the tradition of chivalry has always survived. We
read how in the Peninsula the pickets of the two armies, each of them as
earnest as any Germans, would exchange courtesies, how they would shout
warnings to each other to fall back when an advance in force was taking
place, and how to prevent the destruction of an ancient bridge, the
British promised not to use it on condition that the French would forgo
its destruction--an agreement faithfully kept upon either side. Could
one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as this? Think of that
old French bridge, and then think of the University of Louvain and the
Cathedral of Rheims. What a gap between them--the gap that separates
civilization from the savage!

Let us take a few of the points which, when focused together, show how
the Germans have degraded warfare--a degradation which affects not only
the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world, since if such
examples were followed the entire human race would, each in turn, become
the sufferers. Take the very first incident of the war, the mine laying
by the Koenigin Luise. Here was a vessel, which was obviously made ready
with freshly charged mines some time before there was any question of a
general European war, which was sent forth in time of peace, and which,
on receipt of a wireless message, began to spawn its hellish cargo
across the North Sea at points fifty miles from land in the track of all
neutral merchant shipping. There was the keynote of German tactics
struck at the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the effect that
it was a mere chance which prevented the vessel which bore the German
Ambassador from being destroyed by a German mine. From first to last
some hundreds of people have lost their lives on this tract of sea, some
of them harmless British trawlers, but the greater number sailors of
Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they had every right
to do. It was the first move in a consistent policy of murder.

Leaving the sea, let us turn to the air. Can any possible term save a
policy of murder be applied to the use of aircraft by the Germans? It
has always been a principle of warfare that unfortified towns should not
be bombarded. So closely has it been followed by the British that one of
our aviators, flying over Cologne in search of a Zeppelin shed,
refrained from dropping a bomb in an uncertain light, even though
Cologne is a fortress, lest the innocent should suffe