The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1915. THE UNSPEAKABLE GERMAN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XL, Issue 12540, 11 May 1915, Page 4

The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1915. THE UNSPEAKABLE GERMAN.

The -horrors of the war are multiplying.- New cruelties are added to Germany's operations to gratify her desperation at failure to achieve what in her inordinate conceit she -thought was -within her grasp. The use of suffocating and death-dealing gases, to stifle enemies whose power .she had ■as contemptuously underestimated as she had arrogantly overestimated her own, has been followed by the unspeakable "Lusitania". atrocity. For all such outrages, Germans urge some shuffling plea. Gas was used because the British were going to use hounds against them; the "Lusitania" was sunk because she was carrying ammunition and was armed. The coined bare-faced lie about the British and the dogs places one in doubt as to whether he ought to laugh 'or to swear. Now that Germany is told that the "Lusitania" carried neither ;;uns nor ammunition, she tells the world that this fact ought to havo been announced! And yet the German -secret service is omnipresent and omniscient. It is the boast of the Teuton, that he knows everything that is proceeding in every country that he wants to know: He wanted, to kno.w about the dogs ; though they may have been the creation and the creatures of looted wine cellars, but he did not want to know tiiat the "Lusitania" was unarmed and an utterly helpless passenger ship. German}' makes her own moral code as the necessity arises to wriggle out of some tight corner, and manufactures truths as she does Krupp guns, out of metal. 'What is to be done with this destructive monster ? The whole world is growing sick of reading of Germany's performances morning, noon, and night. It is aghast at the development of her hatred and her defiance of heaven and earth. All humanity is appalled —it is almost struck dumb —at the latest pitiful and cowardly act of Tirpitz as the idolised agent of the Germans. And yet, while thousands of homes are grieving 'at the loss of relatives and friends,. at the hands of the German war fiend, Berlin and the lthino and Vienna rejoice atthe heroic act winch ennobles their peoples and entitles them to be coiii sidered the 'salt of the earth destined to rule over all. What will America do to compel Germany's respect for international'amenities ? No one will blame the United States for -avoiding war with all its human slaughter and economic waste. But so great and glorious a country owes a duty' to others as well as to herself in the exertion of a moral influence. There can be no question that Germany sank the, "Lusitania" and murdered United States citizens and more than a thousand others. It is just as clear that there was no warrant for the act. The New York World challenged Hcrr Ballin, in an interrupted wireless message, to give one justification for the destruction of the "Lusitania," as "it would be welcomed by millions of German-Ameri-cans." The New York "World know that it was asking for the impossible. There is no law either Divine or human that allowed it. No wonder that Ger-man-Americans are hunting for ' some colorable excuse behind which to hide their shame—shame not only at the. assassination of the helpless and inoffensive, but at the Kaiser's making such an inhuman act an occasion for giving the schoolchildren a holiday. Surely a nation that teaches children to make merry over the corpses'' of little comrades and of women which are being thrown up on the beaches of Ireland through an. act of their nation must bo lost to all sense of decency. The destruction of the "Lusitania" and the murder of its passengers will prove to tho world, in more lurid characters than ever, that there can be no peace whilst the German menace exists.