FEAR AND FEROCITY.

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 14

FEAR AND FEROCITY.

I think fear was at the heart of a good deal of those atrocious acts by which the German troops stained the honour, of their race in the first phases of the war. Advancing into hostile country among a people whom they knew to be reckless in courage and of a proud spirit, the generals and high officers were obsessed with the thought of ' peasant warfare, rifle-shots from windows, murders of soldiers billeted in farms, spies everywhere, and the peril of ■ francs-tireurs goading their troops on 'the march. .

The proclamations posted on the walls of invaded towns reveal fear as well as cruelty.. These bald-headed officers, in pointed helmets, so scowling behind their spectacles, had fear in their hearts and concealed it by cruelty.

. It is no wonder that the subordinate officers and their men were nervous of the dangers suggested in those documents, and found, • perhaps without any conscious dishonesty, clear proof of civilian plots against them. A shot rang out down a village street. "The peasants are firing on us!" shouted a German soldier ob neurotic temperament "Shoot them at sight!" said an officer who had learnt his lesson of ruthlessness. "Burn these wasps out! Leiber Gott, we will teach them a pretty lesson!"— Mr. Philip Gibbs in "The.Soul of. the War."