What do we care for the Russians and French?
Shot against shot and thrust for thrust!
We love them not, we hate them not;
We guard the Vistula and the passes of the Vosges.
We have but one single hate;
We love as one, we hate as one;
We have but one single foe,
Whom you all know, whom you all know.
He sits crouched behind the gray flood,
Full of envy, full of fury, full of craft, full of guile,
Set apart by waters that are thicker than blood.
We wish to go before a seat of judgment
To swear an oath, face to face,
An oath of metal no wind can blow away,
An oath for children and children's children.
Hearken to the word, repeat the word,
It rolls on through all Germany:
We will not forbear from our hate.
TESTIMONY OF AFFIDAVITS, AND DIARIES TAKEN FROM THE BODIES OF
GERMAN SOLDIERS, AS TO THE ATROCITIES
(_D. 25-54._) A boy with his hands cut off, mutilated by a German
officer, because he was supposed to have laughed at this drunken brute.
(_D. 4, 5._) A Belgian babe, skewered upon the bayonet, driven through
his stomach, with his little dead head and hands and legs dangling as
the German proudly carried it through the street of a village.
(_Alcove C. 60._) A Mother Superior crucified by bayonets to the door
of her schoolhouse as punishment for scratching the face of an officer
who was violating the person of a young nun. The burning alive of a man
who defended his wife.
(_D. 92-93. Also D. 100-108._) Photographs of an aged priest, staked
down to the ground, and used as a lavatory until he was dead;
photographs and affidavits of young girls with one breast cut off.
(_Affidavits in Alcove 867._) The dead body of a young girl nailed by
her hands to the outside door of a cottage. She was about fourteen or
sixteen years of age.
(_Page 21. Affidavits H-67._) "September 14th. One hundred and eight
inhabitants are stated to have been shot after they had dug their own
graves. Innumerable houses have been destroyed. The population looks
bitter and scowling." August 22nd, notebook of Private Max Thomas. "Our
soldiers are so excited, we are like wild beasts. To-day, destroyed
eight houses, with their inmates. Bayonetted two men with their wives
and a girl of eighteen. The little one almost unnerved me, so innocent
was her expression."
(_D. 10. 45._) In retreating from Laines eight drunken soldiers were
marching through the street. A little child of two years came out and
a soldier skewered the child on his bayonet, and carried it away while
his comrades sang.
Withdrawing from Hofstade, in addition to other atrocities the Germans
cut off both hands of a boy of sixteen. At the inquest affidavits were
taken from twenty-five witnesses, who saw the boy before he died or
just afterwards.
(_Affidavits D. 100-8._) Passing through Haecht, in addition to the
young women whom they violated and killed, a child three years old was
found nailed by its hands and feet to a door.
That all these atrocities were carefully planned in advance for
terrorizing the people is proven by the fact that on the morning of
August 25th the officers who had received great kindness from Madame
Roomans, a notary's wife, warned her to make her escape immediately, as
the looting and killing of all the citizens, men, women and children,
was about to begin.
(_D. 186._) "The captain served a requisition upon all the farmers
hereabouts, taking horses, oxen, wagons, milk and butter. These
people are so ignorant that they did not know when he gave them false
receipts and signed this name--Herr von Koepenick." Other peasants
received receipts stating that in return for the goods that had
been requisitioned by the German officers, the owner was to come to
the German quartermaster and receive his pay in twenty strokes of a
whip-lash. If all the diaries of the Germans now in the hands of the
English, Belgian and French authorities were brought together and
published, they would make a small library, and the title would be
"Confessions of Crime by German Soldiers."
"August 19th. Halted and plundered a villa, as invariably the
surrounding houses were immediately plundered; dined splendidly, drank
eleven bottles of champagne, four bottles of wine and six bottles of
liquor."
John VanderSchoot, 10th Company, 39th Infantry, 7th Army Corps. "August
19th. Quartered in the University. Boozed through the streets of Liège,
lie on straw, booze in plenty, little food, so we must steal. We live
like gods here in Belgium."
K. Bartel--on crimes he had witnessed--as they were committed by his
own officers and fellow privates. "Our men have shrunk morally below
zero. Oct. 7th."
Yager Otto Clepp, August 22nd, in Liège makes this entry: "Two of our
regiments shot at each other; nine dead and fifty wounded. Reason for
mistake not yet ascertained."
There is a striking commentary on the German War Staff's Commission's
statement that they shot the old men and women in Liège because of an
attack by the people. This German officer's entry illustrates what
doubtless happened many times. When the Germans were drunk, terrified
by the sense of their own crimes and expecting the people to resist the
cruelties, one German company turned and fired upon another.
H. W. Heller. August 6th. "Friday at 8:30 came the news that the
English had landed in Belgium. We smashed everything immediately. One
sees only burning houses and heaps of dead people and dead horses every
three steps."
Fritz Holman writes: "We are never thirsty here in France. We drink
five and six bottles of champagne a day, and as to under linen, we
simply loot a house and change. God only knows what will happen unto us
later on."
Stephen Luther's diary. "Monday the 10th. Marching via Laden. Villages
friendly disposed, one of them bombarded in error. Misunderstandings
occurred because our officers understand no French. There was terrible
destruction; in a farmhouse saw a woman who had been completely
stripped and who lay on burnt beams. How savage! Terrible conditions
in the destroyed houses." "August 24, 1914. In Ermiton we took about a
thousand prisoners. At least five hundred were shot."
* * * * *
Let this series be closed by a few trenchant words from two of
Germany's most famous poets, characterizing the Prussian nature that
to-day controls all Germany (and neighbour Austria besides). The great
Goethe was from Weimar, but the satiric Heine, from Düsseldorf--a
Prussian, born.