It was many months after the beginning of the World War before the large body of American citizens would believe that the German nation and the German people made a business of lies and deception, and considered such a business just and proper when in the service of the Fatherland. But when Germany--after having promised the United States on May 4, 1916, that merchant ships would not be sunk without warning or without giving the crews and passengers an opportunity for safety--on January 31, 1917, informed Washington that she was not going to keep her promise and told the German people that she had only made it in order to get time to build a great submarine fleet which would bring England to her knees in three months--then the American people saw Germany as she was and in her shame. Of all the peoples of the earth, the Americans are probably the most sympathetic and helpful to the weak and the afflicted. They are the most merciful, striving to be kind not only to people but even to animals. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, another for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the numberless Bands of Mercy show the feeling of the people of America toward the helpless. Americans supposed that other people were like them in this respect. They knew of the German pensions to the widows and to the aged, and they supposed that the efficient and enlightened Germans were among the merciful and sympathetic to the weak and dependent. The people of the United States knew, of course, of the Zabern incident where two German soldiers held a crippled Alsatian cobbler while a German officer slashed his face with his sword for laughing at him,--they knew that the German army officers were haughty and overbearing, but they thought this came from their training and was not a part of the German character. Americans had read the Kaiser's directions to the German soldiers going to China during the Boxer uprising to "Show no mercy! Take no prisoners! Use such frightfulness that a Chinaman will never dare look at a German again. Make a name for yourselves as the Hun did long ago." But the Americans, or most of them, did not believe that in the twentieth century a nation classified among the civilized nations could or would adopt _Frightfulness_ as a policy. But when they read of the devastation of Belgium and northern France; of the destruction of Louvain; of whole villages of innocent men, women, and children being wiped out; of the horrible crimes of the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the _Falaba_, and the _Laconia_; of the execution of Edith Cavell; of the carrying off into slavery, or worse than slavery, of the able-bodied women and men from the conquered territory--when Americans learned these horrors one after another, they at last were forced to acknowledge that, like the brutal Assyrian kings who sought to terrify their enemies into submission by standing as conquerors upon pyramids of the slain, the modern Huns sought mastery