Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/155

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solution, but we can put Cologne again under the care of civilised France. We must not spoil or ravage one monument of humane effort, religious or secular, in Germany. But the Denkmal at Bingen has got to go, and the Column of Insolence at Berlin has got to go. Mr. Lowes Dickinson has said that Germany must not be humiliated. Not Germany, but Prussia must be humiliated. Berlin militarism must pass under the Caudine Forks, and the forks must be set so low as to sweep the spike of the helmet as it passes.

I saw a mad Belgian soldier taken away from the Ostend Infirmary a few days ago. Of course, I don't know, of my own personal observation, why he went mad. But one of the attendants told me that the soldier told him that he had remained the only survivor of a Belgian patrol which had repelled the attack of a much heavier German advance post. Reinforcements arrived; all his comrades were killed, and he was taken prisoner. His captors roped him up against a tree, in the posture of crucifixion, but without lifting his feet from the ground.

A firing party was ordered to take its stand at the usual twelve paces. Time after time their rifles went up to the "present!" Sometimes a volley was at that moment fired behind him. At last he was cut down; somehow or other he scrambled within reach of the Red Cross. They were very kind to him in Ostend, but he kept on babbling