JAMES BRYCE’S REPORT ON SYSTEMATIC MASSACRE IN BELGIUM
REPORT OF COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE GERMAN OUTRAGES -- A HARROWING
RECITAL -- TELLS OF MASSACRES--“KILLED IN MASSES”--THE TALE OF LOUVAIN
-- TREATMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN -- CALLS KILLING
DELIBERATE--“SPIRIT OF WAR DEIFIED”--THE COMMISSION’S CONCLUSIONS.
Viscount Bryce, former British Ambassador at Washington, was appointed
chairman of a special government commission to investigate and report on
“outrages alleged to have been committed by German troops.” Associated
with Lord Bryce on the commission were Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Edward
Clarke, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, H. A. L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Sheffield; Harold Cox, and Kenelm E. Digby. The commission
was appointed by Premier Asquith on January 22, 1915. The document is
considered as probably the most severe arraignment made of the German
military sweep across Belgium, mainly because of the position of
Viscount Bryce as a historian, and also because of the care with which
the investigation was made, the great number of witnesses whose
testimony was examined, and the mass of evidence submitted with the
report of the commission.
The report makes an official document of sixty-one printed pages, or
upward of 30,000 words, accompanied by maps showing the various routes
of the army and the chief scenes of desolation. It states at the outset
that 1,200 witnesses have been examined, the depositions being taken by
examiners of legal knowledge and experience, though without authority to
administer an oath. The examiners were instructed not to “lead” the
witnesses, and to seek to bring out the truth by cross-examination and
otherwise. The commission also submitted extracts from a number of
diaries taken from the German dead, chiefly German soldiers and in some
cases officers.
A HARROWING RECITAL
Taking up conditions at Liège at the outset of the war, the report gives
a harrowing recital of occurrences at various points in the devastated
territory. At Herve on August 4, 1914, the report says, “the murder of
an innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage
of the town and of other villages in the neighborhood; to the
indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes and to the organized
military execution of batches of selected males. Thus some fifty men
escaping from burning houses were seized, taken outside the town and
shot. At Melen, in one household alone the father and mother (names
given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly attacked and
the son was wounded.
“In Soumagne and Micheroux very many civilians were summarily shot. In a
field belonging to a man named E----, fifty-six or fifty-seven were put
to death. A German officer said, ‘You have shot at us.’ One of the
villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and said, ‘If you think these
people fired, kill me, but let them go.’ The answer was three volleys.
The survivors were bayoneted. Their corpses were seen in the field that
night by another witness. One at least had been mutilated. These were
not the only victims in Soumagne. The eye-witness of the massacre saw,
on his way home, twenty bodies, one that of a girl of thirteen. Another
witness saw nineteen corpses in a meadow.
“At Heure le Romain all the male inhabitants, including some bed-ridden
old men, were imprisoned in the church. The burgomaster’s brother and
the priest were bayoneted. The village of Visé was completely destroyed.
Officers directed the incendiaries. Antiques and china were removed from
the houses before their destruction, by officers, who guarded the
plunder, revolver in hand.
TELLS OF MASSACRES
“Entries in a German diary show that on August 10 the German soldiers
gave themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liège, and on the
night of the 20th a massacre took place in the streets. . . . Though the
cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known with
certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de l’Université
and the Quai des Pêcheurs were systematically fired with benzine; and
many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their efforts to
escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot while
trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liège
Fire Brigade turned out, but was not allowed to extinguish the fire. Its
carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of civilian
corpses to the Town Hall.”
Taking up the Valleys of the Meuse and Sambre, the report gives lengthy
details of terrible conditions described by witnesses at Andenne, and
says:
“About four hundred people lost their lives in this massacre, some on
the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given,
and some in the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight
men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close
to a machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body
home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked
it.
“A hair-dresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a
child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this
came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped
the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of
corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently
used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans
had built across the river and were so used to prevent the Belgian forts
from firing upon it.
“A few days later the Germans celebrated a ‘fête nocturne’ in the
square. Hot wine, located in the town, was drunk, and the women were
compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing ‘Deutschland
über Alles.’”
“KILLED IN MASSES”
Similar details are recited at much length in reference to the districts
of Namur, Charleroi and the town of Dinant. At the latter point, the
report says, “Unarmed civilians were killed in masses. We have no reason
to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation
or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment
inflicted upon its citizens.”
