Monsieur Segotin's Story
speaks the essential German. A telephone or a telegraph wire is cut; a railway bridge is blown up. So! it is inconvenient for the German Army, that. Who did it? Belgian soldiers? Belgian civilians? There is no time to consider that. We make war not upon the army but upon the whole country. That is our theory of war. That is the only true theory of war. Is it not ours, donnerwetter? And we have been put to inconvenience. Such acts hinder the march of Kultur. So! Well, they must be stopped. And since we cannot lay hands on the Belgian soldiers who assuredly did this thing, as it was their duty to do, let us be satisfied with what we can lay our hands upon. Civilians are plenty and easy. Come, then, let us put a few villages to the sword and torch in this neighbourhood. That will perhaps teach the Belgian Army to let our communications alone. Let us shoot a few hostages, say twenty—or perhaps thirty, to be on the safe side. And let us not be afraid to announce our readiness to kill innocent people, if it should so fall out. Better that a thousand innocent Belgians should die than one guilty German. And these cuttings of the wires endanger German lives, by prolonging the operations. Come, then, shoot me this batch of hostages. Blot out this village and this and this, and let us get on with the civilisation of humanity. This is the way we do things. Therefore it is right. Innocence? Guilt? What do those words mean? We have done with all that. We attach importance only to such words as 'strong' and 'weak,
30
