The neutral nations and some of the belligerent nations feel another
strong objection to the present German way of conducting war on land and
sea, namely that it brutalizes the soldier and the sailor to an
unprecedented degree. English French, and Russian soldiers on the one
side can contend with German, Austrian and Turkish soldiers on the other
with the utmost fierceness from trenches or in the open, use new and old
weapons of destruction, and kill and wound each other with equal ardor
and resolution, and yet not be brutalized or degraded in their moral
nature, if they fight from love of country or with self-sacrificing
loyalty to its spiritual ideals; but neither soldiers nor sailors can
attack defenseless noncombatants, systematically destroy towns and
villages, and put to death captured men, women, and children without
falling in their moral nature before the brutes. That he obeyed orders
will not save from moral ruin the soldier or sailor who does such deeds.
He should have refused to obey such orders and taken the consequences.
This is true even of the privates, but more emphatically of the
officers.
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