THE DRAMA OF 365 DAYS
German people, with a calm conscience, would kneel and pray:
- "Hallowed be Thy name,
- Thy kingdom come,
- Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
"WE SHALL NEVER MASSACRE BELGIAN WOMEN"
One of the writers who performed the same
kind of moral somersault was Gerhart Hauptmann,
author of a Socialist drama called "The
Weavers," and, rumour says, protege (what
frightful irony!) of the Crown Prince. Hauptmann
knew well (none better) that a vast proportion
of the human family live perpetually
on the borderland of want, and that of all who
suffer by war the poor suffer most. Yet he
wrote (and a degenerate son of the great Norwegian
liberator, Björnsen, published) a letter,
in which, after telling the poor of his people
that "heaven alone knew" why their enemies
were assailing them, he called on them (in
effect) to avenge unnameable atrocities, which
he alleged, without a particle of proof, had been
committed on innocent Germans living abroad, and
then said, in allusion to Mr. Maeterlinck, "I can
assure him that, although 'barbarous Germans,'
we shall never be so cowardly as to massacre or
martyr the Belgian women and children."
