A Fact
To understand the true inwardness of this cartoon, the reader must be familiar with the writings of General von Hartmann, one of the chief evangelists of German methods of warfare. The following gem is extracted from an article by von Hartmann, published in 1877, on “Military Necessities and Humanity”:—
“The warrior has need of passion. It must not, indeed, as the result of opposition, be regarded as a necessary evil; nor condemned as a regrettable consequence of physical contact; nor must we seek to restrain and curb it as a savage and brutal force; for in causing a powerful and exclusive concentration of individual energies it becomes an indispensable agent of the consummation of conflict. Every warlike exploit is before all things of a personal nature; it puts before all else the affirmation of the individual character, and it demands, in its agent, a release from the oppressive rule of the moderating laws of everyday life.... Violence and passion are the two levers essential to any warlike action, and, we say it advisedly, of all military greatness.”
FRANCIS STOPFORD
A FACT
This brutalism by Major Tille of the German Army on a small boy of Maastricht was vouched for by an eye-witness.