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WHO ARE THE HUNS?

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Bombardments by Aeroplanes. 255<br />

the entire district of South Baden, but they bombarded schools—<br />

whereby chiefly children were slain. They shelled open towns<br />

like Dar-es-Salaam, Victoria in the Cameroons and Swakopmund,<br />

and endeavored with the most incredible meanness to<br />

carry out their "starving-out policy." Nevertheless in this war<br />

of annihilation they adopt a tone of the most revolting cant<br />

and moral indignation. This may delude the foolish and the<br />

unknowing, but it remains without the slightest effect in<br />

Germany.<br />

Lord Fisher has not only defined the limits of warfare in<br />

the air for England but also for us when he declared: "The<br />

chief thing is that the air-ships should prove their value and<br />

damage the enemy—nothing else matters."<br />

The official German bulletin issued by the General Headquarters<br />

on the 25th of December, 1914, shows the proper<br />

German attitude. This states:<br />

"On the afternoon of December 20th a French airman<br />

threw 9 bombs on the village of Inor, though only hospitals<br />

were established here, and these had been plainly marked so<br />

as to be visible even to aeroplanes. No great damage was done.<br />

"As a reply to this act and also to those that involved<br />

recent bomb-throwing upon the open city of Freiburg, which<br />

lies outside the sphere of operations, certain villages which lie<br />

near the position of Nancy were bombarded today by our<br />

airmen with bombs of a medium calibre."<br />

What we were to expect from the enemy airmen if these<br />

were able to carry out all their threats, may be seen by the<br />

bombastic recruiting phrases which led to the founding of the<br />

secret league "France Aviateurs" by Vedrines and Garros.<br />

"What is our purpose? We desire, in the first few hours<br />

after a declaration of war on the side of Germany, to strike<br />

a frightful blow by personal, swift and daring action. We will<br />

bombard the centres of German defence, overwhelm them with<br />

explosives and transform their palaces, their garrisons, their<br />

military buildings into heaps of rubbish. We will carry death<br />

and ruin into the very centres of the enemy's organization, for<br />

this will be a war of destruction, iron against iron, fire against<br />

fire, death against death."

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