Their Crimes - Various
The cowards chiefly used civilians as shields, but sometimes they also
made use of prisoners. At Keyem, they pushed one hundred Belgian
soldiers in front of them, some with their hands tied, and others with
their arms in the air. At Dixmude, they advanced under the shelter of
forty disarmed marines who had been taken prisoners. When they got in
front of our lines our marines shouted, "For God's sake fire, these are
Germans," and these heroes fell gloriously under the French bullets.
Such deeds are countless.
The Boches will deny them later on, but in 1914 they did not deny them,
but rather gloried in them as a "good idea." We can see this from the
letter of the Bavarian Lieutenant Eberlein, published on the 7th
October, 1914, by a leading Munich paper, "We had arrested three other
civilians when a 'good idea' struck me. We made them sit on chairs in
the middle of the street;--supplications from them, and blows with
butt-ends of rifles from us. At last they were seated outside in the
street with their hands convulsively clasped together. I felt sorry for
them, but the plan worked at once. As I learnt later, the regiment which
entered Saint-Die, further to the north of us, had precisely similar
experiences to our own. The civilians, whom they had put in the same
way in the middle of the street, were killed by French bullets. I saw
their dead bodies."[17]
FOOTNOTES:
[17] We have not, so far, come across any attempted justification, by
German authors, of these cowardly acts; but such we shall have without
fail. It is probable that the 93 "intellectuals" whose manifesto we
recall to memory a few pages further on are preparing a fresh "appeal to
the civilized world" with a view to explaining that the German
troops--the representatives and trustees of _Kultur_--are authorised by
God Himself to use _every means_ for the protection of their precious
lives.
MARTYRDON OF CIVILIAN PRISONERS
After having burnt our villages,[18] and shot the inhabitants by dozens
in some places, and by hundreds in others, they frequently deported all
or a part of the survivors to Germany. It is impossible at this moment
to establish the number of those deported, but they were sent off by
tens of thousands. These unfortunate people, men, women and children,
who had witnessed and survived fires and massacres, who had seen their
houses blazing and so many of those dear to them fall under the bullets
of the assassin, and who were forced in some places to dig graves for
their victims, and in others to hold a light for the executioners while
they were finishing off the wounded,--these poor wretches are despatched
to Germany.[19] What a journey, and what a place of residence!
Let us quote one story among a thousand. "Our escort was commanded by
two German officers. They were unapproachable. Anyone who tried to speak
to them was threatened with a revolver. In order that we might get a
drink, we were made to collect empty meat tins which served as our
drinking cups until we reached Cassel. We were abused and threatened
wherever we went. Sometimes they made signs to us that they were going
to shoot us, or hang us, or cut our heads off. They threw filth at our
heads and spat in our faces. We were not going to stoop before them; the
disgrace was not ours. It is they, not we, who are degraded. An officer
who was present when our march-past took place aimed blows with a
riding-whip at everyone within his reach. Until we arrived at the
railway, it was the same at every place where we met soldiers. We
reached Marche after a nine hours' journey. We were conducted to a room
marked as having accommodation for 100 soldiers, but they put 400 of us
in there. The people of the place sent us slices of bread and butter,
but it was the Germans who ate them. The latter gave us crusts of bread
to eat. We were abominably cramped; a few managed to stretch themselves
out, but the air was so poisonous that they could not remain in that
position. At Melreux station we changed guards. They drove us with the
butt-ends of their rifles to a spot where a train of cattle trucks was
standing in the yard, and we had to get in. The previous occupants had
been cattle, and the trucks had been cleaned in a very perfunctory
fashion. There was neither straw nor seats. Off we went. Every time we
stopped at a station the soldiers on guard there insulted us. It was
even worse when once we arrived in Germany. They opened the doors on the
platform side, and if we were on a line between two platforms, they
opened the doors on both sides so as to rejoice German hearts by the
sight of us. They treated us like wild beasts in a menagerie, and the
officers and soldiers set the example while the women and children were
not behindhand with abuse, and made threatening gestures. Our guards
were applauded as if they were doing something heroic. At one station we
saw a woman looking out of her window and shouting 'Hurrah!' The journey
took 35 hours, and during the whole of that time we were only given food
and drink once, and that thanks only to the Red Cross.[20] We arrived at
Wilhelmshoehe (Cassel) at 3 a.m. on the 28th August, and were made to
walk quickly through the streets. Our arrival had been notified, and in
spite of the early hour, a hostile crowd, abusive and threatening, lined
the route. The old and the lame could not keep up the pace at which we
marched. Their companions helped and dragged them along, constantly
beaten with butt-ends. At length, we arrived at the gaol, where they
shut us in the cells in lots of three or four at a time. M. Brichet
(Inspector of Forests) wanted to take his son (aged 14) with him, but
the gaoler said, 'Not the father and son together.' The prison
authorities showed their surprise at the sort of criminals who had been
entrusted to them, as the bulk of them were shopkeepers and artisans.
