THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1915. RETALIATORY ACTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15949, 21 June 1915, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1915. RETALIATORY ACTION.

I The French aeroplane attack upon I German Karlsruhe and the Allied determination to employ poisonous gas, if that undesired and illegal weapon is forced into their hands by persistent German use, again remind us that unless German militarism is utterly destroyed civilisation will be gradually forced back into the barbarism from which it has emerged. Seme very plausible and pretentious individuals, who profess and call themselves British, assert more or less openly that they see no difference between killing with a bayonet and killing with poisonous gas but it will always be found that these individuals are pro-German in their fundamental sympathies, and usually that they are, distinctly German by inheritance, association or temperament. There is, indeed, no more instructive evidence of the existence of racial characteristics, which expose individuals of a given national type to mental contamination by a peculiar form of persistent suggestion, than the underlying sympathy with German methods and unconscious antagonism to Allied interests exhibited by alien elements existing, often unnoticed, in British communities. Our own British domestic differences are so little ineradicable that opponents of universal training in time of peace, are often found among the readiest volunteers for active service in time of war, and among the most loyal and unswerving defenders of the national existence the moment they realise that existence to be endangered. Fundamental racial and temperamental differences are not thus readily swept aside, but constantly reappear and invariably where they may be expected. Throughout the British world—in Now Zealand and in Auckland as elsewhere— shall reach more surely and more quickly to the national and Imperial harmony in which alone our greatest strength can bo asserted if we realise that those who in any way weaken our unity of thought, word and deed upon essential issues have no true part and lot with our British spirit. There is no such thing as looking at the war without feeling. We might as well look without feeling at a hungry tiger while it was worrying and carrying off a little child.

Whether killing by poisonous gas is or is not the same as killing by the bayonet is not tho question, though the accounts of what death by gas poisoning means suggest that those who tabooed it as utterly inhuman and villainous were not wrong. The point is that the European peoples have been slowly and strenuously endeavouring to arrive at a better understanding with one another, and have agreed that certain things shall not be done in war. Germany has not only deliberately broken this agreement, as she has deliberately broken every other treaty and agreement which she thought it advantageous to break, but she has shown herself to be without any moral restraint in matters not covered by international agreement. It would be sheer waste of time to repeat here what all our readers know of tho methods and morals of Germany and the Germans. They arc worthy of a people who in the Twentieth Century tolerated a monarch who claimed that they must obey him as they would obey God and that his will was their highest law. There is no villainy known to depraved human nature which has not been deliberately perpetrated in this war of ;" frightfulncss" by which Germany seeks to dominate the world. No pledge to another nation, no agreement with other nations, no sense of moral responsibility, weighs with Germany or the. Germans when they strike for victory. The use of poisonous gases, the bombardment of undefended towns and residential quarters, tho sinking without warning of crowded passenger ships, the leaving to drown of vanquished enemies, the killing and torturing of prisoners, the murder and violation of helpless and unresisting men and women and children, the abuse of the white flag and the trick of false uniforms, arc simply manifestations of the German mind, which reveals itself in their apologists. There are many phases of German villainy, for which the only effective remedy would be a plentiful supply of timber for scaffolds and of hemp

for rope. Retaliatory measures could not cover them. British and French cannot torture prisoners, murder civilians, mutilate little children and abuse agonising women —when they march through Germany—on the ground that thus and thus the Germans have done at every convenient opportunity. We must leave such forms of " {rightfulness" to their inventors and perpetrators, although it may freely be admitted that if there were no other way to secure a reasonable guarantee that there should be no repetition of the unspeakable crime perpetrated upon inoffensive Belgium it would be absolutely . justifiable, to exterminate the criminals. There are, however, other German villainies which can be countered, as for example the use of gas and the bombing of undefended cities. Nobody knows better than the German War Office that if gas once becomes a common weapon the Germans will be the losers; they thought to gain a decisive advantage at a critical moment by its unexpected use, and relied upon the hiunanitarianism they despise to protect them against retaliation. It is quite possible that when the Allies use gas the Germans will tacitly agree to discontinue the horrible practice ; in any case, the Allies will no longer be under a monstrous disadvantage which no Allied government has the right to impose upon its brave, soldiers. The aerial bombing of Allied towns may similarly bo checked by teaching the Germans that, although their enemies have been singularly forbearing, both sides can play that game. The French have suffered for ten months and the British for several months from aerial raiders, who avoid the defended military points and aim at nothing but the terrorising of the civilian populations. The preposterous indignation of the Kaiser, and the panic at Karlsruhe, aro in vivid contrast to the complacent approval with which the Kaiser and his people have greeted German bombing of Allied towns. The mere fact that fhe German is such a firm believer in " frightfulness" points to the conclusion that of all the countries in the world Germany is the most easily cowed and disorganised by a little of her own medicine.