The Better Germany in War Time: Being Some Facts Towards FellowshipPicton, Harold W. (Harold Williams)
History
The Better Germany in War Time: Being Some Facts Towards Fellowship
Picton, Harold W. (Harold Williams)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals, charities, etc.; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
When Bishop Bury during his visit in November, 1915, asked what he might
be allowed to say at Ruhleben, General Friedrich replied: “Please do all
you can to hearten and cheer up your fellow countrymen. Appeal to their
patriotism, speak to their manhood. You and they will have no one
between you. There will be no official of the camp; no one to listen to
you, no one to come between yourself and them. We trust you entirely
with them, and you will understand, I am sure, that we do not wish to
diminish anyone’s sense of nationality who is imprisoned or interned in
Germany.” (“My Visit to Ruhleben,” p. 21.) The words, says Bishop Bury,
“seemed to come straight from the heart of the speaker.” Some readers
will be sceptical; but at least _the words were acted on_. The Bishop
spoke about the armies and the war to the men, and told them of his own
experiences in the war area, “just as I should have told them to my own
countrymen in this country.” At his last address the British flag was
run in on a cord and “God Save the King” was sung. The Bishop had no
time to propose the omission of the second verse, but one is proud to
know that those Englishmen, even amidst their excitement, spontaneously
omitted it. The whole scene revealed what was finest on both sides.
Bishop Bury told the German Staff that at the meeting “we all sang ‘Send
him victorious.’ They smiled indulgently.”
WAR TERRORISM.
A good many more things of a favourable character could be said.
Unfortunately men who speak well of their German captors are accused of
pro-Germanism, and they dare not speak. This is a rather terrible fact,
but it is a fact. As one man said to me: “I have my living to get, and
if my identity could be traced through any account I gave I should be
ruined. My work has already been very materially affected, but in
private conversation I shall continue to speak the truth, come what
may.” War prejudice indeed desires one kind of story only, and
victimises those who give it what it does not want. And so all along the
line suppression begets suppression of the truths most needed to heal
our ills. A woman teacher writes to me: “I think I have a fairly open
mind myself to recognise good deeds of the enemy; but to tell such to my
pupils is another matter, and I fear would be very impolitic seeing that
I depend on my school for my daily bread.” And again the Editor of a
provincial paper writes: “... but when one has to rely on the public
for one’s living one has to think twice before expressing one’s views.”
LAST DAYS AT RUHLEBEN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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