THE TRAIL OF THE BEAST IN BELGIUM
Germany’s onrush into heroic Belgium speedily resolved itself into a
saturnalia that drenched the land with blood and roused the civilized
world into resentful horror. As the tide of barbarity swept forward
into Northern France, stories of the horrors filtered through the
close web of German censorship. There were denials at first by
German propagandists. In the face of truth furnished by thousands of
witnesses, the denials faded away.
What caused these atrocities? Were they the spontaneous expression of
dormant brutishness in German soldiers? Were they a sudden reversion of
an entire nation to bestiality?
The answer is that the private soldier as an individual was not
responsible. The carnage, the rapine, the wholesale desolation was
an integral part of the German policy of _schrecklichkeit_ or
frightfulness. This policy was laid down by Germany as part of its
imperial war code. In 1902 Germany issued a new war manual entitled
“Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege.” In it is written this cold-blooded
declaration:
All measures which conduce to the attainment of the object of war are
permissible and these may be summarized in the two ideas of violence
and cunning. What is permissible includes every means of war without
which the object of the war cannot be attained. All means which
modern invention affords, including the fullest, most dangerous, and
most massive means of destruction, may be utilized.
Brand Whitlock, United States Minister to Belgium, in a formal report
to the State Department, made this statement concerning Germany’s
policy in permitting these outrages:
“All these deliberate organized massacres of civilians, all these
murders and outrages, the violation of women, the killing of children,
wanton destruction, burning, looting and pillage, and whole towns
destroyed, were acts for which no possible military necessity can
be pleaded. They were wilfully committed as part of a deliberately
prepared and scientifically organized policy of terrorism.”
And now, having considered these outrages as part of the German policy
of terrorism, let us turn to the facts presented by those who made
investigations at first hand in devastated Belgium and Northern France.
Let us first return to the tragic story of the destruction of Louvain.
The first document comes in the form of a cable sent from the Belgian
Minister of Foreign Affairs under date of August 8, 1914:
“On Tuesday evening a body of German troops who had been driven back
retired in disorder upon the town of Louvain. Germans who were guarding
the town thought that the retiring troops were Belgians and fired
upon them. In order to excuse this mistake the Germans, in spite of
the most energetic denials on the part of the authorities, pretended
that Belgians had fired on the Germans, although all the inhabitants,
including policemen, had been disarmed for more than a week. Without
any examination and without listening to any protest the commanding
officer announced that the town would be immediately destroyed. All
inhabitants had to leave their homes at once; some were made prisoners;
women and children were put into a train of which the destination was
unknown; soldiers with fire bombs set fire to the different quarters
of the town; the splendid Church of St. Pierre, the markets, the
university and its scientific establishments, were given to the flames,
and it is probable that the Hotel de Ville, this celebrated jewel
of Gothic art, will also have disappeared in the disaster. Several
notabilities were shot at sight. Thus a town of 40,000 inhabitants,
which, since the fifteenth century, has been the intellectual and
scientific capital of the Low Countries, is a heap of ashes. Americans,
many of whom have followed the course at this illustrious alma mater
and have there received such cordial hospitality, cannot remain
insensible to this outrage on the rights of humanity and civilization
which is unprecedented in history.”
Minister Whitlock made the following report on the same outrage:
“A violent fusillade broke out simultaneously at various points in the
city (Louvain), notably at the Porte de Bruxelles, Porte de Tirlemont,
Rue Leopold, Rue Marie-Thérèse, Rue des Joyeuses Entrées. German
soldiers were firing at random in every street and in every direction.
Later fires broke out everywhere, notably in the University building,
the Library, in the old Church of St. Peter, in the Place du Peuple,
in the Rue de la Station, in the Boulevard de Tirlemont, and in the
Chaussée de Tirlemont. On the orders of their chiefs, the German
soldiers would break open the houses and set fire to them, shooting on
the inhabitants who tried to leave their dwellings. Many persons who
took refuge in their cellars were burned to death. The German soldiers
were equipped with apparatus for the purpose of firing dwellings,
incendiary pastils, machines for spraying petroleum, etc....