"Included in the number were the burgomaster of Dinant, a sheriff,
professors, barristers, and judges. An imbecile, a dozen children of
about 13, and some old men (one of whom was 81) made up the party. At
the end of a week, we were assembled in a yard and told that we were not
under sentence, but were detained in the interests of public safety."
In that prison the poor wretches were treated with much greater severity
than ordinary prisoners, for they were shut up in cells and had no air.
"By climbing on a chest one might open the window and see a little bit
of the landscape. The ordinary prisoners were allowed to do this but we
were forbidden." There was not a single chair. There was the skeleton of
an iron bed which was quite useless as there was no mattress. There were
four blankets, and two bundles of straw which very soon crumbled into
dust. "One day a week we had an hour in the courtyard, and there we
walked round and round in single file, being forbidden to walk two by
two. There was a guard with fixed bayonets always with us. The food was
absolutely inadequate[21] and we suffered continually from hunger. There
was a certain Croibien who had been slightly wounded at Dinant by a
bullet in his arm. His wound, neglected during the journey, had become
septic and in spite of all his sufferings, nothing was done for him. It
was not until after several days that it was decided to take him to the
infirmary where his arm was amputated; he died the next day. Although
his father and brothers were interned with him, they were not allowed to
see him again, alive or dead."
M. Tschoffen, public prosecutor at Dinant, the high official who writes
these lines, finishes his deposition with these words: "They had no
reason whatever for our arrest, and I do not see any reason that they
could have for setting us at liberty. One fine day they told us that we
were going to leave."
Here is another illustration: Before the 28th February, 1915, more than
10,000 persons, old men, women, and children, who had been deported from
France to Germany, had been repatriated by way of Switzerland. All those
who received them on their return were "alarmed at their ragged
condition and weakness," which was so great that the French Commission
of Enquiry received special instructions to question these victims. They
took the evidence of over 300 witnesses in 28 different localities. To
do justice to their case one ought to quote the whole report--children
brutally torn away from their mothers, poor wretches crowded for days
together in carriages so tightly packed that they had to stand up, cases
of madness occurring among these half-stifled crowds, howling with
hunger. But we must confine our quotations to a few items of "Kultur."
"While the men of Combres set out for Germany, the women and children
were shut up in the village church. They were kept there for a month,
and passed their nights seated in the pews. Dysentery and croup raged
among them. The women were allowed to carry excrement only just outside
the church into the churchyard."--"At least four of the prisoners were
massacred because they could not keep up with, the column, being
completely exhausted."--"Fortin, aged 65, and infirm, could not go any
further. They tied a rope to him, and two horsemen held the ends so that
he had to keep the pace of the horses. As he kept falling down at every
moment, they made him get up by poking him with their lances. The poor
wretch, covered with blood, prayed them to kill him."
