next war not only malnutrition but actual starvation “by wholesale.”
Remember those Danish statistics. Ten million soldiers in arms died in the last war; and thirty million others “who might be living today” are not living. War on civilians was not yet a generally acknowledged fact; it was only a practical result. In the next war, it will be an acknowledged fact. The civilian population, I repeat once for all, will be an objective of military necessity—fair game.
It would not be, could not be, if we fought only with the old, primitive weapons, saw with our own eyes the effect of our blows. During the invasion of Belgium, a friend of mine stood beside a German private playing with a little Belgian girl. “Our discipline is perfect,” said the officer. “You see that soldier. He likes that child. He has toward her humane sentiments. Yet if I ordered him to run his bayonet through her, he would obey without an instant’s hesitation,” Now personally, I doubt that. The man in question might have obeyed; I do not believe that the average German soldier would have obeyed—slightly brutalized though he was by “the system.” There were German atrocities in Belgium—I can testify personally to that—but they did not happen in that way. Contrary to a rumor widely circulated and believed by many Americans as gospel, the Germans did not cut off children’s hands.
