Just as no sacrifice in endurance and privation was too great for those staying at home, so also the army, in defending itself during the war criminally forced upon us, did not merely overcome the crushing superiority of twenty-eight hostile nations; but likewise, on land and water and in the air, won victories whose glory may have paled a, bit in the mists of the present day but, for that very reason, will shine forth all the more brightly in the light of history. Nor is that all. Wherever there was distress among our allies, Cierman intervention, often with weak forces, always restored the situation and-often won noteworthy successes. Germans fought on all the battlefields of the far-flung World War.
Surely the heroic bravery of the German nation deserved a better fate than to fall a victim to the dagger that treacherously stabbed it from behind; it seems to be the German destiny that Germans shall always be defeated by. Germans. Recently I read the unfortunately not entirely unjustified words; "In Germany every Siegfried has his Hédur behind him.'
Finally, let me say a word concerning the German "atrocities" and give two instances thereof!
After our advance into Northern France I immediately ordered that art treasures be protected. Art-historians and professors were assigned to each army, who travelled about inspecting, photographing and describing churches, cnateaux and castles. Among them Professor Ulemen, Curator of tue Rhine Province, especially distinguished himse: f and reported to me, when 1 was at the front, on the protection of art treasures.
All the collections in -towns, museums and castles were catalogued and numbered; whenever they seemed to be imperiled by the fighting they were taken away and assembled, at Valenciennes and Maubeuge, in two splendid museums. There they were carefully preserved and the name of the owner marked on each article, The old windows of the cathedral of St. Quentin were removed by German soldiers, at the risk of their lives, under English shell-tire. Che story. of the destruction of the church by the English was told by a German Catholic priest, who published it with photographs, and it was sent, by my orders, to the the chateau of Pinon, which belongs to the Princess of Paix, who had been a guest of mine and the Empress, the headquarters of the general commanding the Third
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.