"189 inhabitants of Sinceny, who were sent to Erfurt, arrived there
after a journey of 84 hours, during which each of them got nothing but a
single morsel of bread weighing less than four ounces. Another convoy
spent four days on the railway journey and were only fed once, and were
beaten with sticks and fists and with knife handles." The same
brutalities were experienced in the German cities through which they
passed, and very few of the civilian prisoners escaped being buffeted by
the infuriated crowds or being spat upon.
So much for the journey. Now for what happened to them after their
arrival! "The declarations made to us show clearly that the bulk of the
prisoners almost collapsed from hunger. After food had been distributed,
when anything was left, you saw some of them rush to the neighbourhood
of the kitchens; hustled and beaten by the sentries, these unfortunates
risked blows and abuse to try and pick up some additional morsels of
the sickening food. You saw men, dying of hunger, picking up herring
heads, and the grounds of the morning's decoction."
At Parchim, where 2,000 French civilians from 12 to 77 years of age were
interned, two starving prisoners who asked for the scraps left over were
beaten with the butt-ends of rifles to such an extent that they died of
their wounds. The young son of one of them who tried to protect his
father was tied to a stake for a week on end.
On oath, Dr. Page deposes: "Those who had no money almost died of
hunger. When a little soup was left, a crowd of unfortunates rushed to
get it, and the non-commissioned officers got rid of them at last by
letting the dogs loose on them." But what is the need of all these
details and of all this evidence? Look at the 10,000 who came back after
being repatriated and see what the bandits have done to them. Reader,
summon up your courage and peruse to the bitter end the conclusions of
the Official Commission of Enquiry. "It is impossible to conceal the
melancholy and indignation we felt on seeing the state of the
'hostages'[22] whom the Germans had returned to us after they had
kidnapped them in defiance of the rights of nations. During our enquiry
we never ceased hearing the perpetual coughs that rent them. We saw
numbers of young people whose cheerfulness had disappeared apparently
for ever, and whose pale and emaciated faces betrayed physical damage
probably beyond repair. In spite of ourselves we could not help thinking
that scientific Germany had applied her methodical ways to try and
spread tuberculosis in our country. Nor were we less profoundly moved to
thought by the sight of women mourning their desolated hearths and
missing or captive children, or by the moral impression left on the
faces and bearing of many prisoners by the hateful regime which was
intended to destroy, in those who were subjected to it, the feeling of
human dignity and self-respect."[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] _Prisoners_, as well as wounded, have very often been massacred on
the field of battle. As to the treatment that prisoners--French,
Belgian, Russian and English--have undergone in German camps, it is a
pitiful tale that we do not intend to begin here. Some day it must be
written. With the actual evidence before us, the lot of the German
prisoners in England, Russia and France must be compared with that of
ours in Germany. The most indifferent reader will feel his heart stirred
within him, and will hesitate to say whether we were "generous," or
whether we were "fools."
[19] We speak of those who have left--but what of those who have
remained in Belgium and France, under the German heel? The time has not
yet come for writing this piece of history, but we cannot refrain from
referring to the sufferings of these children of the North, boys and
girls, torn from their families, carried off like bands of slaves to
other invaded regions to be employed on forced labour. France has
apprised the neutral countries of these facts: Will they remain silent?
[20] Further on it will be seen that much worse happened on numerous
other journeys.
[21] "We got one pound of black sour bread per diem. In the morning we
had a tepid decoction intended for coffee; at mid-day a pint and a half
of thick soup, and at night rather less than a pint of thin soup. On
three occasions only did we get potatoes, but never once meat. Cabbage
soup was the usual thing and after a certain time it turned our
stomachs. Certain prisoners were employed in chopping up the cabbages to
make sauerkraut, and they had to keep the broken leaves, as these were
used up for our soup."
[22] Through an old habit, the Commission makes use of this word; they
are not "hostages," of course.
[23] It must also be noted that when the Commissioners making the
enquiry saw the repatriated people, they had had some time in which to
recover, first in Switzerland, and then in France. The arrival of these
pitiable drafts gave rise (even among those of the Swiss people who were
in principle the least hostile to Germany) to such a feeling of horror
for their executioners that the Kaiser took warning and thought it wiser
to suspend the repatriations for several months. For the welcome and the
kind care which our poor martyrs received at the hands of the Swiss, our
grateful thanks and salutations are due!
