GREATESC TRIME OF THE WAR.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16408, 31 December 1918, Page 8

GREATESC TRIME OF THE WAR.

\ The question, "What is the greatest crime committed during the warwas >ut to conspicuous men m ; Europe bomo time ago. ■. "The torpedoing of hospital ships. 'Ms "tlio reply of I ield MarsuflL Lord. French. .. , ■ "Tho declaration of war itself," says Stephen Pichon, then French Minister of Fovcign Affairs. "Among so manv ignominies that have been perpetrated sincc," ho adds, "I renounce making a ' great crime of Rheims, the abomlnabio destruction of the cathedral, is the one that makes bleed iuo.st my heart of a Frenchman and an artist, but can one establish a lieirarchy of crimes of the''barbarians?" replied tho late Auguste Rodin, the sculptor. "Tho murder of sailors whose vessels had been torpedoed is the most atrocious act committee! during the war," is the opinion of Sir W. H. Dunn, formerly" Lord Mayor of London. "Politically tho <jreatest crime committed during tho war is the violation of the neutrality of Belgium by those who had sworn to defend it,' says Mgr. Haudrillant, vicar-general of the Catholic institute <Sf Paris. "Morally, one is embarrassed to choose among so many atrocities. The worst crime, in my eyes, is the re-establishment of slavery by the Germans." Signor Vicente Blosco Ibanex replied: "The greatest crime of intellectual Germany consisted in the troubling of the course of. human thought and the proclaiming of the superiority of war over justice. -Ml the atrocities of the Germans against men and_ things are only the material consequence of scientific barbarity." . The massacre and deportation or hundreds of thousands of innocent Armenians while Germany, protector ana ally of Turkey, gave a tacit consent by its attitude, is considered as "the .most gigantic crime of the war" by Viscount James Bryce, while lie says "the most

abject crime of the war thus far is that of the German Government carrying off into' slavery hundreds of young French and Belgian girls and thousands of Belgian labourers, obliging them to work against their own unfortunato country, ruined by the invasion."