SEMPER TALIO

The recent raids on England by German aerial forces have inspired in the attacked country a cry for retaliation. Let the German unprotected towns be shattered by the bombs of English raiders, and German women and children die as have the English, by that blind destruction against which there is no defence.

Fortunately those who control England's war policy have too much human wisdom to attempt a course in plan and achievement so vain. The law of requital is the law of the feud, whereby hate for the enemy is born and fostered in generation after generation, till the sum of accumulated hate will end in equal destruction. It is the law of the mob, which strives to repay by brutal sin the commission of a brutal sin. The talonic justice that demands suffering for the offender equal to that which he has inflicted is an outworn creed, fit only for the equity of barbarians.

If German towns are destroyed in some wanton and tragedically useless way, it will not be the airmen who manned Germany's raiding machines who will be punished. It will not be those stern minds which ordered the raid, nor the nourishers of that fierce policy of conquest which has led Germany on through the ruin of nations and the ruin of our frail human morality to the goal for which she would almost pay her life. It is not the workers of evil who would suffer by any scheme of revenge that might be planned.

We must remember, should our armies enter into Germany for the complete submission of her stubborn people, that not by the torch nor by the sword may Belgium be avenged. For that there is no atonement. The burning of every German city and the death of every man who defends his invaded country would not bring back one murdered Belgian citizen, would not uprear one razed hamlet, would not make clean one sin.

That which is done may not be undone, even by the deepest suffering of the doer. We have that promise which says: "Vergeance is mine; I will repay." But we, for all we may do, cannot repay, not even to the barest fraction. That is the tragedy of justice.