1941-01-18 — Page 7

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THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 18, 1941.

WINDSOR HOUSE.

CHINA MAIL German In War Has Always Been Barbarian

ENEMY PROPAGANDISTS

Enemy propaganda is a never- failing source of amusement, and the latest efforts which they have put forward prove to be no excep- tion to the rule. Thus accord- ing to A

German mes-

'sage

from Rome, quarters there stated that in the Mediter- ranean and North Africa the "Bri- tish were obviously trying to start

Blucher, the incarnation of Prussian militarism, was periodi- cally subject, according to one historian, too "all sorts of strange fancies." At times he imagined; the same authority tells us, "that he had a live beast in his body."

Perhaps the Field-Marshal was not quite so mad as the historian appears to think. His delusion was' both intelligible and symbo lic. Germany

has always

Nazism is Merely the Inheritor of the Ruth- less Prussian Principle that "Necessity"

Knows No Law

By Brig-Gen J. H. Morgan, K.C.

i live beast in it's

The beast body politic.

was, German General Staff, particular- | 1847 their conduct in suppressing and is, the Prussian Army, Itsly, the design of conscripting the constitutional agitation in Prus- doctrines Have worked such a cor-

civil population. ruption in the soul of Germany as to prostitute the German con- ception of law itself to the lust of

conquest.

- major offensives In numerous had

places." The reduction of Sidi Barrani, and Bard.a. together with the investment of Tobruk are apparently attempts to start ma- jor offensives, and it may be re- marked that if the capture of 80,- 000 prisoners and vast quantities

of material are merely the endeay- ours to start something, it will be really interesting to see what wil happen once they really get go- ing. Goering while handing out a few bushels of medals to min- ers declared that "despite British raids, not a single armament fac- tory of importance throughout the

Stranrefess Atrocities Nothing has been more' charac- (eristic of that decadence of the German mind and character. which in the evening of his day: Alled even Trefschke, the life-long apologist of German ruthless- Hess, with misgiving, when it was too late for misgiving than the ferocious casuistry with which the set themselves to sap and mine the very foundations of interna- tional law.

J

|

Nor is the barbarous idea of making war upon the civil popu- lation of any country with which Germany

is at war an after- thought of the Nazi creed. Still less is it a kind of offshoot of the in- vention of the bombing aeroplane, It had been taught a century ago in the Prussian Staff College, the

in Berlin, Kriegsakademie since its foundation, and practised, one form or another, by the in every Prussian General Staff campaign since 1814.

IA

evor

Reich had been put out of action,¦ modern school of German lawyers star fficers, laid down that every

even if at this or that place bombs

had caused temporary distur- bances." Goering is a stout fel-

low and lies stoutly, but it is to be doubled whether he would make that statement in the Ruhr distrket or in the various indus- trial towns where the R.A.F. have inflicted widespread damage and reduced essential war production.

Then again another message from Milan states that Italy has given

The time-fuse they invented, to "go off at the

appropriate mo-

Clausewitz, the idol of each suc- reeding generation of German means is legitimate to break the- spirit (der Geist) of the people of an enemy country if "necessary.” and the German armies have al- ways been notoricus for their brutal application of his teaching.

in

The German Government did, exactly the opposite. It issued to all its officers a manual, the Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, or German War Book, in which the Conventions were derided, in so mony words, as the windy utter- ances of "sentimentalism and flabby emotion,"

sian Poland excited horror and Ugly 1914 Memories dismay among the impotent Liberals all over Germany;

The German officer was warn- 1870-1871 their savage treatment ed against the contagion of -hu- of the "Home Guards" in France manitarian ideas, and, by & became a by-word in Europe; in characteristically German debase- 1914-1915 their butcheries of civi- ment of the

currency of Human lians, in order to terrorise the Bel-Speech, was instructed that "the gian Army into surrender, were freely admitted in the official Ger- only true humanity" lay in being as inhuman as possible. Terrorism (Terrorismus) of the civil popu→ lation was inculcated as a “neces- sity" of war,

man White Book itself.

