Читать книгу German Atrocities: An Official Investigation - J. H. Morgan - Страница 23

Quite apart from this inductive evidence there is the fact that the German Government is so tainted with the infamy of indisputable mendacity that no sober and impartial man can credit a single word of what it says. It has deliberately forged Belgian documents which have come into its possession in order to make out a case against the Belgian Government;43 it has repeatedly broken faith with the British Government and the Vatican;44 it has abused the Geneva Convention in order to make use of a hospital ship as an instrument of war.45 Berlin itself is one great factory of lies, and its official Press service, to quote the words of our Ambassador, “a vast system of international blackmail.”46 As is the Government, so are the people. Its merchants forge manifests and falsify bills of lading in order to secure the immunity of their property from capture at sea.47 A journal under German control48 has admitted that the stories of mutilation so industriously circulated by the German Government and its agents are entirely the product of hysterical “suggestion.” Often its pretexts are a shameless afterthought. In co-operation with the French authorities I was instrumental in tracking down a now notorious order issued by a German Brigadier-General to butcher all the wounded who fell into German hands. At first its authenticity was denied by the German Government, but, when it was established beyond doubt, they published a statement that a similar order had been issued by one of our own Generals some twelve months ago. The excuse was as belated as it was mendacious, and to this day not the slightest proof has been adduced in support of it.

The German authorities seem to suffer from a malady which can only be described as moral perversion. It is a kind of moral insanity. In defending the sinking of the Lusitania with its freight of innocent women and children the German Government wrote:

“The case of the Lusitania shows with horrible clearness to what jeopardising of human lives the manner of war conducted by our adversaries leads.”49

This affectation of horror at the consequences of its own crimes and the imputation of the guilt of them to others is surely one of the most remarkable revelations of the moral obliquity of the German mind. Yet it by no means stands alone. The Proclamations, issued in Belgium, threaten the inhabitants with fire and sword, the scaffold and the firing-party, for the least infraction of the most trivial regulations, and then conclude with the aspersion that by such infraction they will commit “the horrible crime” of compromising the existence of a whole community and placing it “outside the pale of international law.”50 The man who omits to put his hands up with acrobatic promptitude will “make himself guilty” of the penalty of death. All through the German utterances there runs an infatuated obsession that the Germans enjoy a kind of moral prerogative in virtue of which they are entitled to violate all the laws which they rigidly prescribe for others.51 We have lately had an example of this which is of supreme horror. The Power which has broken all laws, human and divine, sought to dignify its condemnation of Edith Cavell with all the pomp and circumstance of a tribunal of justice. While thousands of ravishers and spoilers go free, one woman, who had spent her life in ministries to such as were sick and afflicted, was handed over to the executioner. Truly, there has been no such trial in history since Barabbas was released and Christ led forth to the hill of Calvary.