GERMAN EXCUSES: LIES AND CALUMNY
The Boches have taken up three positions in succession. In the first
place, in their speeches, in their writings and by commemorative
pictures and medals, _they have gloried in their misdeeds_, thus
declaring that Kultur is above morality (as stated by their writer,
Thomas Mann), and that the right of German might is above everything.
Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world
outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not
understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, _they cynically
denied the charges_. Finally, when they were driven from this second
trench, when simple negation became impossible, _they had perforce to
explain their crimes_.
Their commonest explanation is this, "Civilians fired on us."[24] The
French Commission of Enquiry came to the following conclusion on this
point: "This allegation is false, and those who put it forward have been
powerless to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been
their custom to fire shots in the neighbourhood of dwellings, in order
to be able to affirm that they have been attacked by innocent
inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they had resolved."
Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established the fact that
German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies. It is
probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium
or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The
cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for
pillage--"Man hat geschossen (they have fired)"--is enough for a
locality to be delivered up at once to the wildest fury. "When an
inhabitant has fired on a regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, "the
place belongs to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier to
fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre!
Some mistakes have _possibly_ been made which could have been avoided by
the least enquiry. Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon
officer: "The lovely village of Gue-d'Hossus has been given over to the
flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off
his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a
consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male
inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such
horrors will not be repeated, we must hope ... There ought to be some
compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this
indiscriminate shooting of people."
The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of,
villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their
retreat. Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have
continued their crimes--in order to justify them.
Here is the statement of a neutral: "In one village they found corpses
of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer
in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot.... In
the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish
poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration,
and allowed himself to talk freely: his complaint was the misdeeds of
his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his host, he had to have a soldier
shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings: the
man, on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies
of the German dead."[25]
In exceptional cases an enquiry is held; and in every such instance the
truth is discovered and massacre prevented.
At the end of August, Liebknecht,[26] a member of the Reichstag, set out
in his car for Louvain. He came to a village where there was
considerable excitement going on. The Germans had just found three of
their men lying dead on the road, and accused the peasants of being
responsible for the deed. Liebknecht examined them, and was not long in
obtaining proof that the Germans had been killed by Belgian riflemen. At
Huy there were shots in the night; two soldiers wounded; the populace
accused; the mayor arrested and condemned to death; but he knew that
there were no Allied troops in the neighbourhood, and also that his own
people had not fired a shot. "Shoot me, if you like," he said calmly,
"but not before extracting the bullets from the wounded." The officer,
less of a brute than some, gave his consent to this. The bullets in the
wounds were German bullets. But the Germans do not even require a
pretext to take action. Their first crime, to our knowledge, was on
August 4th. Some officers dashed up to Herve in a car, challenged two
civilians while crossing the bridge and, without giving them time to
answer, shot them down with revolvers.
In their private diaries they accuse one another, each throwing on his
neighbour the responsibility for crimes committed. A cavalryman writes:
"It is unfortunately true that the worst elements of our Army feel
themselves authorised to commit any sort of infamy. This charge applies
particularly to the A.S.C." A bombing officer: "_Rethel_, September 2nd.
Discipline becoming lax. Brandy. Looting. The blame lies with the
_infantry_." An infantry officer: "Discipline in our company
excellent--a contrast with the rest. The _Pioneers_ are not worth much.
As for the _Artillery_, they are a band of brigands." A final extract
seems to be the only one that gives the truth: "Brin ... _troops of all
arms_ are engaged in looting."
