To the
Belgian, a German in his home or in his town was no more than an armed
housebreaker. What did he care for the code of war? He was not
responsible for the war. He had no share in framing the code. He took
his gun, and when the chance came he fired---and fired to kill.
Perhaps, at first, he did not know that by that same act he forfeited
his life and sacrificed his home and jeopardized the lives and homes of
all his neighbors. Perhaps in the blind fury of the moment he did not
much care.
Take the German soldier: He had proved he was ready to meet his enemy in
the open and to fight him there. When his comrade fell at his side,
struck down by an unseen, skulking foe, who lurked behind a hedge or a
chimney, he saw red and he did red deeds. That in his reprisals he went
farther than some might have gone under similar conditions is rather to
have been expected. In point of organization, in discipline, and in the
enactment of a terribly stern, terribly deadly course of conduct for
just such emergencies, his masters had gone farther than the heads of
any modern army ever went before.
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