BRITISH LEARN TO HATE ENEMY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12064, 20 July 1917, Page 7

BRITISH LEARN TO HATE ENEMY.

CAMPAIGN OF TERRORISM MAKES BRITONS

CLAMOUR FOR. VENGEANCE

(By JUDSON C. WELLIVER. in New York "Sun. v ) LONDON, May H. Although I have been in England in v. nr timo oniv about' three months I havo boon impressed within that period more by the changing altitude of the British mid French peoples toward the war than by any other one: thing. By tins I mean that- since the German inauguration of Miirestrictcd submarine terrorism and since the beginning of tho tremendous battles on the western fiont with the opening or spring both the British and 1* rench people havo been rapidly developing at attitude, of intense bitterness, of real, persona], physical hatred toward their enemy that- was not observable even a few months ago, and the alienee of which w< r is one of the moststriking characteristics of public sentiment. in the early stages of the war- _ There is to-day a new jeeling in England that- the war is one in which there can be no other end than destruction of one combatant or tho other. Earlier the good-natured British public, true to tho ideals of sportsmanship, persisted in the belief that war was a great game for points with the regrettable incident of an uncomfortable lot of casualties, but nevertheless to be played according to rules and in which misfortunes and defeats were, to be inflicted without uneccssary malice and accepted with sportsmanlike fortitude and good nature. That attitude of mind is passing away. The British people are fast getting into the mental state of the French, who nro inspired by perfectly fiendish hatred of Germany and all its works. "With the. French the desire to kill, slay, destroy, torture has been inspired by the fact that the war has been within their gates, on their soil; that thev have hnd to see it, to liv 0 it. to feel it thoroughly and really to understand what German frightfulncss means. The British public has merely read about it. To read about it has been horrible enough, but. until very recently has failed utterlv to make the English people abandon their fine, ideals of fair play and s'juare sport. It has been borne in 011 t.hem at last thatthere is no such thing as fair play or square sport in any game in which tho German is engaged. HORDES OF SPIES REVEALED. They have discovered that apparently every German in England—and there wore multitudes of them before, the war—was a. trusty and reliable spy in some, capacity or other for the Government at home. The German clerk in an English bank, the German barber at the hotel, tho German manager of a business house was an espionage, agent. The, inore intimate and confidential his knowledge the more, dangerous he was. So tho business of England was being persistently betrayed into the hands of England's enemies, and when England had tho realisation of this conspiracy forced upon hei it. brought a fearful awakening. While England was learning the truth about, this commercial betrayal she was also beginning to learn something about what German methods of war meant. But she only saw those methods of fright.fulness as through a glass darkly; she heard of them as they were manifested in France, but- didn't see them with tho living eye. England, . in short, has had only a little more | intimate understanding of the war in ! all its reel horrors than the United States has had. But at last the thing has been getting home to England. The sinking of hospital ships to which safe conducts had been handed, the violation of the Red Cross, the deliberate destruction of Belgian relief ships whose safety had been guaranteed, the bringing of prisoners into the danger zone, the sinking of merchant- ships sailing under neutral flags without warning when they were engaged in trade that had no significance to Germany's enemies—those things and scores of others have been working their INEVITABLE EFFECT ON THE BRITISH MIND. the German hymn of hate was J translated into English and imported j from the trenches England was conI vulsed with laughter. It, was too troj mendously ridiculous, too idiotically \ melodramatic possibly to he taken seri- | ously. I heard of one incident when ! a couple of German prisoners who had ! recently arrived in England were enteri tained by their guards, who took them : to a battalion theatrical entertainment I at a camp.in England. The story may ! or may not be true, but my informant ! was a soldier who claimed to have seen i the affair. Hans and Fritz were given j good scats, and at the proper point, in I tho proceedings the master of <.rre- ! monies rose and with a neat little speech j in the best Cockney announced that in special recognition of their two guests 1 the audience would now rise and join in singing the " 'ymn of 'ate. ' "Whereupon the Tommies all stood up, the piano started the accompaniment and the rafters were shaken with tho resounding chorus of Germany s battle hvmn of hate. GERMANS WERE PITIED. That sort of thing was still looked upon only a few month,s ago as a huge ioke. Hans and Fritz were, still re-gard,-d as unfortunate victims of a delusion that had somehow taken possession of Germany. England and England's soldiers were not prepared to liato the German people. 'I hey felt sorry for the poor devils in the German trenches, who were, looked upon as the victims of a bad system irom which the war was going to emancipate them. There was a strangely persistent unwillingness to believe, thati the methods of the German army represented the sentiments of file, individual German soldier. Rather thero was a. determination to cling to the old notion that the Germans as people wero very much like other people, and that Kaiserism was the institution that was to blame for the troubles of not only the rest of the world but also of the. masses of the German soldiers and the German people. I think three recent developments in the war have contributed in tho largest port to break down this old iiovion and to substitute for it a. firm conviction that tho individual German is really a conscious and knowing and understanding and willing part of tho conspiracy of German barbarism against everything deep at and civilised One was the intimate understanding which England got of Germa.n war methods when tho German lines began to retreat from the Somrae, and tho world got a, view of the panorama of destruction that had been spread out in the occupied area before the. Germans evacuated it. Tho FIENDISH COMPLETENESS with which the thing had been done, the evident purpose of not merely destroying things that might be of military value hut literally of converting