“Major von Manteuffel (of the German forces) sent for Alderman
Schmidt. Upon the latter’s arrival, the major declared that hostages
were to be held, as sedition had just broken out. He asked Father
Parijs, Mr. Schmidt, and Mgr. Coenraedts, First Vice-Rector of the
University, who was being held as a hostage, to make proclamations
to the inhabitants exhorting them to be calm and menacing them with
a fine of twenty million francs, the destruction of the city and the
hanging of the hostages, if they created disturbance. Surrounded by
about thirty soldiers and a few officers, Major Manteuffel, Father
Parijs, Mr. Schmidt and Mgr. Coenraedts left in the direction of the
station, and the alderman, in French, and the priest, in Flemish, made
proclamations at the street corners....
“Near the statue of Juste-Lipse, a Dr. Berghausen, a German surgeon,
in a highly excited condition, ran to meet the delegation. He shouted
that a German soldier had just been killed by a shot fired from the
house of Mr. David Fishbach. Addressing the soldiers, Dr. Berghausen
said: ‘The blood of the entire population of Louvain is not worth a
drop of the blood of a German soldier!’ Then one of the soldiers threw
into the interior of the house of Mr. Fishbach one of the pastils
which the German soldiers carried and immediately the house flared
up. It contained paintings of a high value. The old coachman, Joseph
Vandermosten, who had re-entered the house to try to save the life of
his master, did not return. His body was found the next day amidst the
ruins....
“The Germans made the usual claim that the civil population had fired
upon them and that it was necessary to take these measures, i. e., burn
the churches, the library and other public monuments, burn and pillage
houses, driving out and murdering the inhabitants, sacking the city
in order to punish and to spread terror among the people, and General
von Luttwitz had told me that it was reported that the son of the
burgomaster had shot one of their generals.
“But the burgomaster of Louvain had no son, and no officer was shot
at Louvain. The story of a general shot by the son of a burgomaster
was a repetition of a tragedy that had occurred at Aerschot, on the
19th, where the fifteen-year-old son of the burgomaster had been killed
by a firing squad, not because he had shot a general, but because an
officer had been shot, probably by Belgian soldiers retreating through
the town. The story of this tragedy is told by the boy’s mother, under
oath, before the Belgian Commission, and is so simple, so touching, so
convincing in its verisimilitude, that I attach a copy of it in extenso
to this report. It seems to afford an altogether typical example of
what went on all over the stricken land during those days of terror.
(In other places it was the daughter of the burgomaster who was said to
have shot a general.)
“The following facts may be noted: From the avowal of Prussian officers
themselves, there was not one single victim, among their men at the
barracks of St. Martin, Louvain, where it was claimed that the first
shot had been fired from a house situated in front of the Caserne. This
would appear to be impossible had the civilians fired upon them point
blank from across the street. It was said that when certain houses near
the barracks were burning, numerous explosions occurred, revealing the
presence of cartridges; but these houses were drinking houses much
frequented by German soldiers. It was said that Spanish students shot
from the schools in the Rue de la Station, but Father Catala, rector of
the school, affirms that the schools were empty....
“If it was necessary, for whatever reason, to do what was done at
Vise, at Dinant, at Aerschot, at Louvain, and in a hundred other towns
that were sacked, pillaged and burned, where masses were shot down
because civilians had fired on German troops, and if it was necessary
to do this on a scale never before witnessed in history, one might not
unreasonably assume that the alleged firing by civilians was done on a
scale, if not so thoroughly organized, at least somewhat in proportion
to the rage of destruction that punished it. And hence it would seem
to be a simple matter to produce at least convincing evidence that
civilians had fired on the soldiers; but there is no testimony to
that effect beyond that of the soldiers who merely assert it: _Man hat
geschossen_. If there were no more firing on soldiers by civilians in
Belgium than is proved by the German testimony, it was not enough to
justify the burning of the smallest of the towns that was overtaken by
that fate. And there is not a scintilla of evidence of organized bands
of francs-tireurs, such as were found in the war of 1870.”
[Illustration: _From a painting by F. Gueldry to illustrate an
official report._
GERMAN ATROCITIES
At Senlis, Department of Oise, on September 2, 1914, French captives
were made to walk in the open so as to be hit by French bullets. Many
were killed and wounded. The townsman on the left was struck in the
knee. A German officer asked to see the wound and shot him through the
shoulder. On the right a German officer is seen torturing a wounded
French soldier by beating him in the face with a stick.]
