The Henson Journals

[23]

Saturday, September 19th, 1914.

46th day

A lower temperature but no rain. I made a start with the article on 'Christianity & War', which I foolishly promised to write for the "Church Quarterly". I wrote to Kitty. Ella went with me to Bishop Auckland, where I addressed another Recruit–raising meeting. There was an overflow meeting in the Market–place, and this also I addressed. There was a large attendance of Miners, and they seemed to be enthusiastic. There is still no news from the seat of war, though we understand that a tremendous battle continues. The casualty list published in this morning's paper contains the name of young Denroche–Smith. The stories of German barbarities are very distressing, & not a little perplexing. Rogerson gave an instance on the authority of Lady Petre, who had told him that among the Belgian refugees, whom she was receiving, was a child with both its hands cut off! There are many similar stories in circulation: & the narratives of the wounded, & in private letters from soldiers at the front, are full of the same thing. The official treatment of the Belgian & French cities gives a quasi–authentication to every kind of oppression. I suspect that the reports of the atrocities perpetrated on the natives in the Congo district by the agents of the late King Leopold have been widely distributed among the German soldiers, and have operated as a miserably suggestive influence on their minds. Add the fact of general intoxication, which seems undoubted, and it is, perhaps, not necessary to seek for more remote explanations. But the fact is very lamentable & humiliating. The blatant nonsense which the Kaiser has talked about Attila & the Huns – for whom the modern Pan–German appears to have developed a kind of cultus – has no doubt stimulated every brutal tendency in the German People, & marked out for the German Army a truly revolting path.

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