When one writes with a hot heart upon events which are still recent one
is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one should check
one's self by the reflection as to how this may appear ten years hence,
and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may prove themselves
to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition of war. But a time
has now come when in cold blood, with every possible restraint, one is
justified in saying that since the most barbarous campaigns of Alva in
the Lowlands, or the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, there has been
no such deliberate policy of murder as has been adopted in this struggle
by the German forces. This is the more terrible since these forces are
not, like those of Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent and
mercenary soldiers, but they are the nation itself, and their deeds are
condoned or even applauded by the entire national press. It is not on
the chiefs of the army that the whole guilt of this terrible crime must
rest, but it is upon the whole German Nation, which for generations to
come must stand condemned before the civilized world for this reversion
to those barbarous practices from which Christianity, civilization, and
chivalry had gradually rescued the human race.
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