The commission stated that it had received a great mass of evidence on
“scenes of chronic outrage” in the territory bounded by the towns
Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde and Louvain. It stated that the total number
of outrages was so great that the commission could not refer to them
all.
“The commission is specially impressed by the character of the outrages
committed in the smaller villages. Many of these are exceptionally
shocking and cannot be regarded as contemplated or prescribed by
responsible commanders of the troops by whom they were commanded.
Evidence goes to show that deaths in these villages were due not to
accident but to deliberate purpose. The wounds were generally stabs or
cuts, and for the most part appear to have been inflicted with a
bayonet.
“In Sempst the corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly
bound, was seen by a witness, who also saw a girl of seventeen in great
distress dressed only in a chemise. She alleged that she herself and
other girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked and attacked,
and that some of them had been killed with a bayonet.”
Taking up conditions at Aerschot and the surrounding district during
September, the report says:
“At Haecht several children had been murdered; one of two or three years
old was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse by its hands and feet, a
crime which seems almost incredible, but the evidence for which we feel
bound to accept. At Eppeghem the body of a child of two was seen pinned
to the ground with a German lance. The same witness saw a mutilated
woman alive near Weerde on the same day.”
A chapter is given to the terrible conditions at Louvain, where the
report states, “massacre, fire and destruction went on. . . . Citizens
were shot and others taken prisoners and compelled to go with the
troops. Soldiers went through the streets saying, ‘Man hat geschossen’
(some one has fired on us).
THE TALE OF LOUVAIN
“The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens.
Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding
districts, not only from Aerschot and Gelrod, but also from other
places. For example, a witness describes how many women and children
were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a stable. Of the
hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages and brought to
Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others were forced to
march along with citizens of Louvain through various places, some being
ultimately sent to the Belgian lines at Malines, others were taken in
trucks to Cologne, others were released.
“Ropes were put around the necks of some and they were told they would
be hanged. An order then came that they were to be shot instead of
hanged. A firing squad was prepared, and five or six prisoners were put
up, but were not shot. . . . This taking of the inhabitants in groups
and marching them to various places must evidently have been done under
the direction of a higher military authority. The ill-treatment of the
prisoners was under the eyes and often under the direction or sanction
of officers, and officers themselves took part in it. . . .
“It is to be noticed that cases occur in the depositions in which humane
acts by individual officers and soldiers are mentioned, or in which
officers are said to have expressed regret at being obliged to carry out
orders for cruel action against the civilians. Similarly, we find
entries in diaries which reveal a genuine pity for the population and
disgust at the conduct of the enemy. It appears that a German
non-commissioned officer stated definitely that he ‘was acting under
orders and executing them with great unwillingness.’ A commissioned
officer on being asked at Louvain by a witness, a highly educated man,
about the horrible acts committed by the soldiers, said he ‘was merely
executing orders,’ and that he himself would be shot if he did not
execute them.”
Another division of the report is on the “killing of non-combatants in
France.” This is not as detailed as the case of Belgium, as the
commission states that the French official report gives the most
complete account as to the invaded districts in France. It adds:
“The evidence before us proves that, in the parts of France referred
to, murder of unoffending civilians and other acts of cruelty, including
aggravated cases of felonious attack, carried out under threat of death,
and sometimes actually followed by murder of the victim, were committed
by some of the German troops.”
TREATMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN
A special chapter is given to the treatment of women and children. The
latter, it is said, frequently received milder treatment than the men.
But many instances are given of “calculated cruelty, often going the
length of murder, towards the women and children.” A witness gives a
story, very circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly
attacked in the market place of the city, five young German officers
assisting. The report goes on: “In the evidence before us there are
cases tending to show that aggravated crimes against women were
sometimes severely punished. These instances are sufficient to show that
the maltreatment of women was not part of the military scheme of the
invaders, however much it may appear to have been the inevitable result
of the system of terror deliberately adopted in certain regions.
“It is clearly shown that many offences were committed against infants
and quite young children. On one occasion children were even roped
together and used as a military screen against the enemy, on another
three soldiers went into action carrying small children to protect
themselves from flank fire. It is difficult to imagine the motives which
may have prompted such acts. Whether or not Belgian civilians fired on
German soldiers, young children at any rate did not fire.”
