ELESS CITIES]

If the Prussian people themselves cling to their Gods of War, if
Kaiser and Crown Prince fulfil their ideals, if the Prussian
leave the reins in the hands of these warlike task masters and
refuse to join the other peoples in stamping out the devil of
war, then the conflict must go on, go on until the Germans get
their stomachs full of war, until they forget their easy
victories of the last century, until their leaders learn that war
as a national industry does not pay, until their wealth and their
trade has disappeared, until their sons are maimed and killed and
their land laid waste, until the blinders fall from their eyes
and they sicken of Emperor and Crown Prince, of the almost
countless Kings and Grand Dukes and Princes, Generals and
Admirals, Court Marshals and Chamberlains and Majors and
Adjutants, Captains and Lieutenants, who now, like fat, green,
distended flies, feed on the blood of Germany. What is there in
war for any one but those men of froth at the top? It is this
infernal king business that is responsible; so much of the king
tradition is bound up with war that a king with power feels that
he is untrue to the traditions of his ancestors if he fails at
some period of his career to give the court painters and the
court poets and the court historians a chance to portray him as a
successful warrior.

The British air minister recently announced that reprisal raids
were to be made on German towns. Who is not sorry for the poor
people who may suffer, but the war must be brought home to them.
They have made no protest while Zeppelins killed babies and women
and children in the "fortress" of London. The "fortress" of
London, indeed! First the Germans attack an open town, contrary
to every rule, and then, when guns are mounted to ward off future
attacks, the Germans christen the town a "fortress" and claim the
right to continue this slaughter of non-combatants.

Postcards were sold and eagerly bought all over Germany showing
the Zeppelins bombing towns. When some German father sits by the
hospital bed of his dying daughter, who sobs out her life torn
with a fatal wound, let him tack one of these postcards over the
bed and in looking on it remember that "he who lives by the sword
shall perish by the sword," that it was at the command of the
Kaiser and the Crown Prince when they thought only the German
Zeppelins could make a successful air raid that these massacres
were ordered and that the Ger