THE UNSPEAKABLE HUN.

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 98, 25 April 1917, Page 7

THE UNSPEAKABLE HUN.

One does not wish to give the impression that the German, is to be treated as a milder fighter than he hais been made out to be; because one knows perfectly well that if it suited the ugly brain at the back of his lines to treat Australian soldiers—their wounded, for example; in No Man's Land—with bru-' tality, then / brutally would he. treat them. On one occasion, when such orders certainly did- come from the German staff, there followed a scene which no Australian who saw it will ever forget or forgive. I am. not going to inflict a deal of unnecessary pain by describing it. The are duly noted, and they will be told all in due time when the history of this war comes to be written. - Do not let any man imagine that tho German General Staff is an institution with which you can deal with kid gloves. It and tho whole brutal, boastful isystem of philosophy upon whidh it has been fed and uponwhich it has- grown into its brutal strength, arc a pest to be stamped once and for all out of existence—and that is what we are fighting for.

But the little German machine hands and tradesmen who make up a considerable^ part of the German front lino troops to-day are not stuff whicK was reared and educated to itis own purpose by the machinery of Bismarck and Moltke. I have friends who in days after the Maine saw themselves Wio results of unspeakable deeds by the German cavalry on the women of France—old women and young alike. The German opposite the Australians has never had the chance of repeating that vileness, and has never given evidence of being the man who would be prone to it.

SILLY STORIES FROM POZIERES. It is equally wise to be cautious in believing the more highly-coloured sort of stories about our troops. I remember reading, under several sets of headlines,- how a, Frenchman—returned from the front—had brought a story of the Australian attack on Pozieresv - How they fought from house to house up the street of that deadly village. I think this was the account which spoke ot them fighting with knives. There was not an atom of truth or of anything even approaching or distantly resembling truth in that story—except possibly the statement that the Frenchman had told it. Very possibly he did, and believed it. But who told it to him, and who told it to the man who told it to his informant, the message did not slate, and that is the very material part which is almost always left out of the more richly coloured narratives. As a matter of fact, it goes without saying that Australians did not fight with knives af,. Pozieres, and they did not light from house to house, because the.ro were no houses to fight from. They occasionally used the bayonet— there were even a few real bayonet duels with Germans who stood up to them. But 99 per cent, of the real hand-to, hand fighting was carried on with one weapon only—the hand-grenade. And with that weapon, which Australians ha.ye learned to use perhaps better than any other, there were such fights enacted up and down certain shattered trenches and back again, hour after hour, day and night, and day again, without ceasing, as will niako the Australian's blood rise when he hears the full story of them—battles I suppose such" as have rarely been fought since tho days of the Romans—in one case such a battle as within my limited z-eadiug and knowledge has never before been fought at all, when 15,000 bombs were thrown by one side alone in a 15 hours' fight. THE TRUE AND THE FALSE. I suppose that^the best advice that one I can give to those who. wish to discjimin,. (

ate between the true and the false ia "Be cautious." You know wfcat sort of man the Australian is, and therefore you know what is likely to be true of him. As for the Germans, you knowi that for two generations they hava been, deliberately educated- by timfe »tS.tesmen and professors in the docwine that might is right and that the only thing worth being is strong; some have learned the'lesson well, and some only supej> ficiaJly.