Many instances are given of the use of civilians as screens during the
military operation. Cases of the Red Cross being misused for offensive
military purposes, and of abuse of the white flag are also given. As to
the latter the report says: “There is in our opinion sufficient evidence
that these offences have been frequent, deliberate and in many cases
committed by whole units under orders. All the facts mentioned are in
contravention of The Hague Convention, signed by the Great Powers,
including France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, in
1907.”
A division of the report is given to diaries of German soldiers. The
entry of a sergeant of the First Guards Regiment, who received the Iron
Cross, says, under date of August 10: “A transport of 300 Belgians came
through Duisburg in the morning. Of these, eighty, including the
Oberburgomaster, were shot according to martial law.” The diary of a
member of the Fourth Company of Jägers says, under date of August 23:
“About 220 inhabitants and the village were burned.” Another diary, by a
member of the Second Mounted Battery, First Kurhessian Field Artillery
Regiment, No. 11, records an incident which happened in French territory
near Lille on October 11: “We had no fight, but we caught about twenty
men and shot them.” The commission says of this last diary: “By this
time killing not in a fight would seem to have passed into a habit.”
The report adds that the most important entry was contained in diary No.
19. This contained no name and address, but names referred to in the
diary indicate that the entries were made by an officer of the First
Regiment of Foot Guards. The entry made at Bermeton on August 24 says:
“We took about 1,000 prisoners; at least 500 were shot. The village was
burned because inhabitants had also shot. Two civilians were shot at
once.”
“If a line is drawn on a map from the Belgian frontier to Liège and
continued to Charleroi, and a second line drawn from Liège to Malines, a
sort of figure resembling an irregular Y will be formed. It is along
this ‘Y’ that most of the systematic (as opposed to isolated) outrages
were committed. If the period from August 4 to August 30 is taken it
will be found to cover most of these organized outrages. Termonde and
Alost extend, it is true, beyond the ‘Y’ lines, and they belong to the
month of September. Murder, assault, arson and pillage began from the
moment when the German army crossed the frontier. For the first
fortnight of the war the towns and villages near Liège were the chief
sufferers. From August 19 to the end of the month outrages spread in the
direction of Charleroi and Malines and reached their period of greatest
intensity.
“There is a certain significance in the fact that the outrages around
Liège coincide with the unexpected resistance of the Belgian army in
that district, and that the slaughter which reigned from August 19 to
the end of the month is contemporaneous with the period when the German
army’s need for a quick passage through Belgium at all costs was deemed
imperative.
“In all wars occur many shocking and outrageous acts of men of criminal
instincts whose worst passions are unloosed by the immunity which the
conditions of warfare afford. Drunkenness, moreover, may turn even a
soldier who has no criminal habits into a brute, and there is evidence
that intoxication was extremely prevalent among the German army, both in
Belgium and in France. Unfortunately little seems to have been done to
repress this source of danger.
CALLS KILLING DELIBERATE
“In the present war, however--and this is the gravest charge against the
German army--the evidence shows that the killing of non-combatants was
carried out to an extent for which no previous war between nations
claiming to be civilized (for such cases as the atrocities perpetrated
by the Turks on the Bulgarian Christians in 1876, and on the Armenian
Christians in 1895 and 1896, do not belong to that category) furnishes
any precedent. That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan
is clear from the facts hereinbefore set forth regarding Louvain,
Aerschot, Dinant and other towns. The killing was done under orders in
each place. It began at a certain fixed date. Some of the officers who
carried out the work did it reluctantly, and said they were obeying
directions from their chiefs. The same remarks apply to the destruction
of property. House burning was part of the program; and villages, even
large parts of a city, were given to the flames as part of the
terrorizing policy.
“Citizens of neutral states who visited Belgium in December and January
report that the German authorities do not deny that non-combatants were
systematically killed in large numbers during the first weeks of the
invasion, and this, so far as we know, has never been officially denied.
“The German government has, however, sought to justify these severities
on the grounds of military necessity and has excused them as retaliation
for cases in which civilians fired on German troops. There may have been
cases in which such firing occurred, but no proof has ever been given,
or, to our knowledge, attempted to be given, of such cases, nor of the
stories of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and women on
German soldiers. . . .
“We gladly record the instances where the evidence shows that humanity
has not wholly disappeared from some members of the German army and that
they realized that the responsible heads of that organization were
employing them not in war but in butchery: ‘I am merely executing
orders, and I should be shot if I did not execute them,’ said an officer
to a witness at Louvain. At Brussels another officer said, ‘I have not
done one hundredth part of what we have been ordered to do by the high
German military authorities.’
