WILLIAM THE MURDERER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 19, 16 August 1917, Page 7

WILLIAM THE MURDERER.

HIS DAILY REPRIEVE. GERMAN PRISONERS AVOWAL. I I A wounded English officer had much to say to an • interviewer who tsked him for his impressions of the situation on the western front, and his opinion seemed to be that if the people, at Home really knew what rapid T ingress is actually being made by the! Allies* they would be agreeably astonished. But one of the most inter-

csting things 1 e had to relate was his mooting with a German who was taken prisoner at the time he himself was wounded, and who carried him some distance hack before the ambulance men took charge of him (says the “Morning Post” of May .'ll). This German was a very different kind of man from the ordinary, and gave his views on the war and its longI deferred hut inevitable outcome with complete candour and detachment. He had resided for some years in America, hut when the war threatened he was on a visit to London, and, afraid of being interned, never having taken nut papers as an American subject, he crossed over to the Continent, and found his way into his native land. It was only last year, when the Somme push began, that he was compelled to join up. The following are the statements lie made to the wounded British office’’, who wrote | them down from memory the same 1 evening when lie was in the clearing ■ station:— ■ This war is the greatest crime the world has ever seen. The crimes that made the French Revolution are no

thing if yon compare them with the crimes of the beasts who are running Germany to-day and keeping this war going. They were only thieves and brigands when they began it, and thought they’d bring it off; hut now they’re the bloodiest murderers by

wholesale that the world ever produced. There never was anything like it before. They know perfectly well they’ve lost the war; they’ve known for months that the last chances they ever had have gone. But they are frightened of their own miserable skins to admit it and call a halt; and because they are frightened of what the people might do when they learned the truth they keep the thing going, and sacrifice many thousands of Germans every single day and millions of money. For what? To shield the reputations of a handful of princes and politicians. It’s the greatest crime the world has ever known. Here on this front our people are being killed like flies. Your artillery kills them in bunches. There isn’t a minute of the day but legs and arms are being blown off. Our men would gladly give themselves up to end it, but you know they cannot. When there seems to be a chance there is always an officer of N.C.O.’s about. It is not, only your guns that kill. Many Germans fall every day >vith German bullets in them. They are driven like dogs to the fighting. And to what end? Because our cursed Kaiser and the creatures we call statesmen are afraid of their lives for what will happen to them when the people know’ it’s all lip.

PEOPLE HELPLESS AS SLAVES. But plenty of them know it now. Many knew before ever I was forced to join up. And perhaps I never shotild have been made to join if I had known less and never said a word of what I did know. I talked a little of what T knew. And that is enough. In Germany to-day the man who will till the truth must be hustled out of the way. That is why I see no hope for Germany; because those left in the country have no spirit,; can do nothing. All the strength of the country, such as it is, is in the fighting lines—helpless as slaves. The others, there in Germany, they are slaves—starving, starving quietly, never daring to say a word. The few who speak soon find themselves hustled into the front line, and no more is heard of them. They go on paying the price.—thousands of lives every day; every single day The Central Powers’ casualties now must he a hundred thousand a week. And all for what : The crazy dreams of a few ■hankers and merchants, and the cowardly fears of a few noliticians and of the Hohenzollerns. They say the Hapshnrgs, ton; hut the Austrians would be thankful to make peace to-' morrow, but they cannot. They are as much sacrificed by Berlin as wo poni 1 devils are here on the front. All I lie bloody slaughter of this war, with its milliards of money and thousands of lives lost—every single day—what keeps it going long after it has been finally decided is not the will of nations. No, it is the murderous criminality and cowardice of a little handful of men in Berlin who never have been anything but a pest in Europe. Is not that the greatest crime the world has ever known P And is it not strictly true? Does not sane German suppose the appointed end can be altered when the whole New World is ranged against Germany as well as tlie Old ? They know all about the hundred million men in the States; and the millions of millions of money; the innumerable factories and slopyards. They know that America can* put hundreds of thousands of fresh troops on this front next spring, and that the exhaustion of Germany long before then will he frightful. It is frightful now; it has been frightful for a year and more. They know it all,, and, brute devils that they are, they' choose to keep the awful slaughter going, not because they nope it can alter the end but for what you call “Wait and see!” because they fear to face to-day what.they can put off till to-morrow, at the cost of another few thousand decent lives, another few milliards of money. Never before since the world began has a twentieth part ,of such suffering been allowed to continue day after day and month ofter fnonth to protect a handful of exalted criminals from general recognition of their crimes. The Russian people rose and smashed the bonds that hound them. Yes; but not our people. Our tyrants have boon cleverer. It was only the bodies of the Russian people that were fettered. Their minds were free. No German mind, in Germany, has been free since 1870. The Berlin criminals have seen too well to that. Our people think they have been well educated. So they have—very well, very carefully—for just what they are doing now; for the blindest and most damnable kind of slavery the world has ever seen ; for a slavery in which the will of the masters must he paid for daily by steadily running streams of the blood of their victims, victims taught to hare their own throats to the knife on the word of command. If your armies could reach Germany itself the slavery might end suddenly. But Germany to-day is one vast prison full of starving slaves who cannot lift a hand to help themselves, and that it will remain while William the Murderer can go on buying a daily reprieve for his own misearable family in return for the blood of ten thousand of Hr; slaves. Thank God t am nut of it!