Under date of September 12, 1917, Minister Whitlock, in a report to the
State Department of the United States, made the following summary: “As
one studies the evidence at hand, one is struck at the outset by the
fact so general that it must exclude the hypothesis of coincidence,
and that is that these wholesale massacres followed immediately upon
some check, some reverse, that the German army had sustained. The
German army was checked by the guns of the forts to the east of Liége,
and the horrors of Vise, Verviers, Bligny, Battice, Hervy and twenty
villages follow. When they entered Liége, they burned the houses
along two streets and killed many persons, five or six Spaniards
among them. Checked before Namur they sacked Andenne, Bauvignies, and
Champignon, and when they took Namur they burned one hundred and fifty
houses. Compelled to give battle to the French army in the Belgian
Ardennes they ravaged the beautiful valley of the Semois; the complete
destruction of the village of Rossignlo and the extermination of its
entire male population took place there. Checked again by the French
on the Meuse, the awful carnage of Dinant results. Held on the Sambre
by the French, they burn one hundred houses at Charleroi and enact the
appalling tragedy of Tamines. At Mons, the English hold them, and after
that all over the Borinage there is a systematic destruction, pillage
and murder. The Belgian army drive them back from Malines and Louvain
is doomed. The Belgian army falling back and fighting in retreat took
refuge in the forts of Antwerp, and the burning and sack of Hougaerde,
Wavre, Ottignies, Grimde, Neerlinter, Weert, St. George, Shaffen and
Aerschot follow.
“The Belgian troops inflicted serious losses on the Germans in the
South of the Province of Limbourg and the towns of Lummen, Bilsen, and
Lanaeken are partially destroyed. Antwerp held out for two months,
and all about its outer line of fortifications there was blood and
fire, numerous villages were sacked and burned and the whole town of
Termonde was destroyed. During the battles of September the village of
Boortmeerbeek near Malines, occupied by the Germans, was retaken by
the Belgians, and when the Germans entered it again they burned forty
houses. Three times occupied by the Belgians and retaken by the Germans
Boortmeerbeek was three times punished in the same way. That is to say,
everywhere the German army met with a defeat it took it out, as we say
in America, on the civil population. And that is the explanation of the
German atrocities in Belgium.”
A committee of the highest honor and responsibility was appointed by
the British Government to investigate the whole subject of atrocities
in Belgium and Northern France. Its chairman was the Rt. Hon. Viscount
James Bryce, formerly British Ambassador to the United States. Its
other members were the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, the Rt.
Hon. Sir Edward Clark, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, Mr. Harold Cox and Sir
Kenelm E. Digby.
The report of the commission bears upon its face the stamp of
painstaking search for truth, substantiates every statement made by
Minister Whitlock and makes known many horrible instances of cruelty
and barbarity. It makes the following deductions as having been proved
beyond question:
1. 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.
2. That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both
men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and
children murdered.
3. 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 burnings and destruction were
frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being, indeed,
part of a system of general terrorization.
4. 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.
The Bryce Commission’s report on the destruction of Dinant is an
example of testimony laid before them. It follows:
“A clear statement of the outrages at Dinant, which many travelers will
recall as a singularly picturesque town on the Meuse, is given by one
witness, who says that the Germans began burning houses in the Rue
St. Jacques on the 21st of August, and that every house in the street
was burned. On the following day an engagement took place between the
French and the Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the
cellar of a bank with his wife and children. On the morning of the
23d, about 5 o’clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately afterward
a party of Germans came to the house. They rang the bell and began to
batter at the door and windows. The witness’ wife went to the door and
two or three Germans came in. The family were ordered out into the
street. There they found another family, and the two families were
driven with their hands above their heads along the Rue Grande. All the
houses in the street were burning.
“The party was eventually put into a forge where there were a number
of other prisoners, about a hundred in all, and were kept there from
11 A. M. till 2 P. M. They were then taken to the prison. There they
were assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. They
were then passed through into the prison itself and put into cells.
The witness and his wife were separated from each other. During the
next hour the witness heard rifle shots continually and noticed in
the corner of a courtyard leading off the row of cells the body of a
young man with a mantle thrown over it. He recognized the mantle as
having belonged to his wife. The witness’ daughter was allowed to go
out to see what had happened to her mother, and the witness himself was
allowed to go across the courtyard half an hour afterward for the same
purpose. He found his wife lying on the floor in a room. She had bullet
wounds in four places but was alive and told her husband to return to
the children and he did so.
