  Starving Germany.—(Lord Courtney in Manchester “Guardian”)—“The attempt of England to starve Germany is a violation of the Declaration of London and a brutal offense against humanity. For these two reasons—if not for many others—it is a dishonorable proceeding.” (Dispatch of March21,1915.) The silent policy of starving people into subjection is eloquently shown in the history of Ireland, of India, of the South African republics and of the Central Powers, and, strangely, the one country that has achieved this distinction is England. We said that the blockade of Germany was “illegal, ineffective and indefensible,” but Sir Robert Cecil about the same time declared that England and the United States had an understanding, and he boasted that “we have our hands at the throat of Germany” and scorned the suggestion to relax a grip that meant the starvation of women, children and the aged. Germany was told to give up her U-boat sinking of merchant ships and answered that she had no other weapon to make England take her grip off the German throat, and when she was forced to surrender, the full magnitude of the policy of starving non-combatants was revealed. The picture is presented in the uncolored official statements of unprejudiced observers. The Stockholm “Tidningen” of March29,1919: The Swedish Red Cross delegates sent to Germany in order to make arrangements for getting over to Sweden underfed German children have now returned to Stockholm. The first transport will contain 500Berlin children. The delegates describe the want in Germany as appalling. During the revolution days nothing at all could be got for the babies in some places except hot water, and many died, but this was nothing unusual in Berlin. The children were underfed, feeble and rachitic everywhere. Often children four or five years old were unable to walk. In many places the schools had had to be closed because of the general want. Tuberculosis has increased by 60per cent. Because of this older children than at first proposed must be sent to Sweden.... There are also negotiations going on regarding children from the other famishing countries. The German Government has promised to transport the Belgian children free of charge from Belgium to Sassnitz. The interest in Sweden for the war children is immense. One thousand five hundred invitations have already been made from single peasants’ homes, and about £3,000 has been collected, mostly in small contributions from the poorer classes. Thus willingness to sacrifice is great, but, of course, much more money is still needed. Henry Nevison, an eminent journalist, recently presented in the London “Daily News” a tragic description of what he saw in the hospitals of Cologne: “Although I have seen many horrible things,” he writes, “I have seen nothing so pitiful as these rows of babies, feverish from want of food, exhausted by privations to the point that their little limbs were slender wands, their expressions hopeless and their eyes full of pain.”—“The Nation.” Prof. Johansson, of the Neutral Commission, who visited Germany in January, reports: “About 1,600,000 people were killed in the war, but almost half this number, or rather 700,000, fell victims to the food shortage produced by the blockade. The population has decreased in an unprecedented degree by reason Dr.Rubner writes in the “German Medical Weekly” on the effects of the blockade. He gives the figures of deaths of army and civil population since 1914as: Army, all causes, 1,621,000. Civil population, through blockade, 763,000, of which 260,000 is for1917 and 294,000 to the end of1918. He comes to the conclusion that even now any improvement in the condition, as regards nourishment of the German people, will be possible only in a very partial degree; above all, capacity for work will not increase to the needed extent.—“Vorwaerts,” April11,1919. In a report made by five doctors of neutral lands, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch, dated April11, 1919, after they had collected information in Berlin, Halle and Dresden, they say: “The food concessions under the Brussels agreement are altogether inadequate. The most they do is to maintain the present necessitous food conditions.... Immediate help is necessary. Every day of delay risks immeasurable injury not only to the whole of Europe, but to the whole world.” Evidence of the same import is furnished by Jane Adams and charitable English persons, and the liberal periodicals, as distinct from the daily newspapers, have printed columns showing the terrible ravages of an illegal and indefensible blockade which inflicted the horrors of war upon the feeble and helpless, those recognized by the laws of nations and humanity as entitled to protection when not within the sphere of military operations and in no way responsible for or contributing tothem. The armistice was signed November11, 1918, but so relentless was the English policy of crushing the German people that Winston Churchill, on March3, 1919, declared in the House of Commons: “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor.... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and children, upon the old, the weak, and the poor, after all the fighting has stopped.” (“The Nation,” June21, 1919; p.980.) The appalling heartlessness which, not content with inflicting starvation on a whole nation—for we will not mention Austria in this connection—designed to add to its horrors still added injuries, is exposed in the terms of the treaty, by which the German people were required to give up 140,000 milch cows and other livestock. Witness the following Associated Press dispatch: Paris, July24 (Associated Press).—Germany will have to surrender to France 500stallions, 3,000 fillies, 90,000 milch cows, 100,000 sheep and 10,000 goats, according to a report made yesterday before the French Peace Commission, sitting under the Two hundred stallions, 5,000 mares, 5,000 fillies, 50,000 cows, and 40,000 heifers, also are to go to Belgium from Germany. The deliveries are to be made monthly during a period of three months until completed. A total of 140,000 milch cows! Forty thousand heifers! To be surrendered by a country in which little children were dying for lack of milk, and babies were brought into the world blind because of the starved conditions of the mothers! |
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