144 our freedom, to breathe the pure air, to stretch out our arms, and exclaim free, free,, free, thank God I am a free man. In conclusion I will quote a leaflet that we were given before leaving Germany, and which at the present time will be appropriate. This leaflet is quoted in full in my bookt Never Again, and is as follows A parting word, Gentlemen, the war is over. A little while, and you will see your native land again, your homes, your loved ones, your friends, you will once more take up your accustomed work. The fortunes of war brought you into our hands as- prisoners, you were freed even against your will from the fighting, from danger, from death. But the joys of peace could not be yours, for there was no peace. Now peace is coming, and peace means liberty. When you are already united to your families, thousands of our countrymen will still be pining in far off prison camps with hearts as hungry for home as yours. You have suffered in confinement, as who could not, it was the fate of every prisoner in every prison camp in the world to eat his heart out with longing, to chafe against loss of liberty, to suffer from home sickness, brooding, dis couragement, black despair. The days, the weeks, the weary years crept by, and there was no end in sight. There were many discomforts, irritations, misunderstandings. Your situation has been a difficult one, our own has been desperate. Our country blockaded, our civil population and Army suffering from want of proper and sufficient food and materials, the enormous demands made on our harassed land from every side these and many other afflictions made it impossible to do all that we should have liked to do. Under the circumstances we did our best to lessen the hardships of your lot, to ensure your comfort, to provide you with pastime, employment, mental and bodily recreation. It is not likely that you will ever know how difficult our circumstances have been. We know that errors have been committed and that there have been hardships for which the former system was to blame. There have been wrongs and evils on both sides. We hope that you will always think of that, and be just. You entered the old Empire of Germany, you leave the new Republic, the newest and, as we hope to make it, the freest land in the world. We are sorry that you saw* so little of what we are proud of in the former Germany, our Arts, our Sciences, our Model Cities, our Theatres, Schools, Industries, our Social Institutions, as well as the beauties of our scenery, and the real soul of our people, akin in so many, things to your own. But these things will remain part of the new Germany. Once the barriers of artificial hatred and misunderstandings have fallen, we hope that you will learn to know, in happier times, these grander features of the land whose unwilling guests you have been. A barbed wire enclosure is not the proper point of view from which to survey or judge a great nation. The war has blinded all nations. But if a true and just peace will result in opening the eyes of the peoples to the fact, that their interests are common, that no difference in flags, governments, speech or nationality, can alter the great truth of the fraternity of all men, this war will not have been fought in vain. We hope that every one of you will go home carrying a message of goodwill, of conciliation, of enlightenment. Let all men in our new epoch go forth as missionaries of the new evangel, as interpreters between nation and nation. The valient dead who once fought against each other have long been sleeping as comrades side by side in the same earth. May the living who once fought against each other labour as comrades side by side upon this self same earth. That is the message with which we bid you farewell. Let us all work in the spirit of the above message, and carry the message of peace far and wide. Let us by all means give full respect to the fallen in the Great War, but let us see to it that it is NEVER AGAIN." H. G. (Copyright, All Rights Reserved).

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1935 | | pagina 18