OCR Text |
Show uu YOUR CHILDREN AND MY CHILDREN. Porter Emerson Browne presents a dialogue in which Von Tirpitz, author of Germany's submarine ruthlessness, attempts to justify his crime of the ages: "Ah," I excLaimed. "I see you have children." Ho smiled benignly. "Yes," he assented. ' "Spare ones' I suggested, "that you are getting ready to blow up?" "Not at all," he returned. "These are my children"; or, I should say, my grand-children. "You rather like them, I infer." "I love them," he returned warmly. "They look like other children to me," I said. "Somewhat," he agreed. "You would like to see them murdered?" mur-dered?" I persisted. "Certainly not!" ho cried. "How can you suggest such a terrible thing?" "Other people sort of fancy their know," I explained. "And yet you haven't hesitated to slaughter them whenever the mood o'ertook you." "That's different," he asserted. "And how?" I queried. "They are enemy children," he said. "Oh, so you're afraid of them!" "No," ho answered. "But they," he explained, "are children of our enemies." en-emies." "Quite so," I said. "Just as your children are children of their enemies. Isn't that so?" "Possibly," ho admitted. "But they haven't drowned your children in the icy black waters of a winter night. Why do you drown theirs?" "War is war," he asserted dogmatically. dogmati-cally. "It is," I agreed. "But aren't there different kinds of war?" "What do you mean?" he demanded. demand-ed. "One kind of war is where men fight men," I explained. "Yes," he said. "Another kind," I went on, "is where beasts murder babies." Ho shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "They drove us to it," he protested. "No other nation has been driven to it in two thousand years," I said. "Why you?" "This war is different," he declared. "It Is," I assented. "You have made it so." nn |