If England could ever be disgraced by a
mishap, she would be disgraced by having given birth to those
Englishmen, few and wretched, who, when an enemy behaves generously,
conceal or deny the fact. And consider the effect of this silence on the
Germans. There are some German officers, as I said, who are better than
the German military handbooks, and better than their monstrous chiefs.
Which of them will pay the smallest attention to what our papers say
when he finds that they collect only atrocities, and are blind to
humanity if they see it in an enemy? He will regard our press accounts
of the German army as the work of malicious cripples; and our perfectly
true narrative of the unspeakable brutality and filthiness of the German
army's doings will lose credit with him.
If I had my way, I would staff the newspaper offices, as far as
possible, with wounded soldiers, and I would give some of the present
staff a holiday as stretcher-bearers. Then we should hear more of the
truth.
Is it feared that we should have no heart for the War if once we are
convinced that among the Germans there are some human beings? Is it
believed that our people can be heroic on one condition only, that they
shall be asked to fight no one but orangoutangs? Our airmen fight as
well as any one, in this world or above it, has ever fought; and we owe
them a great debt of thanks for maintaining, and, by their example,
actually teaching the Germans to maintain, a high standard of decency.
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