Their Crimes Part 3

When their adversary cannot actually see the human shield that they are using, they send a warning. On the 7th September, 1914, the Death's Head Hussars shut up all the inhabitants of the village with them in the Chateau of Saint Ouen-sur-Morin, and then, to avoid being sh.e.l.led, informed the English of their "dispositions." They fired on anyone who tried to escape. At Mouzon, we saw a number of civilians being pushed in front of the enemy with the b.u.t.t-ends of rifles, and we stopped firing.

The wretched people moved suddenly to one side of the road, uncovering the Germans, and then we fired. The Boches, furious, fired their first volley not at us, but point blank at these non-combatants, who were decimated.

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 G.o.d'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 b.u.t.t-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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.sacres, who had seen their houses blazing and so many of those dear to them fall under the bullets of the a.s.sa.s.sin, 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 Ca.s.sel. 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 b.u.t.t-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 Wilhelmshohe (Ca.s.sel) 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 b.u.t.t-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 a.s.sembled 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 ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sacred 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 pa.s.sed, 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 sc.r.a.ps left over were beaten with the b.u.t.t-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 ma.s.sacred 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 ma.s.sacre 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 ma.s.sacre!

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 ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sed that they were going to burn the town and ma.s.sacre the inhabitants. At Louvain, a German officer, treated generously by a middle-cla.s.s 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 a.s.sa.s.sinating 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 doc.u.ments 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.sacre in a heap, haphazard, and without enquiry, so many innocent souls?