the country into a desert, of ruining it if it coulcl be ruined for all future/ ime > was brought home to the realisation or both tho English and the French people. ~ , Tho French, it 'ina.y he said, dinn t need much of this kind of inspiration, they were hating already just about as ardently as it is possible for a. people to h.'itc. " No so the English. _ They needed to see, to know, to vitalise the horrors of German shrecklichk'MtAfter they had looked at- the. moving pictures and read the .stories of this scientific devastation in France the English people went hack and reread their Bernhnrdi. Ihey refreshed their recollections of Prussian methods in the wars of 1566 and 18<0, They forced themselves to realise that the German is to-day precisely what he was in those, wars, that he prides himself on the thoroughness with which he does tho job, that war to him means extermination. lie engages in it as a pretext, for exterminating other peoples not bcause he hates them but because they are. other peoples, and therefore he regards them as encumberers of the earth. This is the conception that Englishmen are nowadays getting fixed in their minds of the German character. Some °f the incidents of this readjustment, of viewpoint mightbp. humorous if tho things that had brought it about were not so tragic. READY TO HATE ALL OF FOE. It is the fact that England, is at last getting into a .state of mind that makes it. ready to seize upon any excuse for ha,ting not merely the German Government, not merely the German system, not merely Teutonic Kultur, but the individual German, the. soldier, tho man in the street, the peasant in tho field.

I stood in the public squaw of tho little. French town of Nesle a few weeks ago, three weeks after it. had been abandoned by the Germans and left filled with cripples, blind people, aged men and helpless children whoso parents had been taken away from them. A group of these unfortunates bad been telling us their experiences. _ A bin; French sergeant shouldered himself into the group, and presently T noticed that, as he listened he ""'as trembling: and T saw a tear roll down his bronzed and dusty cheek. He turned away as if hi a determined effort to cot 'control of himself, and as ho did so he muttered: "When wo. get into Germany wp will make them pay dearly in kind for all these outrages.''

This is exactly what the French poilu hns been determined to do for a. long time. But it. is a new thing for the British people, for plain, peaceful, sim-ple-minded middle-aged men and matronly women to he talking; that sort; of thine in England ; but- the spirit- of it is taking possession of them. Let Germany inflict, another three years of unrestricted H'anism upon Europe and it is impossible t'O imagine what may result. This war is fast; becoming a war of sheer barbarism : a. war for the extermination of peoples; a war not between organised military units, hut a war between wholo populations. Despite al' the carnage that- is being wrought along the battle line from the Nortli Sea to the Alps, the most effective weapon that ir. being employed is starvation; starvation aimed at the bodv of the nation: starvation which Germany is determined to impose and which England and her Allies are just as determinedly endeavouring to impose upon Germany.