World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Clement Wood, in the Socialist paper, _The New York Call_, writes:
"This book attempts more of a summing up of German offenses, and,
being written to sustain an opinion rather than to give impartially
the facts, correspondingly loses in interest and persuasiveness. Its
usefulness to the general reader or the person who desires an unbiased
understanding of the conflict is slight." He speaks of "the alleged
German atrocities in Belgium."
My statements do not deal with opinion but with things seen. Apparently
it is an offense to take sides on this war. One is a trusthworthy
witness if one has seen only picturesque incidents that do not reveal
the method of warfare practiced by an invading army. One is fair-minded
only by shutting the eyes to the burned houses of Melle, Termonde and
Lorraine, and the dead bodies of peasants; and by closing the ears to
the statements of outraged persons. One is judicial only by defending
the Germans against the acts of their soldiers, and the written
evidence of their officers and privates.
The _Independent_ says: "He saw the wreck of the convent school, but
learned none of the sisters had been harmed."
The critic selects that portion of my testimony on the convent school
which relieves the Germans of the charge of rape. As always, I have
given every bit of evidence in favor of the Germans that came my
way. I have told of the individual soldier who was revolted by his
orders. I have published the diaries of German soldiers which revealed
nobility. But is that scrupulous care of mine a justification to the
_Independent_ for omitting to tell the humiliations visited on that
convent school?
My testimony of bayonetted dying peasants is "credible in so far as no
testimony from the other side was obtainable."
"Mr. Gleason also saw the ruins of bombarded Belgian cities."
Is it fair of the _Independent_ to be inaccurate? My evidence is not
of bombarded Belgian cities. It is of Belgian cities, burned house by
house, with certain houses spared where "Do not burn by incendiary
methods" was chalked on the door.
"Otherwise his evidence is at second or third hand mainly."
On the contrary, I have quoted witnesses whom I can produce.
The _Times_, of Los Angeles, says: "He is quite rabid. He writes with
the frenzy of a zealot."
I do not think the colorless recitation of facts, fortified by name,
place and date, is rabid or frenzied.
The _Literary Digest_ says: "Of the 'atrocities' in Belgium, we find
reports of a 'friend,' or a 'friend's friend,' or what 'some one saw or
heard.'"
I have told what I myself saw and heard.
"Fair-minded readers will be inclined to reserve judgment."
But in the light cast by eye-witnesses and German diaries, we have
reserved judgment too long. Our American Revolution would have been a
drearier affair, if the French had reserved judgment. In a crisis the
need is to form a judgment in time to make it tell for the cause of
justice. Truth-seeking is a living function of the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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