more inhuman it is, because
the very terrors which its excesses inspire shorten it and make it less
murderous.

In the second place, war necessarily ignores moral laws. Respect for
laws, treaties, conventions, loyalty, good faith, sentiment and honor,
scruples, nobility of soul generosity--these are mere fetters. The
God-people do not recognize them. It will then, without hesitation,
violate the rights of neutrals if it is to its interest. It will use
falsehood, perfidy, treachery. It will justify itself by futile pretexts
in committing the most atrocious acts--bombardment of undefended cities,
massacre of old men, women and children; barbarous torture, pillage and
assassination; bestiality to women; organized incendiarism; methodical
destruction of monuments which, by their history and their antiquity and
by the admiration of the world, would seem to be inviolable. "I am told:
I must avenge myself." This reason suffices. We are told that some
inhabitant of one city or another has been wanting in respect toward one
of our men. Therefore we must burn the city and show the inhabitants
what we have. Definitively, our duty is to let loose the elementary
energies of nature as far as possible to attain the maximum force and
the maximum of result.

The effect should, moreover, be psychological as well as material.
Actions which seem horrible to man and which spread terror are
commendable means, because they break the spirit even if they have no
value from a military point of view. Moreover, what offends common
morality is conformed to transcendent morality. The mission of the
Germans at war is to punish. They work Divine vengeance. They compel
their enemies to expiate the crime of resisting them. After they have
taken a city, if the enemy has the insolence to take it back, it is just
that they shall sack that city if possible, killing its inhabitants and
burning its finest monuments.

*Barbarity Multiplied by Science.*

Given this problem, how to let loose most widely the powers of evil, it
is clear that a people of superior culture is better equipped than any
other to resolve that problem. In fact, science, where it excels, can
work destruction and evil with the very forces which nature employs only
to create light, heat, life, and beauty. The God-people therefore unites
the maximum of science to the maximum of barbarity. The formula of its
action may be thus written: "Barbarity multiplied by science."

This is the las