It has been possible sometimes to prove premeditation. On the 17th
August, a German officer was billeted with a Belgian magistrate. Their
talk turned on Dinant. "Dinant," said the officer, "is a condemned
town!" M. X ..., of Dinant, happening to be in another town, made the
acquaintance of a German officer, who said to him on August 20th, "You
come from Dinant? Don't go back. It's a bad place, and will be
destroyed." Troops on their march towards Andenne announced in villages
through which they passed that they were going to burn the town and
massacre the inhabitants. At Louvain, a German officer, treated
generously by a middle-class family, and appreciating their courtesy,
rushed to their house on the 25th at 11 o'clock in the morning,[27] and
earnestly pressed his hosts to leave without delay, refusing to give
them any explanation. The family, puzzled and perturbed by his appeal,
went off and so escaped.
* * * * *
In the eyes of the moralist the worst of all their crimes will perhaps
be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour Belgium, after first
assassinating her. They have dared to say, write, and proclaim publicly,
and affirm to Neutrals, that Belgian women and girls had mutilated
German wounded soldiers, blinding them with scissors or with boiling
water. The reports of the Belgian Commission of Enquiry have been
replied to in a counter report[28] published as a German White Book.
This enquiry and these documents will live in history. In centuries to
come they will hang as a heavy weight on the Kaiser's memory and the
conscience of Germany. Listen to the pathetic conclusion of the Belgian
reply: "Before God and before man, the Belgian Government has no
hesitation in giving this as its opinion of the conduct of the German
Government towards the Belgian nation: 'He is twice guilty who violates
the rights of others and then attempts, with singular audacity, to
justify himself by imputing to his victim faults that were never
committed.'"[29]
It still remains to be explained how, by what means, by what deadly
influences, this German nation, consisting of men who, as individuals,
are not all brigands, has reached and been led to this state of
savagery? In the preparations for this _collective madness_ of a
people, what part has been played by its leaders of thought and its
politicians, by race and by education? This is a disturbing phenomenon
which students of mental disease[30] will study later, but on the
examination of which we cannot here embark. It is not for us to seek the
pathological cause for this moral decay--this decadence. We have only to
note its _effects_.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Need it be noted here that even if in any locality an imprudent
civilian had fired a shot, it would still remain--in accordance with the
Hague Convention, International Law, and plain morality--a veritable
crime to massacre in a heap, haphazard, and without enquiry, so many
innocent souls?
[25] L.H. Grondijs, "Les Allemands en Belgique," p. cxix. (Paris,
Berger-Levrault, Publishers).
[26] Liebknecht was too honest and embarrassing a witness for Germany.
He has been thrown into prison. We salute him.
[27] The martyrdom of Dinant began on August 24th; that of Louvain on
the 25th August, at 5 p.m.
[28] It may be recalled that commissions of enquiry, at which _both_
sides should be represented, were offered by Belgian Socialists to
German Socialists, by Belgian Freemasons to German Freemasons, by
Belgian Bishops to German Bishops. Three proposals. Three refusals!
[29] France has suffered from similar calumny. We alluded above (note,
p. 37) to the declaration of a German army doctor that orders were given
to amputate, as a reprisal, "all wounded limbs." So _we_ are said to have
done that? A monstrous lie, which will be spurned indignantly by all who
know the honourable traditions of our ambulances and of our French
doctors. The _method of systematic lying_ has been shown to the life in
connection with the use of asphyxiating gas. The Boches made immense
preparations for the use of this gas. When their organization was
complete, they took care, before acting, to publish each day for a week
in their communiques, little notes announcing that the enemy were
"making wide use of this new method of warfare,"--a statement contrary
to fact, and known by them to be so, but one that was calculated to
mislead public opinion. When they considered that public opinion was
sufficiently "prepared," they launched their deadly gases and their
flaming liquids; and we needed a long time, needed also to overcome our
moral hesitation, to make sure of our defence and our reply. _Cynical
lying_ with the Germans is not only admitted, but _gloried in_. When it
was completely proved that, in order to start the war of 1870, Bismarck
had committed _forgery_. Professor Hans Delbrueck exclaimed, "Blessed is
the hand that forged the Ems despatch."