The full extent of the German atrocities committed on a battle line
six hundred miles in length, and extending from the English Channel
to the Swiss frontier, can never be known. More than one hundred
thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes
were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German
armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns
affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies
taken. After the German troops had passed out of the village or city,
it became possible for the village school-teacher, priest or banker,
the aged women and the children to creep out of pits, the caves in
the fields, or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and
return to survey the scene of desolation behind them. The opposite
page shows victims in the little town of Andenne, where more than 300
civilians were massacred.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]