This flourishing German industry began at Louvain, at the very outbreak
of the war, and has continued right down to the present. It is
astounding to see how quickly murders began, with the most revolting
brutality, immediately after the Germans entered Belgium! Sometimes
the excuse was made that "Mann hat geschossen",--that "civilians have
fired";--and then the indiscriminate slaughter began.
The thick volume of "Evidence" taken by the Bryce Commission on the
German Atrocities is crowded full of testimony; and so are many
subsequent publications of the British and French governments. The
stories written down in their diaries by German soldiers are both
terrible and amazing. In an uncountable number of villages old men,
old women, boys, girls, women and children were shot by dozens and by
hundreds; and hundreds were stabbed to death by bayonets.
There are sickening accounts, from eye-witness testimony, of German
soldiers =bayoneting children= and girls, but the most spectacular
crime of that kind was committed at Malaines (d4, Bryce Evidence), when
a German soldier walking down the main street, singing, "drove his
bayonet with both hands through a living child's stomach, lifting the
child into the air on his bayonet, and carrying it away on his bayonet,
he and his comrades still singing." (Page 82.)
In the village of Sempst, an Uhlan cut off the breast of a woman with
his sword; and a little boy was burned to death in an attic. (K. 33.)
At Aerschot a girl of 18 or 20 was found "absolutely naked, with her
abdomen cut open", and "her body covered with bruises, showing that she
had made a struggle." Jack the Ripper in a spiked helmet!
And again at Aerschot (C. 38) did the German Jack get in his work on
another girl of 18. She was found (dead) with "her arms nailed to the
door in extended fashion, ... her left breast cut away, and numerous
bayonet wounds in the chest, some piercing through to the back." (Told
by a Belgian soldier, who helped to recapture the place.)
A British subject saw on September 15, 1914, in the Wetteren Hospital,
a girl of 11 from Alost with 17 bayonet thrusts in her back,
"practically flayed, and at the point of death." (F. 13.) "Out of the
1300 inhabitants of Noumeny, at least 150 were killed (murdered) by the
Germans." (French Police Report, Aug. 24, 1914.)
This list could be extended by hundreds of other cases; and a
long chapter could be filled with such instances as the above.
Geographically they reach all the way from Louvain to the beginning of
the great German defeat before Paris.
In order to form estimates of what the quiet little country villages of
New England might expect if the armed wolves and mad dogs of Germany
ever gained a foothold here, let us consider a few figures compiled
from official reports and published by the _Illustrated London News_.
They relate solely to the murder of unarmed, inoffensive civilians--old
men, women, girls, boys and children.
In Brabant 897 persons shot or bayoneted.
In Luxembourg Province, over 1,000 " " " "
At Arlon 119 " " " "
Dinant Arrondissement (Fr.) 606 killed, from 3 weeks to 77 years old.
Neufchatel 18 shot.
Etalle 30 "
Hondemont 11 "
Tintiguy 157 "
Izele 10 "
Rossignol 106 "
Bertrix 21 "
Ethe about 300 shot; "530 in all missing."
Latour only 17 men left.
Maissin 12 shot, 1 a young girl.
Aloy 52 men and women shot.
Claireuse 2 men hanged.
--and so on, indefinitely. On the most trivial pretexts, or none at
all, the Germans slaughtered unresisting non-combatants who were in
their power. Out of a lot of 40 German soldier diaries, only 6 express
disapproval or disgust, and at least 30 diaries treat murders either
exultingly or as being merely a part of the day's work.
The slaughtered innocents of Belgium, France, Servia and Poland would,
in each of those countries, undoubtedly run far up into thousands if it
were possible to count them.
Thanks to the diligence of the British and French governments in
collecting evidence now while evidence is procurable, there is already
enough printed testimony to damn Germany in the eyes of the world for
at least two centuries.