The great crime and its moral

Preface

The principal features of the Great Crime have been already separately recorded and developed in books and pamphlets without number and in many languages. In the following pages the various counts of the indictment are set out in the form of a short but connected narrative, and, that the story may carry the greater conviction, the details which compose it have been described, wherever possible, in the words of neutrals and of Germans themselves, the references to whose writings will serve as a guide to readers desiring a closer insight into any particular incident or aspect of the Crime.

We have indeed been at great pains throughout to present the facts in as convincing a form as possible; but in some cases we have not been able to describe them in all their horror because, had we done so, we should have produced a work unfit for general reading and so defeated the object we have in view, which is to give an opportunity to every man, woman and child who has any understanding whatever to realise, once for all, the character of the people who have made war on the world, the motives by which they were actuated in so doing, the appalling nature of the catastrophe which would follow upon the success of their scheme — of their plot against humanity — and the danger of making peace with them before their power for evil is broken.

For, incredible as it must seem to most of us, there are still people who allow themselves to be persuaded that Germany was provoked, that she invaded Belgium in self-defence, that she had no lust for world-domination, that the atrocities have been exaggerated, that it will be wise to make peace with her at the earliest moment.

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It will be said that, in speaking of the aggressors as the people of Germany, we ascribe the guilt to the whole nation. We shall perhaps only know, when their arms are defeated, how far the civil population was in sympathy with its rulers — or how far it would have been out of sympathy with them had the true circumstances of the aggression not been hidden from it.

Meanwhile, it is clear that the leading men in the country, the so-called "Intellectuals," have, as a body, adopted the principle that Might is Right and that it is Germany's mission to impose her will — or rather, the will of one man, her Emperor and War-lord — on the whole of this planet.

They have mistaken the times. Engrossed in the contemplation of their war-machinery, they have failed to see that, in the present stage of the evolution of mankind, a new order prevails — that, in fact. Right is Might. The moral forces, the feeling ever present, though at times dormant, in the human mind, that good must prevail over evil and justice over tyranny, that the weak have equal rights with the strong, are more potent to-day than all the hosts of Germany, and they will be her undoing.

The world of to-day does not want the hideous thing called German Kultur. There is no place for it in the civilisation of the twentieth century, and the nations of the earth are determined that it shall not be imposed upon them.

It is this determination which has now brought the great peace-loving people of America "to accept" — in President Wilson's words — "the gage of battle with this natural foe of liberty," and which animates the ten million of her youth who have answered the call to arms.

It is important to observe that the characteristics ^ of the German people which have been brought so prominently to our notice of late have been associated with them throughout their history — in particular, their treachery

* Including even some of their tactics in war. Dion Cassius, describing them in battle, says: "Many of them, owing to the closeness of their formation, remained standing even after they were killed." — Roman History, xxxviii. 49.

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and disregard of treaties. The Roman and Greek historians never tire of alluding to this trait. But it is not only in the barbarian Germans of the Roman period that it is so marked. It appears again and again in each succeeding period. This nation has ever made it a principle only to keep a treaty when it is to its own convenience to do so, a circumstance which cannot be too carefully noted by those who will have to decide by what means it will be possible to ensure a lasting peace. I therefore make no apology for having dealt with it at length in the body of the work.

The Roman general Germanicus believed that the war with Germany could only end with the extermination of the race. He must have realised the gravity of the German danger of his time, which in the beginning took the form of predatory incursions into the Gallic provinces, and in the end had much to do with the downfall of the Empire. There' can be no thought of exterminating the race at the present day, but we shall do well to take warning from the comment of the historian Florus: "Breve id gaudium, quippe German! victi magis quam domiti erant" {It was a short-lived joy, for the Germans had been conquered rather than subdued), or Tacitus' lament that they were "triumphati magis quam victi." "It is not impossible," wrote Merivale {History of the Romans under the Empire, vol. v. p. 51), "that the result of one or two more campaigns at this critical moment might have delayed for a hundred years the eventual overthrow of the Roman Empire.'*

J. Selden Willmore.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Conception of the Plot i

II. The Psychological Moment 34