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During the joint expedition to Peking, all the other contingents were horrified at the cruelty of the German troops. I have heard how on one occasion a number of Chinese women were watching a German regiment at drill, when suddenly the commanding officer ordered his men to open fire upon them. When remonstrated with, he replied that terrorism was humane in the end, because it made the enemy desire peace. For some reason, these atrocities were not very widely known in England; and no one dreamed that such infernal crimes would ever be perpetrated in European war. But such are indeed the calculated methods of Germany; and her officers began to order them as soon as her troops crossed the Belgian frontier. The German military authorities advise that terrorism should be used sparingly when there is danger of reprisals. Accordingly, though many abominable things have been done to civilians in France and Russia, and to ourselves when opportunity offered, the worst atrocities were committed in Belgium, because Belgium is a small country, which had dispensed with universal military service in reliance on the international guarantee of her security. These events of the first month of the war are in danger of being forgotten, now that Germany is contending on equal terms against the great nations of Europe. But they must not be forgotten. We are fighting against a nation which thinks it good policy to massacre non-combatants, provided only that the sons and brothers of the victims are not in a position to retaliate.
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Sailors of all nationality except German have from time immemorial looked upon themselves as the guardians and protectors of land folk at sea.
That is why every sailor in the world, outside the doggeries of Hamburg, felt his calling spat upon and his personal pride injured by the sinking of the _Lusitania_--by a sailor.
It seemed that nothing could be worse than that, and then came the sinking of the _Hesperia_, a ship filled with wounded soldiers and Hospital nurses.
Raemaekers brings the fact home to us in this cartoon, not the fact of the English nurses' heroism, which goes without saying, but of German low-down common infamy. The fact has become so commonplace, so accustomed, so everyday that pictures of burning cathedrals, murdered children, and terrified women no longer move us as they did, but this artist, whose command of language seems as infinite and varied as the crimes of the criminals whom God sent him to scourge, has always some stroke in reserve, something to add to what he has said, if need be. In the case of this picture it is the medicine bottle, glass, and spoon flying off the shelf, flung to the floor by the bursting charge of Tri-nitro-toluine that adds the last touch as distinctive as the artist's signature.