13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German PrisonCaunter, John Alan Lyde
History
13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison
Caunter, John Alan Lyde
Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
Very few people in this country seem to realise that the German, being
a bully, has the characteristics of a bully. If a strong attitude is
taken with him he immediately gives way. Collectively and individually
they cannot understand any argument but Force, whether it takes the
form of a reprisal or a great attack at the front.
GERMANY
Since my return to England I have often been asked what do the Germans
think of the war now and are they hard up for food, etc.
The Germans I talked to were thoroughly fed-up with the war and only
wanted peace. This does not mean that they will break out into
Revolution. That to my mind cannot come about until the military
defeat of Germany is a fact. The Kaiser, not too popular nowadays,
would immediately regain his former position in the minds of his
subjects could he but secure a peace even partially favourable to the
German people. The rulers of Germany know that defeat, or anything
like it, would be fatal for them; that is why they will stick at
nothing and spare no spilling of blood until they have either won or
lost irretrievably. What would a patched-up peace mean? It would mean
that Germany would begin building submarines by the hundred for use
against us within ten years' time. It would mean just an armistice for
a few years and then a renewal of the conflict without Russia and
probably many of our other exhausted allies.
The Germans with whom I spoke knew this and looked at the future with
open eyes.
I wonder if it is realised how much the British are hated by the
Germans? Their hate of us is "Kolossal," to use their own expressive
word. Somebody in Germany said that should the Germans ever get into
England they would make "Belgium appear like a Garden of Eden in
comparison with what England would look like after they had done with
her."
It is a German boast that the war has never touched the sacred soil of
the Fatherland. The few occasions on which our aeroplanes bombed
German towns during my stay there, gave me an excellent opportunity of
judging how sensitive they are to this particular form of punishment.
The bombing of Karlsruhe and Freiburg caused a scream throughout the
west of Germany. I heard the echo of it in the canteen at Crefeld.
When I suggested that London had also been bombed and innocent lives
lost, they simply said that that was different. Thus in their minds
there are two kinds of law, one for England, the other for Germany. I
was very pleased to notice how much less was the effect of air-raids
on our civilian population than on the Germans. There is no doubt
whatever that the fear of air bombardments is much stronger in Germany
than over here.
There is only one way of touching the German mind and that is by the
employment of FORCE, Brute Force. It is what he believes in as the
medicine for his enemies, simply because he judges others by himself,
and knows that he respects that and that only, and therefore applies it
whenever possible to others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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