REMEMBER COVENTRY! (REMEMBER HAMBURG?)
Mayer, Milton
Remember Coventry! (Remember Hamburg?) By MILTON MAYER ATROCITY TIME is here again, and oh, to be anywhere, now that atrocity time is here. It was slow in coming, like the heavy fighting, but it...
...From now on in, the lights will burn brightly all night in the Nurses' Breasts Division of the OWI of every country...
...Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi philosopher, said, "There is no use trying to reason with them...
...After The Hamburg Raids Continuing my voracious reading, I see by the Associated Press that an exchanged British prisoner, arriving in London, is able to report that "after the heavy raids on Hamburg the German people were very incensed against the British...
...I am sure that this is the best of all possible wars, and that everything is going to be just fine in the end...
...is obviously of an atrocious piece with beheading and torso-kicking...
...Any law which is not an ordinance of reason, promulgated by the people whom it governs, and accompanied by the force of the sheriff's wand, is not law at all but so much jabber...
...I don't know...
...Atrocities, my Aunt Nellie...
...But it will be heaviest of all at the peace table...
...I wasn't there, but a Jap, as William Green would say, is always a Jap, so the atrocities must have occurred...
...I say "reported" because I wasn't there myself, and the report is reported to have come from a Jap...
...A Contradiction Of Terms And finally, as I pick up my favorite atrocity, the Chicago Tribune, I see a front-page cartoon of Hiro-hito hanging from a gallows...
...But the reported incident fails to say whether or not the offender was punished by his superiors...
...Then there are the German atrocities in Italy, particularly in Naples, fulsomely reported by Italian generals and officials who, as recently as a month or two ago, were just as fulsomely reported to be committing atrocities themselves...
...We should have no difficulty in licking such Dummkopfs...
...Since this dispatch, originating in Switzerland, was passed by the British censors, I assume that the British are proud of the going-over they have given the women and children of Germany, and if'the British are proud, why shouldn't we be...
...Not Law At All There is, of course, no international law, except as it appears on the salary checks of professors of international law...
...Two special complaints have been made in connection with the reported beheading...
...It was, if the report may be believed, infinitely more genteel and merciful than, say, hanging, or the fine American art of twisting a bayonet around inside an enemy's stomach...
...Finally, or, rather, semi-fmally, I find the UP reporting from London that "Germany has lost 1,200,-086 civilians through Allied air raids since the start of the war, 102,486 of whom were killed between April 1 and Oct...
...It was not, in a Word, an atrocity at all, but it had to pass for one for want of the real thing...
...The second is that a Japanese soldier vengefully kicked the torso after the beheading...
...An agreement-among sovereigns who can not be brought to book by a higher sovereign is no more law than a private contract...
...Being a white man, and therefore superior, I should, of course, restrain myself...
...Perhaps it depends on whose ox is getting the Goring,- or whose censor is censoring what...
...Meanwhile let us get on with the business at hand —killing our fellow men—and leave the psalm-singing to the preachers...
...We must stoop to the level set by our beastly enemies...
...Force is the only thing they understand...
...If the Japanese soldier happened to have lost his mother, his sister, or his baby as the result of the bombing by the beheaded bomber, the kicking, though atrocious, was understandable...
...The execution, it appears, was performed with due regard to the niceties of Japanese ritual...
...25 in 12 cities alone...
...The caption of the cartoon is: THE ONLY LANGUAGE THEY UNDERSTAND...
...In addition," the dispatch from London continues, "6,933,000 German civilians were said to have been bombed out of their homes and evacuated from stricken cities...
...The Germans, being Dummkopfs, must have sought shelter in the military objectives...
...Why the German people should have been incensed by the bombing of Hamburg is beyond me, unless the German people are, as I have long suspected, sub-human...
...War reduces men to the condition of dogs...
...Our exclusive, white, American gift of humanity will not help us when the going gets tough...
...Of course, he was talking about the Americans, but I see no reason, since he was mistaken only in his application of the principle, why we should not adopt a perfectly good principle and apply it where it belongs...
...I suppose the Japs were beheading Germans that time around, and the Germans were ashamed to admit it...
...That must be true, because many years ago Mr...
...The Germans are a shameful people anyway, whereas we white folks, or Americans, are outspoken on even the most delicate of matters...
...We must put it on ice and resurrect it, intact, of course, when the war is over...
...The headline on this story is: NAZIS STONE WAR CAPTIVES...
...These figures should not be considered, let me advise you, in connection with the atrocious bombing of Coventry, since the Nazis were obviously aiming at civilian objectives, Coventry containing no military objectives but only a few aircraft factories, railroad stations, and cathedrals...
...I am sure that in the Allied bombing of Germany only military objectives were aimed at, and the Norden bomb-sight is the finest in the world...
...I wasn't there...
...less so, because there is recourse to law in the infringement of a private contract...
...This sort of behavior...
...If Japanese soldiers are permitted to step out of rank to kick torsos, we should have no difficulty in licking the Japs, as they are obviously an army without any discipline whatever...
...Nor was I present in Japan in 1918, when the heroic Japanese, fighting manfully beside us to save the world for democracy, appear to have succeeded in concealing their atrocities from us, their intimate allies...
...Humane warfare -4s a contradiction of terms...
...The best atrocity so far was the reported beheading of a captured American bomb-dropper by the Japanese...
...If it happened, it was atrocious...
...Refugees who had lost their homes stoned our working parties...
...I should be tempted to do the same thing under the same circumstances...
...But the best of all possible wars must not be confused with the fox-trot...
...My dear, dear friends, war is an atrocity...
...As to the vengeful kicking of the corpse, I was, I repeat, not present at the time...
...The first complaint is that beheading of prisoners of war is forbidden by international law...
...It was slow in coming, like the heavy fighting, but it had to come as sure as the heavy fighting had to come, and it will get heavier as the fighting gets heavier...
...Wars are won by killing, starving, maiming, bombing, looting, burning, and rape...
...even lower, as the Houwhynnm observed to Gulliver, for reason enables men to add torture to mere brutality...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48
