In Paris, if one of us passing, on Friday, Oct. 9, in the Rue d’Edimbourg, to an office of the Societe d’Economie Politique, situated at No. 14, had passed near to that address, he might have been murdered by a bomb thrown from one of your Taubes on the civil population of a town whose bombarding had not been notified.  Another Taube caused, through the throwing of a bomb, a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.  You cannot, to excuse such an assault, invoke the pretext put forward to excuse the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims.  No observer could have caught sight of a German soldier from the top of the towers.

Barbarian Soldiery.

Your co-signatories and you express indignation because the civilized world describes your soldiers as barbarians.  Do you therefore consider such deeds as those specified to be a high expression of civilization?  And here is the dilemma:  either you are in ignorance of these deeds, then you are indeed very careless, or you approve of them, in which case you must make the defense of them enter into your works on right and ethics.  In doing so you would only be following the theories of your military authors who have insisted on the necessity of striking terror into the hearts of the civil population, in order that it may weigh on its Government and its army so strongly that they may be forced to ask for peace.  But those of your colleagues who profess psychology must, if they have approved such a theory, confess today that they made a great mistake; for such deeds, far from forcing the people to cowardly action, awaken indignation in all hearts and fire the courage of our soldiers.  Nevertheless, your military authors have not stated that theft was a means of assuring victory.  And yet the Crown Prince, your Emperor of tomorrow, gathered together at the castle of the Count of Baye articles in precious metals, belonging to a collection, which he had carefully packed up and sent off.  Some of your officers’ trunks have been found stuffed with goods which would constitute the stock of a second-hand clothes seller.  Do you and your co-signatories include in German science and art the science and art of housebreaking?  Are the law professors and the economists willing to defend such a manner of acquiring property?  And, if so, what becomes of your penal code?

You and your co-signatories affirm that the present struggle is directed against “German culture.”  If such culture teaches that the rights of men include contempt of treaties, contempt of private property, contempt of the lives of non-combatants, you cannot be surprised that the other nations show no desire to preserve it for your benefit and their detriment.