THE VOICE OA A PROPHET

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 February 1917, Page 8

THE VOICE OA A PROPHET

GERMANY’S GUILT.

A POWERFUL INDICTMENT.

Professor H. M. Gwatkin, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, is dead. He was a grout Scholar and teacher.

of great physical disadvantages. “Nor should his keenness as a.acien, title observer be forgotten; for he was a trained morphologist, and would sometimes say that be bad bit reward when he went to the Black Forest m searcli of some rare snail and found a wife,” • Juslfc before his death Professor Gwatkin wrote a valuable letter to a Swedish clergyman, which was printed in full la the “Cambridge Review.’’ This letter .wag evidently in answer •to another in which the Swedish clergyman defined his attitude to Eng. land and Germany with regard to the war. Hero are some ...of the sentences from Professor Gwajkiiu’i* vigorous reply;--

MY OWN WORK NEARLY DONE. “'Many times I have longed for the voice of a prophet,” he wrote, “not to tell ufi what the cncl -of pride shall bo—for that was never doubtful—but to apeak the ‘Thus saith the Lord’ of a man who sees the things of time in the, light of eternity, and can show us the slow procession -of the ages in their courses, authoring round the ever-living Person of the Lord, who loves no less the sinners of Germany than the sinners .of England. I dare j not hope that He would fully acquit • us; but sure I am, unless truth and mercy are a mockery, that He would not lay on us the heavy burden of the hugest crime in history. “ ‘His way is' in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are th» dust of His feet.’ “By the perplex it} 1 - and distress of nations we know that some glorious mystery is now revealing. God keep you, sir, and guide us all and cleanse our hearts to see and to receive it. My own work must now be nearly , clone; but I believe and verily trust that our children and our children’s children will see a hotter, a nobler, aipd a more Christian. Europe rising from the ashes of the old. “I claim no special virtue for my own country. 1 say only that we never sought the war, that we could not honorably avoid it, and that, to the best of my judgment, we have little to be ashamed of in our conduct of it. When eve assured Germany in 1!)12 that we were not, and never would be, parties to any hostile design against her we wore officially told lluct thig was not enough—that wo must promise to be neutral ‘in any case,’ if war broke out. The only case onr assurance did not cover was

that of a wanton attack on France or llussia. As to our want of preparatiofn, we simply refused .to believe that a professedly civilised and friendly nation could be guilty of this infamy. A! all events, the mure severe_ ly you blame us for it, the more you are bound to grant that wy had no aggressive designs.

DAMNED IS Y "DATES

‘‘Now look al Germany, Take a few fact.-; uiifatf many:--■‘May, Il)U.—Reservists called up from the Far Fast. “Early June—Anns for cruisers sent out to Buenos Ayres. "June 15. —Contracts in America for coaling cruisers at sea at specified places, and dates in August and September. "June, late.—Reservists called up from Natal. (On my own personal knowledge.) “Last instalment due of the groat War Loan, “July.—Bills on London far in ex- > cess of trade requirements drawn by Germans, such bills falling (due after August X. • “July 31.—The Kronprinze&S*!'! Ceeilie in mid-Atlantic receives message in special cipher, ‘War has. broken out with England, France, and Russia. Return to New York.’ (Now (a) the cipher was delivered sealed to the captain two years before; (b) war bad not broken out. The English ultimatum was not sent till August 4. Germany was still ‘negotiating.’) “Is all this innocent precaution? Do not all the items converge on the certainty of war early in August? A month earlier nothing would have been ready; a month later the resery_ ists would have been idle, and the bills would have had to be paid. Now . bow could tbe}' have known that date before. May if they were not them- , selves planning the attack?

WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. “It seems as well established as facts cain be, and that not simply by French or Belgian evidence, or that of neutrals, but by the avowals or admissions-cf Germans, that they have plundered the country, burned towns, committed wanto/n massacres, dishonored women, slaughtered ‘hostages,’ ■I.IUUB.—iWWIt*'II»<III— IIIIBW mweawwm

“To his work he gave himself with, out stint for over a quarter of a century,’’ says "The Times.” “Gwatkin’s almost unique powers as a. teacher were attained in the face

and reduced the population to practical- slavery f enforced by deportations and barbarous pmn.ahnenl.s, mid that these outrages are not due to the passions of undisciplined soldiers, or even to the connivance of brutal officers, but to the direct commands and systematic policy of the highest authorities. ' “No doubt there has been some exaggeration, as there always is when devilish deeds are done; hut a very large .-discount will still leave the Ger_ mains below the level of savages, for savages am not in the same way sinners against light. Now lot all this go' for nothing. Lot no more mention be made of outrages, from the delib-erately-repeated massacres of Louvain to the hellish joeridg of the German crowd at the bodies of English officers done to death in their starvation camp at Wittenberg. Let silence cover abominations that cry to heaven like the cry of Sodom. Let the Kaiser’s hands be pure as snow, his preachings of hate and frightfulness. forgotten. Let his lying ministers .pass for men of honor, his ferocious officers for refined and courteous gentlemen, his brutal soldiers for chivalrous' enemies, his reptile press, his spies, his incendiaries, for generous and high-minded patriots.. What then? “Do not some broad facts come out above the chatter of lies that bewilder you iln Sweden? It is not disputed that the Germans have systematically used floating mines, poisonous gases, aircraft on undefended towns, torpedoed oven neutral merchant ships at sight, and forced Belgians to work for them in munition factories*—all which things they promised by the Hague Convention not to do. Are these methods of civilised warfare?

THE DIFFERENCE.

“But, , say you, there is nothing to choose between German and English Methods- lam not so sure of that. I think you will find that most of our alleged offences which give so much annoyance to neutrals are only natural and necessary adaptations of old laws to the days of great ships and parcel post. If a ship' is too> large to be searched at sea, our plan of bringing it to port is, perhaps, a® humane as the German plan of sinking it at sight, and if they send rubber in parcels, there may well be some /delay over air innocent Christina® presents from America. Vexatious as these things are, you cannot fairly compare them with what'the Germans have done. “Coming, however, to cases where we have hud to follow the enemy’s example, we never defended 1 our towns by aircraft until they had been attacked while undefended, and our own raids have been aimed at military positions only. Ga® we never used till the enemy had used it against us, and we have not maliciously chosen 'a. gas which permanently ruins health. Nor can they decently complain of the starvation plan. They used it on Paris, and tried to use it on u® at the beginning of the war; and we did not limit imports of food by neutrals until thev had threatened again (February, 1915) to starve u® out by submarines. But, after all, Ibe blockade of a Country differs only in scale from the

blockade of a town, which is confessed, ly lawful! “The most horrible feature of''(his war is not the destruction of property, Or even of life, but the utter impossibility of trusting a nation which will not be bound by treaties. “The future* is very dark. These rndn hate us like hell, and will only despise us in addition if we'fail to crush their .power for.evil; and they are teaching their children in all their schools to hate us, too.. They will not easily forgive its the wrong they have clone us, and the echoes of the ‘Hymn °i Hate’ will not be soon forgotten. Yet we never hated them before the war; and even now .there far more among us of auger than of settled hatred.

“England makes no war upon the dead. There will be friendship as well as peace with Germany whenever Germany is dead to the crimes of the past —but not till then.”