a distance, despise him, put him publicly in the pillory in order that every other true German may despise him. ”

“ Until this date the documents in our possession disclose preparations for war against Poland, England, and France purporting at least to be defensive measures to ward off attacks which might result from the intervention of those powers in the preparatory aggression of Germany in Central Europe. Hitherto aggressive war against Poland, England, and France has been contemplated only as a distant objective. Now, for the first time, we find a war of conquest by Germany against France and England openly recognized as the future aim, at least of the German Navy. ”

“ In the greater part of the places where we carried on our inquiry we came to the conclusion that the German Army constantly professes the most complete contempt for human life, that its soldiers, and even its officers, do not hesitate to finish off the wounded, that they kill without pity the inoffensive inhabitants of the territories which they have invaded, and they do not spare in their murderous rage women, old men, or children. ”

“ And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of making peace and that the Allies refuse. ”

“ We are concerned more with certain coincidental happenings, like that of Agadir and our own great strike, and certain other happenings which point to the same conclusion—that Germany has tried, by means of industrial unrest, disaffection, and other means, to weaken the hands of potential enemies in the hours when strength was most needed. ”

“ Unreasoning docility is held by some to be a civic virtue: that was the German doctrine and the basis of their Military System, which, though at its inception a defensive system, became an instrument of conquest, pride and insolence, a menace to the world. The form of war which Germany initiated and perfected has degraded war itself, it has organized slaughter with mechanical devices, has made tanks of more account than brains, and has crowned the triumph of matter over mind. ”

“ The Germans have broken all laws, human and divine, and not even the ancient freemasonry of arms, whose honourable traditions are almost as old as war itself, has restrained them in their brutal and licentious fury. It is useless to attempt to discriminate between the people and their rulers ”

“ Over the German trenches they plowed their path, as though there was nothing in the way to bar their progress. Walls, earth, and human bodies were crushed beneath them, and they passed on as though nothing had happened. In vain the Germans charged straight up to their sides. There was nothing they could do when they reached the monsters, except to fire ineffectual rifle shots in an effort to penetrate the apertures and reach the gunners, or to hurl hand grenades, which had no effect.
Each time the enemy charged it was never to return. ”

“ For the whole world stands at a turning-point of its history, and one or other of two opposite principles, the rule of the soldier or the rule of the citizen, must now prevail. In this sense we fight for the masses of the German people, as some day they will understand, to free them from that formidable military caste which has used and abused them, spending their bodies in an unjust war and poisoning their minds by every device which could inflame them against those who wish nothing save to live at peace with them. ”

“ For their part, they expressly and solemnly protest against a population which has, with the most despicable means, waged a dishonourable war against the German soldiers, and still more against the Government which, in complete perversion of their duties, has given rein to the senseless passions of the population, and even now does not scruple to free itself from its own heavy guilt by mendacious libels against the German Army. ”

“ Take no notice of a German soldier, and do not molest or interfere with him, especially when he is carrying out the orders of his superiors, and he will be as harmless as a child, and as easily pleased. But if, on the other hand, you do meddle with him, and stir up his rage on any pretext, his revenge will be no less prompt than terrible. In the battlefield, when once he is excited, he will use his bayonet and musket as a Zulu his assegai, or an Indian his tomahawk. ”

“ In every war of invasion there is bound to occur a certain amount of plunder and rapine. The German system of reprisal is relentless; but the German private as an individual is no more barbaric than his brother in the French, the British, or the Belgian trenches. ”