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After the Whirlwind; A Book of Reconstruction and Profitable Thanksgiving
After the Whirlwind A Book of Reconstruction and Profitable Thanksgiving Author:Charles Edward Russell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1919 Original Publisher: George H. Doran company Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial a... more »ccess to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III KINGS AND COMMERCE No man, according to a venerable philosophy, ever does anything for but one reason. Yet with unaccountable simplicity we seem always to expect a single motive in nations, which are but aggregations of men. The influences that led Germany (in the excellent phrase of the New York World) to draw the sword and lunge with it at the heart of civilization were many and complex, but I have heard the fact of her aggression doubted because the reason for it was not single and plain. It was Germany obsessed, avid and almost frenzied with lust for empire, and grown callous as to how empire was to be obtained; a Germany like a fortune- hunter maddened at the imminent prospect of success. Take but one illustration of the change that had come over it. The ancient city of Senlis, twenty-five miles north of Paris, was the limit reached by the main body of the German invasion of 191A It was in German possession eight days, or until the disaster of the Marne began. In those eight days the Germans had committed shocking and senseless atrocities. They haidbombarded with their artillery an undefended and unresisting town; they had looted it in wholesale fashion; they had burned nearly one-half of it; in a wild riot of blood thirst they had put to death old men, women and children; with circumstances peculiarly revolting they had murdered the white-haired old mayor, Eugene Odent, with six other old men, plain workers, artisans, a carpenter, a mason, and the like, chosen apparently because of their age. Yet forty-fou...« less