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The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon

Categories Essays, War
Language English
Published 1918
Word count 36,918
Excerpt

d his favourite son for Attila the Hun. Second, in sending his German soldiers out to China, and later in 1914 to Belgium, he gave them this charge: "You will take no prisoners; you will show no mercy; you will give no quarter; you will make yourselves as terrible as the Huns under Attila." Plainly the Kaiser knew his men. He knew that they were capable of outdoing even that monster Attila the Hun. So he sent them forth to bayonet babes, violate old women, murder old men, crucify officers, violate nuns, sink Lusitanias, and turn solemn treaties into scraps of paper.

Now over against the Kaiser's charge, black as hell, and big with death, witness Pershing's charge, reported loosely by a French boy, with his imperfect knowledge of English, translated out of the French newspapers on July 18, 1917. Pershing's brief address comes to this:

"Young soldiers of America, you are here in France to help expel an invading enemy; but you are also here to lift a shield above the poor and weak; you wil