Violence Encouraged

Murder,

lying, treachery,

bribery and "fifth column" me- thods were expressly recommend- Between the massacre of hun-ed and were justified by the amaz→ dreds of men, women and chil- dren at Dinant in 1914 by shooting argument that, as interna ing and the holocaust of thousands tional law did not explicitly for at Rotterdam and Tournai in 1940 bid them, it must be taken to have by bombing there is nothing to choose either in the barbarity of implicitly sanctioned them. the act or in the infamy of the It is in fact, a complete delu-excuse. In both cases the excuse sion to suppose that the German took the form of a lie. oneers' Corps is, or ever was, a corps of "periect, gentle knights" who view with distaste the atro- cities practised by the Gestapo. Professional jealously, not moral something very like collusion be-listaste, is the true explanation of tween the German General Staff any such antipathy, if such there

ment, was the doctrine, peculiar to German lawyers, of "necessity"-- the sort of necessity that knows no law.

The date of its first appearance in German text-books suggests

be.

All these doctrines

were duly put into practice, with sadistic savagery, in 1914 by the German The explanation of Nazi bruta- lity

is very simple. The Nazis armies when they invaded Bel- learnt their methods in the school gium. Even the German officers, of the German Army. Nearly all the fine flower of Grosslichter their leaders served in its ranks, felde, the German Sandhurst, be→ many of them as N.C.O.s, and the brutality of the German N.C.O.shaved with bestial obscenity, as towards the men was nothing less many a British officer, billeted in In peace-time a German officer than sadistic. It was not merely enjoyed exclusively the preroga-tolerated by the

Belgian and French chateaux tive of cutting down with

military hier-

hurriedly they had been Their after archy; it was encouraged. Osword any unarmed civilian if he policy was that, if you want your evacuated. by German staff offi

considered himself affronted, and

men to be brutes in war, you must

cers, can testify. in war-time of ordering his men brutalise them in time of peace. to shoot, under pain of being shot The policy was successful. themselves, any civilian whether at home or in occupied territory whose looks he did not like;

and these "barrack-room Jaw- ycra," as they have been aptly called. When the great explosion ur 1914 occurred the doctrine was there ready to the hands of the German armies to justify, rather to excuse, every outrage they committed,

a prize to be known as the "Tro- phy of Genoa" for competitions between Italy, Hungary and Ger- many in football, swimming, track and fleld athletics and bicycle racing. It is obviously something in the nature of what is vulgarly called a Dutch gift, for with the And so now. The outrages com- mitted by the German forces in which Italy has the present war are almost iden- turn of speed been showing on land and sea the tical with those they committed trophy should remain permanent-even more atrocious; the excuses in the last except that they are

ly in Italian possession. Then of course there is the quaintly nain- ed German military commentator,

with which they are accompanied they are even more shameless. Mr. are exactly simibir except that Churchill, in a flash divined this when he declared the of genius, present war to be "a continua tion" of the last.

Count von Stillfried, who has the following to say about the fall of Bardia: "The British advance along the Libyan coast came to a standstill on the frontier of Cy- the British had renaica, after merely recovered terrain lost by them previously as a result of Marshal Graziani's advance." It is just that type of standstill "Totalitarian" war is an idea which has taken British troops that did not originate with Hit- ler, still less, as has lately been past Bardia and as far west as Gazala all of which territory is suggested, with a book published by Ludendorff in His dotage under

Terrorising Civilians

his

So much for the German prac- tice. It only remains to look at the theory. In the third quarter of the last century there was a consen- direction of humanising the laws insys of European opinion in the of war. A great German Jurist of European reputation, Bluntschli, quent expression: to the principle writing in the sixties, gave elo that the civil population was to be immune from violence. Blunt- schli, however, was a Swiss by birth and much too humand to be regarded as a normal German."

No court in Germany could or would try him for murder wither case. In March, 1920, when serving on the Disarmament Com- mission in Berlin, I saw German down inoffensive German civilians officers. order their mon to shoot in hundreds merely because the trade unions had paralysed with a general strike their treasonable attempt to restore the monarchy.

