The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1917. THE DEVASTATION OF FRANCE

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 147, 21 June 1917, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1917. THE DEVASTATION OF FRANCE

For the cause that lacics assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we *xin 'do.

One of the most pathetic touches in Sir Douglas Haig's report on the British operations in the West is his reference to the destruction wrought by the re-

treating _erma_ armies in every part of France and Belgium that they have occupied. The Britia-h Commander-in-Chief speaks not only for the British Army and the British nation, but for the whole civilised world, when he ex-

presses his sympathy for the sufferings of France and the indignation that all decent-minded human oeings must feel when they realise the sheer atrocity of thiis ferocious barbarism. But our

natural resentment at these brutal out rages must not blind us to their mean-

ing or their puropse. Long before Germany struck her blow for " world power"' and the Legions of the Hun swarmed ar.ross the Belgian frontier, the leaders of German thought, the "'semi-oilicial "' journalists, aud the State-paid professors who shape German public opinion, had proclaimed not only to the German people, but to the world at large, what Germany would do to France when the next chance came. When Bismarck expressed his regret that Franco recovered so speedily after the " terrible year " of 1870-1, and strove to find or to invent pretexts that might enable him to "bleed France white " once more, he defined German policy toward France for the two generations that nave succeeded him. Sooner or later the hour would come when Germany could safely embark on her next great war

of aggression, and then — she would so deal with her hereditary enemy that "France shall never cross our path again." Countless exponents of Pan-German political and

" cultural " ambitions, from Bernhardi and Schiemann downward, have dwelt upon this congenial theme; and it is only when we remember these things that we can appreciate and understand the German purpose which underlies the carefully considered programme of brutal and systematic devastation which is now being carried out by the retreating Huns in Northern France and Belgium. So far as the ferocity and cruelty which characterise these "methods of barbarism" are concerao<l, there is nothing in them which the experiences of the past -three years might not have led us to expect from the Germans. But there is more behind this orgy of wilful destruction than the mere desire to terrorise the country people and reduce them to trembling impotencej certainly far more than any plan of a purely strategic or military kind. It is hardly necessary to point out that a campaign against private property is not an incident of ordinary warfare; and it is equally obvious that the demolition of farmhouses, the cutting down of orchards, and. the,

careful and methodical destruction of household furniture, historical relics and works of art, can serve no useful military purpose. But we do less than justice to the scientific capacity of the German mind if we imagine that these new demonstrations of "kultttr" are

merely spontaneous outbursts of the innate ferocity of the Hun. Their object is not simply to punish France for Germany's humiliation and defeat, but to weaken and paralyse France, to drain away her recuperative powers, and thus to prevent her from recovering easily and quickly from the shock of this terrible war. Unless France is mortally wounded, she will soon regain strength and wealth and vitality, just as, after the Franco-Prussian war, a few years sufficed to restoro her to more than all her pristine opulence and vigour. But Germany intends, in the first place, that France shall not again become a dangerous industrial and commercial rival; and in the second place., she is clearly bent upon reducing the French nation to such a level of weak-

ness that they will prove an easy victim to the nest attacks which in Gerown good time will certainly fall upon them-, unless this war closes with the overwhelming defeat and the downfall of Prussianism. Let there be no mistake or misunderstanding in our minds about Germany's objects and intentions. The Germans have failed this

time in their attempt to destroy France, and they know it. But as they retreat slowly and sullenly toward their own frontier, they are not turning Northern France into a desert simply to impede the advance of the Allied armies.

" They arc," in the words of a distinguished American military expert, " endeavouring to cripple France for half a century at the least, to prevent another such recovery from war as France had in IS7O. They are deliberately, methodically, Teutonieally laying waste the fields, cutting down the trees, dynamiting the mines, wrecking the canals, in the hope and with the intention that France shall never again recover. It may take the world some time to realise the full breadth and depth of the horrible iniquity that the German nature is now manifesting. But these last outrages upon humanity come merely as the climax of all the monstrous atrocities which have marked the progress of German arms for the past three years. "At first," as the "New York Tribune" reminds us, "we had murder, then starvation, then that slavery whkh cost thousands of lives, and will leave a permanent mark upon the health of et least one generation of French women and children. We have had German ruthlessnc-ss design. 1 to intimidate a population f. r the period of the war, and the purposes of the campaign. But.it Unnecessary W recognise that the present ruthlessness is directed to the future, and is designed permanently to weaken a nation whose conquest by force of arms has been beyond the power of the Germans in this war." It is only when we comprehend this that we can grasp the true meaning of the scientific barbarism of the Huns. " Every monument of the French past within the German grasp <ir within the reach of German artdierv is being destroyed. Every factory has been gutted of its machinery, every little detail in the farm life of the peasant has been turned to ruin." Everything that could possibly be done is being done to destroy the national spirit, and to exhaust the national vitality of France, not only for the present, but for the future; and in the midst of this atrocious carnivai of cruelty and ferocity and sin, we hear voices raised liemanding peace and generous consideration for the Hermans! It is difficult to express in adequate language the truly monstrous character of these latest Herman crimes. "The deliberate effort to murder a nation, the effort to destroy the women and children, to obliterate every piece of machinery incidental to human life and industrial progress"— these things have been described aptly enough by Mr. Frank Simonds as " one of the supreme atrocities of history." And with a nation whose soul is so far depraved and perverted that it can blindly follow the rulers and leaders who ordain and justify these monstrous cruelties and crimes, and who are even now preparing to repeat them at a more convenient season, no peace is possible, till absolute and ruinous defeat has taught it that "the will to evil " is not yet omnipotent, and that Right and Justice have not yet perished from the world.