“About 5 o’clock in the evening, he saw the Germans bringing out
all the young and middle-aged men from the cells, and ranging their
prisoners, to the number of forty, in three rows in the middle of the
courtyard. About twenty Germans were drawn up opposite, but before
anything was done there was a tremendous fusillade from some point near
the prison and the civilians were hurried back to their cells. Half an
hour later the same forty men were brought back into the courtyard.
Almost immediately there was a second fusillade like the first and they
were driven back to the cells again.
“About 7 o’clock the witness and other prisoners were brought out of
their cells and marched out of the prison. They went between two lines
of troops to Roche Bayard, about a kilometer away. An hour later the
women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back
to Dinant passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison,
the witness saw three lines of bodies which he recognized as being
those of his neighbors. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed
movement in some of them. There were about one hundred and twenty
bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of a hill outside
Dinant and compelled to stay there till 8 o’clock in the morning. On
the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to
Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.
“Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the
prison. About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another
in a grass square opposite the convent. A witness asked a German
officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it was
because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at
the Germans. As a matter of fact, one of her sons was at that time in
Liége and the other in Brussels. It is stated that besides the ninety
corpses referred to above, sixty corpses of civilians were recovered
from a hole in the brewery yard and that forty-eight bodies of women
and children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on
fire by hand grenades. Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one
of whose legs was broken and the other injured by a bayonet. 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 Bryce Commission reports the outrages in a number of Belgian
villages in this terse fashion:
“In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and many corpses
were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, and some in the streets.
Two witnesses speak of having seen the body of a young man pierced by
bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also. On a side road the corpse
of a civilian was seen on his doorstep with a bayonet wound in his
stomach and by his side the dead body of a boy of five or six with his
hands nearly severed. The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the
blacksmith’s. They had been killed with the bayonet. In a café, a young
man, also killed with the bayonet, was holding his hands together as if
in the attitude of supplication.
“In the garden of a house in the main street, bodies of two women were
observed, and in another house, the body of a boy of sixteen with two
bayonet wounds in the chest. In Sempst a similar condition of affairs
existed. Houses were burning and in some of them were the charred
remains of civilians. In a bicycle shop a witness saw the burned corpse
of a man. Other witnesses speak of this incident. Another civilian,
unarmed, was shot as he was running away. As will be remembered,
all the arms had been given up some time before by the order of the
burgomaster.
“At Weerde four corpses of civilians were lying in the road. It was
said that these men had fired upon the German soldiers; but this is
denied. The arms had been given up long before. Two children were
killed in the village of Weerde, quite wantonly as they were standing
in the road with their mother. They were three or four years old and
were killed with the bayonet. A small barn burning close by formed a
convenient means of getting rid of the bodies. They were thrown into
the flames from the bayonets. It is right to add that no commissioned
officer was present at the time. At Eppeghem, on August 25th, a
pregnant woman who had been wounded with a bayonet was discovered in
the convent. She was dying. On the road six dead bodies of laborers
were seen.
“At Boortmeerbeek a German soldier was seen to fire three times at a
little girl five years old. Having failed to hit her, he subsequently
bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian
soldier who had seen him commit this murder from a distance. At Herent
the charred body of a civilian was found in a butcher’s shop, and in
a handcart twenty yards away was the dead body of a laborer. Two eye
witnesses relate that a German soldier shot a civilian and stabbed
him with a bayonet as he lay. He then made one of these witnesses,
a civilian prisoner, smell the blood on the bayonet. At Haecht the
bodies of ten civilians were seen lying in a row by a brewery wall. In
a laborer’s house, which had been broken up, the mutilated corpse of a
woman of thirty to thirty-five was discovered.”
Concerning the treatment of women and children in general, the report
continues: “The evidence shows that the German authorities, when
carrying out a policy of systematic arson and plunder in selected
districts, usually drew some distinction between the adult male
population on the one hand and the women and children on the other. It
was a frequent practice to set apart the adult males of the condemned
district with a view to the execution of a suitable number--preferably
of the younger and more vigorous--and to reserve the women and children
for milder treatment. The depositions, however, present many instances
of calculated cruelty, often going the length of murder, toward the
women and children of the condemned area.