“That these acts should have been perpetrated on the peaceful population
of an unoffending country which was not at war with its invaders, but
merely defending its own neutrality, guaranteed by the invading power,
may excite amazement and even incredulity. It was with amazement and
almost with incredulity that the commission first read the depositions
relating to such acts. But when the evidence regarding Liège was
followed by that regarding Aerschot, Louvain, Andenne, Dinant, and the
other towns and villages, the cumulative effect of such a mass of
concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to the
conclusion that the things described had really happened. The question
then arose how they could have happened.
“The explanation seems to be that these excesses were committed--in some
cases ordered, in others allowed--on a system and in pursuance of a set
purpose. That purpose was to strike terror into the civil population and
dishearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and
extinguish the very spirit of self-defense. The pretext that civilians
had fired upon the invading troops was used to justify not merely the
shooting of individual franc-tireurs, but the murder of large numbers of
innocent civilians, an act absolutely forbidden by the rules of
civilized warfare.
“SPIRIT OF WAR DEIFIED”
“In the minds of Prussian officers war seems to have become a sort of
sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the omnipotent state,
which is itself as much an army as a state. Ordinary morality and the
ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in its presence, superseded by a new
standard which justifies to the soldier every means that can conduce to
success, however shocking to a natural sense of justice and humanity,
however revolting to his own feelings. The spirit of war is deified.
Obedience to the state and its war lord leaves no room for any other
duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory.
Proclaimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to have
permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, leading
them to justify the killing of non-combatants as an act of war, and so
accustoming them to slaughter that even women and children become at
last the victims.
“It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine, for it neither springs
from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German people as they
have heretofore been known to other nations. It is specifically military
doctrine, the outcome of a theory held by a ruling caste who have
brooded and thought, written and talked and dreamed about war until they
have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized by its spirit.
“The doctrine is plainly set forth in the German official monograph on
the usages of war on land, issued under the direction of the German
staff. This book is pervaded throughout by the view that whatever
military needs suggest becomes thereby lawful, and upon this principle,
as the diaries show, the German officers acted.
“If this explanation be the true one, the mystery is solved, and that
which seemed scarcely credible becomes more intelligible though not less
pernicious. This is not the only case that history records in which a
false theory, disguising itself as loyalty to a state or to a church,
has perverted the conception of duty and become a source of danger to
the world.”
THE COMMISSION’S CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions of the commission, as to the various detailed recitals,
are as follows:
“We may now sum up and endeavor to explain the character and
significance of the wrongful acts done by the German army in Belgium.
“It is proved, first, that there were in many parts of Belgium
deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil
population accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.
“Second--That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians,
both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women attacked and
children murdered.
[Illustration: “THEIR FIRST SUCCESS.”
“At Morfontaine, near Longwy, the Germans shot two fifteen-year-old
children who had warned the French gendarmes of the enemy’s
arrival.”--The Newspapers.]
“Third--That looting, house burning and the wanton destruction of
property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German
army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism
at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burning and destruction
were frequently where no military necessity could be alleged, being,
indeed, part of a system of general terrorization.
“Fourth--That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken,
particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as
a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by
killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red
Cross and the white flag.
“Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the
commission conceive that they would be doing less than their duty if
they failed to record them as fully established by the evidence. Murder,
lust and pillage prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale
unparalleled in any war between civilized nations during the last three
centuries.
“Our function is ended when we have stated what the evidence
establishes, but we may be permitted to express our belief that these
disclosures will not have been made in vain if they touch and rouse the
conscience of mankind, and we venture to hope that as soon as the
present war is over, the nations of the world in council will consider
what means can be provided and sanctions devised to prevent the
recurrence of such horrors as our generation is now witnessing.”
[Illustration: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY IN EUROPE DESTROYED BY THE
GERMANS.
Scene of desolation in Louvain. On the right is the magnificent Town
Hall, considered one of the most marvelous pieces of architecture in
Europe’s which escaped almost untouched. In the center, however, the
famous St. Peter’s Cathedral has only the walls standing. (_Copyright by
the International News Service._)]
[Illustration: RUINS OF YPRES AFTER THE BOMBARDMENT.
The old Flemish town was the center of hot fighting between the Allies
and the German troops in the battles for the possession of Belgium. At
the right of the picture are seen the ruins of the famous Cloth Hall,
one of the most famous medieval buildings in Europe. (_Copyright by the
International News Service._)]