This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII "FRIGHTFULNESS" Mankind has been sickened by the excesses committed by the German armies wherever they have gone, and this, less by the revolting deeds themselves, than by the fact that they have been the outcome of deliberate war-policy. Individual atrocities are committed in every war, since in all armies savage natures find a natural habitat. Military service attracts them because of the opportunity offered of loot, lust, and killing. No army can guard against such devilry, but great soldiers like Wellington have sternly punished the author of the individual atrocity. This incidental--and because human nature is what it is--inevitable, accident of warfare is wholly distinct from the policy of official organized atrocity such as Germany has pursued during the present war. The Kaiser and his government have declared officially, and Count Reventlow, Professor Lasson, and many others unofficially, that the policy of Germany was to produce in the minds of the enemy people an effect of terror and demoralization; that there should be destruction, not only of the material but of the intellectual life of the nation, by which is undoubtedly meant its morale, will-power, and spiritual capacity for resistance. That has been the official war-policy carefully developed and systematically, ruthlessly, and viciously applied. The doctrine of frightfulness is not a new one, but its adoption by a civilized nation as a settled policy is wholly new. In old days it was the normal charSINNING AGAINST THE LIGHT 343 acteristic of war, because war had no limitations. No nice distinctions were made between the military and civil populations, between public and private property; no bounds were set to the privileges of the victor over the vanquished....