“At Dinant sixty women and children were confined in the cellar of a
convent from Sunday morning till the following Friday, August 28th,
sleeping on the ground, for there were no beds, with nothing to drink
during the whole period, and given no food until Wednesday, when
somebody threw into the cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot for
each prisoner. In other cases the women and children were marched for
long distances along roads, as, for instance, the march of the women
from Louvain to Tirlemont, August 28th, the laggards pricked on by
the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having been brutally kicked
by privates. Others were struck at with the butt end of rifles. At
Louvain, at Liége, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny, at Andenne,
and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not restrained
from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot be trusted to observe the
rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are called upon to
execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the very first
women were not safe. At Liége women and children were chased about the
streets by soldiers.
“Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women and children from
Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly exposed to a fire
from a mitrailleuse and rifles. ‘We were all placed,’ recounts a
sufferer, ‘in Station Street, Louvain, and the German soldiers fired on
us. I saw the corpses of some women in the street. I fell down, and a
woman who had been shot fell on top of me.’ Women and children suddenly
turned out into the streets, and, compelled to witness the destruction
of their homes by fire, provided a sad spectacle to such as were sober
enough to see.
“A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, exclaimed
in disgust: ‘I am a father myself, and I cannot bear this. It is not
war but butchery.’ Officers as well as men succumbed to the temptation
of drink, with results which may be illustrated by an incident which
occurred at Campenhout. In this village there was a certain well-to-do
merchant (name given) who had a cellar of good champagne. On the
afternoon of the 14th or 15th of August three German cavalry officers
entered the house and demanded champagne. Having drunk ten bottles and
invited five or six officers and three or four private soldiers to join
them, they continued their carouse, and then called for the master and
mistress of the house.
“‘Immediately my mistress came in,’ says the valet de chambre, ‘one
of the officers who was sitting on the floor got up, and, putting
a revolver to my mistress’ temple, shot her dead. The officer was
obviously drunk. The other officers continued to drink and sing, and
they did not pay any great attention to the killing of my mistress. The
officer who shot my mistress then told my master to dig a grave and
bury my mistress. My master and the officer went into the garden, the
officer threatening my master with a pistol. My master was then forced
to dig the grave and to bury my mistress in it. I cannot say for what
reason they killed my mistress. The officer who did it was singing all
the time.’
“In the evidence before us there are cases tending to show that
aggravated crimes against women were sometimes severely punished. One
witness reports that a young girl who was being pursued by a drunken
soldier at Louvain appealed to a German officer, and that the offender
was then and there shot. Another describes how an officer of the
Thirty-second Regiment of the Line was led out to execution for the
violation of two young girls, but reprieved at the request or with the
consent of the girls’ mother. These instances are sufficient to show
that the maltreatment of women was no 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.
Indeed, so much is avowed. ‘I asked the commander why we had been
spared,’ says a lady in Louvain, who deposes to having suffered much
brutal treatment during the sack. He said: ‘We will not hurt you any
more. Stay in Louvain. All is finished.’ It was Saturday, August 29th,
and the reign of terror was over.
“The Germans used men, women and children of Belgium as screens for
advancing infantry, as is shown in the following: Outside Fort Fleron,
near Liége, men and children were marched in front of the Germans to
prevent the Belgian soldiers from firing. The progress of the Germans
through Mons was marked by many incidents of this character. Thus, on
August 22d, half a dozen Belgian colliers returning from work were
marching in front of some German troops who were pursuing the English,
and in the opinion of the witnesses, they must have been placed there
intentionally. An English officer describes how he caused a barricade
to be erected in a main thoroughfare leading out of Mons, when the
Germans, in order to reach a crossroad in the rear, fetched civilians
out of the houses on each side of the main road and compelled them to
hold up white flags and act as cover.
“Another British officer who saw this incident is convinced that
the Germans were acting deliberately for the purpose of protecting
themselves from the fire of the British troops. Apart from this
protection, the Germans could not have advanced, as the street was
straight and commanded by the British rifle fire at a range of 700 or
800 yards. Several British soldiers also speak of this incident, and
their story is confirmed by a Flemish witness in a side street.”
The French Government also appointed a commission, headed by M. Georges
Payelle. This body made an investigation of outrages committed by
German officers and soldiers in Northern France. Its report showed
conditions that outstripped in horror the war tactics of savages. It
makes the following accusations:
“In Rebais, two English cavalrymen who were surprised and wounded in
this commune were finished off with gunshots by the Germans when they
were dismounted and when one of them had thrown up his hands, showing
thus that he was unarmed.
“In the department of the Marne, as everywhere else, the German troops
gave themselves up to general pillage, which was carried out always
under similar conditions and with the complicity of their leaders.
