Asia Minor and in Morocco, between England and Germany, between Germany and France. But what of German relations with Russia? In the murderous spirit that took possession of the German public during the first weeks of the war everything seemed credible. The German populace believed that Belgian women had gouged out the eyes of the German wounded, that Cossacks ate tallow candles, that they had taken infants by the legs and torn them to pieces; they believed that Russia aspired to the annexation of the German empire, to the destruction of German "Kultur," to the introduction of absolutism from Kiel to Munich, from the Warthe to the Rhine. The Social-Democratic Chemnitzer Volksstimme wrote on August 2nd:
"At this moment we all feel it our duty to fight first against the Russian knout. German women and children should not become the victims of Russian bestiality, German territory must not fall into the hands of the cossacks. For if the Entente is victorious, not the French Republicans, but the Russian Tsar will rule over Germany. In this moment we defend everything that we possess of German culture and German freedom against a pitiless and barbarous foe."
On the same day the Fraenkische Tagespost cried out:
"Shall the Cossacks, who have already taken possession of our border towns, in their onrush on our country, bring destruction to our cities? Shall the Russian Czar, whose love of peace the Social-Democrats refused to trust even on the day when his peace manifesto was published, who is the worst enemy of the Russian people themselves, rule over one man of German blood?"
And the Koenigsberger Volkszeitung wrote on August 3rd:
