LAND AND WATER 
January 13, 1916. 
by a certain section among us, namely : Are we 
justilied in weakening in our resolution, surfeited 
with horror and tired of a iob that is tougher than 
it seemed ? 
Could England, refusing the challenge 
have ever held up her head again among the 
nations ? That may seem an unimportant thing 
to the sublimely detached. Is it so unimportant 
to men of llesh and blood by whom the round world 
is peopled ? Is the betrayal of nations a lesser 
crime than the betrayal of friends ? We have 
seized or had thrust upon us, it does not matter 
which for the moment, responsibilities of over- 
lordship. Is the German record such as to suggest 
she would make a better guide for subject races 
than ourselves ? We remember Denshawi and 
most of us are ashamed of it. Does it go near 
the immeasurable infamy of the starvation of the 
rebellious Herreroi? ? 
If Germany, the ringcd-in one, had indeed no 
other purpose but to break the ring, if her own 
conscience did in fact seem clear to her in shoulder- 
ing the immense responsibility of war, could not 
a campaign, prepared as it unquestionably was, re- 
sourceful as it proved itself , if waged, not without 
horror and destruction, for that indeed is impossible, 
but with an honourable clemency, have gone far 
to prove the reality of her innocence and the 
greatness of her spirit ? If it had been waged as, 
for instance, Russia and Japan waged their bitter, 
but (on the testimony of our military attaches) 
essentially chivalrous war ? Could anything worse 
have been done than what in fact has been done 
by her to the people and places in her power ? 
Has anything worse ever been practised on the 
weak since Alva's infamies in the Low Countries ? 
Could any charges to prove the essential wrong- 
ness of her aims have been devised by calumny 
more damning than afe written in the authentic 
liistory of these scxenteen months ? 
These things should not be forgotten. And it 
is by no means so easy to remember — with con- 
viction. The human mind is a strangely con- 
stituted thing. All our values alter as the tragedy 
of the war drags on. We are surfeited with 
horrors on paper — and paper horrors have a way of 
losing weight by repetition. But we are sheltered 
from actual contact with them and that makes 
possible the detachment of our philosophers. 
These things should not be forgotten. Not 
that hate may be nourished, which leads to excess 
and is a futile and degrading passion, but to keep 
alive that anger in us which is a righteous thing. 
After all there is a right and a tvrong in the matter. 
Put aside, for sake of argument, every individual 
outrag(! of lust or blood ; admit the doul)tful plea 
that all the vandalism, asat Louvain and Kheinis, 
was dictated by real military necessity ; distrust 
all testimony even at first hand of terrified 
folk and take only the accredited evidence 
substantiated by neutrals or by the admissions 
and justifications of the enemy. Yet you must 
remember the machine-gun massacres of civilians 
at Dinant and Tamines, 400 at Tamines, 
700 at Dinant ; the lesser but still considerable 
slaughter at Aerschot and Termonde, all carried 
out under disciplined orders. Put aside the 
repeated charges of the use of civilian screens, 
because it is not always easy in the confusion of 
battle to distinguish between fugitives flying and 
captives deliberaU*ly driven. Biit credit the boast 
of a Bavarian lieutenant in a Munich Newspaper 
that he had " the excellent idea " of seating 
three civilians in chairs in the middle of a street. 
" The fire directed at our men diminished and 
my men were the masters of the principal street. 
... As I learned later the Bavarian Reserve 
Regiment . . . made a similar experiment. 
Four civilians whom they also placed in chairs 
in the middle of the street, wore killed by French 
bullets. I saw them myself King in the middle 
of the street near the hospital." Is it likely that 
all the other charges as to the use of human 
screens are false ? 
Receive with great reserve the stories of 
mutilations, but give credit to the American 
journalist PowixL who said in an interview with 
GiiNEKAL VON BoLiiN, " I mvself have seen the 
mutilated bodies. . . . "How about the 
women I saw with their hands and their feet cut 
off ? How about the little girl two years old, 
shot in her mother's arms ? How about the old 
man hung from the rafters of his house and roasted 
to death by a bonfire built under him ? " Is it 
really well to forget or to forgive such things ? 
Or the gas at the second battle of Ypres, 
causing such agonies that doctors and nurses 
accustomed to every sort of horror could not do 
their work for tears ; or the liquid fire at Hooge ? 
Or Falaba, Amiral Ganteaume, Lusitania, 
Arabic, A ncona, Persia, and the attempted hospital 
ship Asturias ? Or the shelling of the defenceless 
E 13 in Danish territorial waters, its crew ranged 
on Its deck with folded arms ? We have the 
Baralong case against us, but the submarine crew 
were fresh from their murders of the Arabic. 
Witli what face could they claim, even if — it is 
driving h'uman nature hard — we should have 
given ([uarter ? 
IJo our, detached ones tell us that there is 
no difference between replying in kind to out- 
rages and initiating them ? Is a duellist fighting 
with swords still to use his sword only if his 
adversary draws a pistol on him ? Does not the 
breach of honour in the one make the other's 
similar action no least breach of honour at all ? 
These things would not be worth the saying 
were it not that our philosophers do in fact put 
forward these pallid suggestions. They are wont 
now to speak as if it were an academic point to 
demand from the enemy recognition of defeat. 
The. recognition of the full defeat of their 
purpose by the German leaders is worth any sacri- 
fice we can make. We write these words with the 
fullest recognition of the solemn responsibiUty 
which rests upon non-combatant penmen. To 
demand less is to betray our belief in human i"ight, 
to deny our hope of a cleaner world. It is to 
make vain tlic sacrifices of oiu" splendid dead — 
an intolerable apostasy. What each man and 
woman of us needs is to make or renew a sacred 
decision from the standpoint of there being in 
human affairs judge by human standards a right 
and a wrong. Substantially we stand for that 
right. Our judged who with an elaborate assump- 
tion of philosophic calm escapes the agony of 
decision and ridesoff on phrases about the common 
weakness of plaintiff and defendant is simply an 
unjust judge. Tlie issue is as clear as eny that 
has ever been stated in a human quarrel, and de- 
mands a definite judgment. That judgment needs 
adequate sanction. That sanction is — victory. 
