Chapter I: Introduction

“_Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me._”--JESUS OF NAZARETH

The sight of all Europe engaged in the most terrific conflict in the history of mankind is a heartrending spectacle. On the east, on the south and on the west the blood-lust leaders have flung their deluded millions upon unbending lines of steel, martyrs to the glorification of Mars.

We see millions of men taken from their homes, their shops and their factories; we see them equipped and organized and mobilized for the express purpose of devastating the homes of other men; we see them making wreckage of property; we see them wasting, with fire and sword, the accumulated efforts of generations in the field of things material; we see the commerce of the world brought to a standstill, all its transportation systems interrupted, and, still worse, the amenities of life so placed in jeopardy for long generations to come that the progress of the world is halted, its material and physical progress turned to retrogression.

“_Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me!_”

But this is not the worst. We see myriads of men banded together to practice open violation of the very fundamental tenets of humanity; we see the worst passions of mankind, murder, theft, lust, arson, pillage--all the baser possibilities of human nature--coming to the surface. Outside of the natural killing of war, hundreds of men have been murdered, often with incidents of the most revolting brutality; children have been slaughtered; women have been outraged, killed and shamefully mutilated. And this we see among peoples who have no possible cause for personal quarrel.

“_Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me!_”

To all human beings of normal mentality it must have seemed that the destruction of the Lusitania marked the apex of horror. There is, indeed, nothing in modern history--nothing, at least, since the Black Hole of Calcutta and some of the indescribable atrocities of Kurdish fanatics--to supply the mind with a vantage ground from which to measure the causeless and profitless savagery of this black deed of murder.

To talk of “warning” having been given on the day the Lusitania sailed is puerile. So does the Black Hand send its warnings. So does Jack the Ripper write his defiant letters to the police. Nothing of this prevents us from regarding such miscreants as wild beasts, against whom society has to defend itself at all hazards.

There are many reasons but not a single excuse for the war. When a man, or a nation, wants what a rival holds and makes a violent effort to enter into possession thereof, right and conscience and duty before God and to one’s neighbor are forgotten in the struggle. Man reverts to the brute. Loose rein is given to passion, and the worst appears. The fair edifice of sobriety and amity and just dealing between man and man, upreared by civilization in centuries of travail, is rent asunder, stone from stone. The inner shrine of the inalienable sense of human brotherhood is profaned. One cannot reconcile with any program for the lasting accomplishment of good and the victory of the truth, this fever of murder on a grand scale, this insensate madness of pillage and slaughter that goes from alarum and counter-alarum to overt acts of fiendish and sickening brutality, palliated because they are done by anonymous thousands instead of by one man who can be named.

“_Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me!_”

It is civilization that is being shot down by machine guns in Europe. That great German host is not made up of mercenaries, nor of the type of men that at one time composed armies. There are Ehrlichs serving as privates in the ranks and in the French corps are Rostands. A bullet does not kill a man; it destroys a generation of learning, annihilates the mentality which was about to be humanity’s instrument in unearthing another of nature’s secrets. The very vehicles of progress are the victims. It will take years to train their equals, decades perhaps to reproduce the intelligence that was ripe to do its work. The chances of the acquisition of knowledge are being sacrificed. Far more than half of the learning on which the world depends for progress is turned from laboratories and workshops into the destructive arenas of battle.

It is indeed a war against civilization. The personnel of the armies makes it so. Every battle is the sacrifice of human assets that cannot be replaced. That is the real tragedy of this stupendous conflict.

Perhaps it is better that the inevitable has come so soon. The burden of preparation was beginning to stagger Europe. There may emerge from the whirlpool new dynasties, new methods, new purposes. This may be the furnace necessary to purge humanity of its brutal perspective. The French Revolution gave an impulse to democracy which it has never lost. This conflict may teach men the folly of dying for trade or avarice. But whatever it does, it is not too much to hope that the capital and energy of humanity will become again manifest in justice and moral achievement, until the place of a nation on the map becomes absolutely subordinate to the place it occupies in the uplift of humanity.

CONTENTS

PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
I. THE SUPREME CRIME AGAINST CIVILIZATION: THE TRAGIC
DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA 9
II. THE HEROES OF THE LUSITANIA AND THEIR HEROISM 22
III. SOUL-STIRRING STORIES OF SURVIVORS OF THE LUSITANIA 34
IV. A CANADIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE LUSITANIA HORROR 50
V. THE PLOT AGAINST THE RESCUE SHIPS 55
VI. BRITISH JURY FINDS KAISER A MURDERER 61
VII. THE WORLD-WIDE INDICTMENT OF GERMANY FOR THE LUSITANIA
ATROCITY 69
VIII. AMERICA’S PROTEST AGAINST UNCIVILIZED WARFARE 81
IX. THE GERMAN DEFENSE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA 91
X. SWIFT REVERSAL TO BARBARISM 101
By Vance Thompson, American Author and Journalist.
XI. BELGIUM’S BITTER NEED 112
By Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., British Novelist.
XII. JAMES BRYCE’S REPORT ON SYSTEMATIC MASSACRE IN BELGIUM 121
XIII. A BELGIAN BOY’S STORY OF THE RUIN OF AERSCHOT 137
XIV. THE UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES OF “CIVILIZED WARFARE” 144
XV. DESTROYING THE PRICELESS MONUMENTS OF CIVILIZATION 159
XVI. WANTON DESTRUCTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS 169
XVII. CANADIANS’ GLORIOUS FEAT AT LANGEMARCK 177
XVIII. PITIFUL FLIGHT OF A MILLION WOMEN 195
By Philip Gibbs, English Author and Journalist.
XIX. FACING DEATH IN THE TRENCHES 207
XX. A VIVID PICTURE OF WAR 221
XXI. HARROWING SCENES ALONG THE BATTLE LINES 228
XXII. WHAT THE MEN IN THE TRENCHES WRITE HOME 234
XXIII. BOMBARDING UNDEFENDED CITIES 240
XXIV. GERMANY’S FATAL WAR ZONE 246
XXV. MULTITUDINOUS TRAGEDIES AT SEA 251
XXVI. HOW “NEUTRAL” WATERS ARE VIOLATED 255
XXVII. THE TERRIBLE DISTRESS OF POLAND 259
XXVIII. THE GHASTLY HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE AIR-DEMONS 267
XXIX. THE DEADLY SUBMARINE AND ITS STEALTHY DESTRUCTION 273
XXX. THE TERRIBLE WORK OF ARTILLERY IN WAR 280
XXXI. WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER BY POISONOUS GASES 286
XXXII. “USAGES OF WAR ON LAND”: THE OFFICIAL GERMAN MANUAL 294
XXXIII. THE SACRIFICE OF THE HORSE IN WARFARE 299
XXXIV. SCOURGES THAT FOLLOW IN THE WAKE OF BATTLE 303
XXXV. WAR’S REPAIR SHOP: CARING FOR THE WOUNDED 308
XXXVI. WHAT WILL THE HORRORS AND ATROCITIES OF THE GREAT WAR
LEAD TO? 314

The English Cunarder, “Lusitania,” one of the largest and fastest passenger vessels in the world, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in a few minutes with the loss of two-thirds of her passengers and crew, among whom were more than one hundred American citizens. The vessel was entirely unarmed and a noncombatant. (_Copyright by Underwood and Underwood._)]

Upper left picture shows a section at center of the vessel. Upper right view shows the submarine at the surface with two torpedo tubes visible at the stern. The large picture illustrates how this monster attacks a vessel like the Lusitania by launching a torpedo beneath the water while securing its observation through the periscope, just above the waves.]