Four hundred German officers were implicated in these bloody acts of violence, and not one of them was ever brought to trial. Nor were the men. It was all in the day's work.

in Libya and obviously not pres the title of "Der Totale Krieg" viously lost to: Graziani by the it is extremely foolish, indeed British. Then, of Bardia the dangerous, to treat that book as The Unchanging: Brute worthy commentator continues an eccentricity

of its author,

friend; Sir Frederick Pollock, to

Thus one might say that the de- peculiar to himself. Its sinister Take a Prussian,” said a dls- fander of Bardia, General Bergon-doctrines can be traced much fartinguished German-scholar to my zoli, fought a successful delaying ther back in the archives of the action which enabled the Italian high command to reorganise its forces. General Bergonzoli him-

The German General Staff, with the utmost solemnity, paid a kind of lip-service to international, law in a vain attempt to quiet the in-

neutral countries by accusations, dignation of America. and other

wholly untrue in substance and

having violated those laws of war in fact, against the Belgians of

which the German War. Book lad so contemptuously repudiated:

the

But, just five years later, Beth- hann-Hollweg let the cat out of This principle, formulated by the bag. Pressed by a Reichstag

at Brussels the Declaration

in Committee, empanelled by 1874, found expression in those Hague Conventions and Regula Weimar Republie in 1919 to in-, tions which another jurist, a Rusquire into the conduct of the war, sian, De Martens, succinctly de-

as to why, when Chancellor, he scribed as a mutual insurance of the nations for the protection of had tolerated. such iniquities, he their civil populations against the abuse of force in time of war.

whom I owe the story, and put Promise Soon Broken [him into a bluecoat with red [facings and tell him to shoot his], grandmother, and he will shoot his grandmother."

of

informed the committee that the German G.H.Q. had disposed of his protests against the savage treatment of the civil population in enemy countries with the curt reply that "in war"-I quote from the official report of the evidence -the General Staff "must stop at nothing." It was the voice of tra

selt succeeded in evading cap British and their Allies have been

They were saluted by an Eng-dition, ture. All that need to be said achieving successes in Afrion, suo

ilish jurist, Pearce Higgins, as "one of the greatest triumphs of civili- about this rich piece of lying, is cesses which do nothing to help Italian morale,which is now at a

sation in having brought about It will be seen, therefore, that that if the Italians achieve only

The German officer has always the distinction between the treat "Hitlerism" in war is nothingi one or two more such actions they remarkably low ebu. Fortunately been proud of these prerogatives ment of combatants and non-com- new, During the years 1920-1928, will have successfully secured a it is noted that the Italian fashion and naturally does not like to see batants by securing the latter when the Disarmament Commis- complete and utter defeat. Gen-industry has not been hampered them usurped by storm trooper from the violence directed, as asion in Berlin had Hitler and his eral Borgonzoll did indeed evade by the war, and two big fashion "toughs," who from his point of legitimate operation war, furtive activities, "under observa- capture simply by leaving his shows are to open in Turin and view are nothing better than against them by the former. All tion" in Bavaria, we all knew that men in the lurch. But finally Milan on February 3. Amongst civilians. For civilians, whether the contracting parties, Germany Ludendorff's political foundling after much similar rigmarole he the more notable exhibits it is to German or foreign, he has always included, agreed to issue to their had been put out to nurse by the be believed: will be new models felt the utmost contempt, and hearmed forces instructions in con-Reichswehr officers quartered in winds up with the following: -

Bavaria, who taught him, all he in stream-lined shorts, which the only tolerated policemen so long formity with these Conventions.

knew.. Prestige successes in Afrion Greeks would probably like to as they treated him with the ut- most obsequiousness;; as indeed ne stimulate the morale of the copy in order to keep pace with they always didi

What followed is instructive. The British Government incor-.

He learnt from them to lisp the British people, but will not in the Italian "come-back"" into Al-

porated all the Conventions in the touching of the German War Hoble the least affect the general war bania: In any event, a couple of

The best corrective to any such | official Manual of Military Law, and palmed off its doctrines on i situation, since the present war fashion shows ought to do won- Will Be decided in the North ders in the way of keeping: Ita-illusions about the German officer colloquially known to British of credulous German public in an

la to study the story of his bencers as the Red Book, and deliterate paraphrase known--as- and not in the Mediterranean lian spirits up, and should prove haviour in time of war. In 1814 voted a chapter of the Manual to "Mein Kampf. In him Prussian

an, inspiration to the Germans who

the apacity and brutality of the enforcing on all our officers the militarism has, as it were, touch So at long last Count von Still-havo filtered, and are still fiver- Prügilan amoers on French soll principles of the Conventions for ed bottom. It has sunk to its low Tried admits that after all the ing into Italy

filed Wellington with; disgust; in strict observance in the field.

ost depths.