Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/236

 grams, was the same God with whom Bismarck "settled matters" regarding his eighty thousand slain, that strange compact of reconciliation is readily intelligible. Otherwise, no!

If Bismarck made cruelty his sacrament, in the gross, he was far from neglecting details. No torch lit a village in France, no finger pulled a trigger against non-combatants, that was not sped by his counsel. I first read his words in Belgium as the stories of Liége, and Visé, and Aerschot, and Louvain poured in—

"True strategy consists in hitting your enemy and hitting him hard. Above all, you must inflict on the inhabitants of invaded towns the maximum of suffering, so that they may become sick of the struggle, and may bring pressure to bear on their government to discontinue it. You must leave the people through whom you march only their eyes to weep with.

"In every case the principle which guided our general was that war must be made terrible to the civil population so that it may sue for peace."

And when Favre, coming out from the heroic defence of Paris, appealed to him in name of that "brotherhood which binds the brave of all the earth," the Wotan of modern Germany replied—

"'You speak of your resistance! You are proud of your resistance. Well, let me tell you, if M. Trochu were a German general, I would shoot him this evening. You have not the right—do you