Show GERMAN NOT NEW every village they have passed through has been the victim of what is only organized pillage every city has been practically racked ransacked on system its citizens plundered its civil officials terrorized imprisoned outraged or kill killed ed the civil populations ions have been contrary to the usage of modern warfare forced to serve the invading armies brutally put to death reduced to wholesale starvation and desolation vast tracts of the richest and most industrious districts of europe have been deliberately stripped and plunged into famine solely in order that the invaders might make war cheaply irregular troops contrary to all the practice of war have been systematically mati cally murdered and civil populations indiscriminately massacred solely to spread terror A regular system of ingenious terrorism has been directed against civilians as horrible as anything in the history of large and populous wars civil or religious been not once but twenty cities citie s have and burnt bombarded thirty forty times and the women and children in them wantonly slaughtered with the sole object of inflicting suffering all this has been done not in license or passion but by the calculating ferocity of scientific soldiers the above was not written though it might have been yesterday last week last month or last year it appeared in the english fortnightly review february 1871 shortly before the surrender of paris frederick harrison ane writer is still alive its statements were true then are true now julius caesar in his commentaries narrates events which show that even before the time of christ the germans demonstrated the possession of all of the rudiments of their modern kultar kul tur it is no new thing and hundreds of thousands of men will have died in vain in anis war if this sinister thing is not absolutely and utterly exterminated forever by the forces of civilization arrayed against it |