The Communes of Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Suippes, Marfaux, Fromentieres
and Esternay suffered especially in this way. Everything which the
invader could carry off from the houses was placed on motor lorries and
vehicles. At Suippes, in particular, they carried off in this way a
quantity of different objects, among these sewing machines and toys.
A great many villages, as well as important country towns, were burned
without any reason whatever. Without doubt, these crimes were committed
by order, as German detachments arrived in the neighborhood with their
torches, their grenades, and their usual outfit for arson.
“At Marfaux nineteen private houses were burned. Of the Commune of
Glannes practically nothing remains. At Somme-Tourbe the entire
village has been destroyed, with the exception of the Mairie, the
church and two private buildings. At Auve nearly the whole town has
been destroyed. At Etrepy sixty-three families out of seventy are
homeless. At Huiron all of the houses, with the exception of five had
been burned. At Sermaize-les-Bains only about forty houses out of 900
remain. At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty houses out of thirty-three are
in ruins.
“At Suippes, the big market town which has been practically burned out,
German soldiers carrying straw and cans of petrol have been seen in the
streets. While the mayor’s house was burning, six sentinels with fixed
bayonets were under orders to forbid any one to approach and to prevent
any help being given.
“All this destruction by arson, which only represents a small
proportion of the acts of the same kind in the Department of
Seine-et-Marne, was accomplished without the least tendency to
rebellion or the smallest act of resistance being recorded against the
inhabitants of the localities which are today more or less completely
destroyed. In some villages the Germans, before setting fire to them,
made one of their soldiers fire a shot from his rifle so as to be able
to pretend afterward that the civilian population had attacked them,
an allegation which is all the more absurd since at the time when the
enemy arrived, the only inhabitants left were old men, sick persons, or
people absolutely without any means of aggression.
“Numerous crimes against the person have also been committed. In the
majority of the communes hostages have been taken away; many of them
have not returned. At Sermaize-les-Bains, the Germans carried off
about one hundred and fifty people, some of whom were decked out with
helmets and coats and compelled, thus equipped, to mount guard over the
bridges.
“At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty men and forty-five women and children
were obliged to leave with a detachment. One of the men--a certain
Emile Pierre--has not returned nor sent any news of himself. At
Corfelix, M. Jacqet, who was carried off on the 7th of September with
eleven of his fellow-citizens, was found five hundred meters from the
village with a bullet in his head.
“At Champuis, the curé, his maid-servant, and four other inhabitants
who were taken away on the same day as the hostages of Corfelix had not
returned at the time of our visit to the place.
“At the same place an old man of seventy, named Jacquemin, was tied
down in his bed by an officer and left in this state without food for
three days. He died a little time after. At Vert-la-Gravelle a farm
hand was killed. He was struck on the head with a bottle and his
chest was run through with a lance. The garde champetre Brulefer of le
Gault-la-Foret was murdered at Maclaunay, where he had been taken by
the Germans. His body was found with his head shattered and a wound on
his chest.
“At Champguyon, a commune which has been fired, a certain Verdier was
killed in his father-in-law’s house. The latter was not present at the
execution, but he heard a shot and next day an officer said to him,
‘Son shot. He is under the ruins.’ In spite of the search made the body
has not been found among them. It must have been consumed in the fire.
“At Sermaize, the roadmaker, Brocard, was placed among a number of
hostages. Just at the moment when he was being arrested with his son,
his wife and his daughter-in-law in a state of panic rushed to throw
themselves into the Saulx. The old man was able to free himself for a
moment and ran in all haste after them and made several attempts to
save them, but the Germans dragged him away pitilessly, leaving the two
wretched women struggling in the river. When Brocard and his son
were restored to liberty, four days afterward, and found the bodies,
they discovered that their wives had both received bullet wounds in the
head.
[Illustration: © _Underwood and Underwood, N. Y._
THE SUPREME EXPONENTS OF GERMAN FRIGHTFULNESS
On the left, General von Bissing, military commander of Belgium. On
the right, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, who inspired the German
submarine campaign.]
“At Triaucourt the Germans gave themselves up to the worst excesses.
Angered doubtless by the remark which an officer had addressed to a
soldier, against whom a young girl of nineteen, Mlle. Helene Proces,
had made complaint on account of the indecent treatment to which she
had been subjected, they burned the village and made a systematic
massacre of the inhabitants. They began by setting fire to the house
of an inoffensive householder, M. Jules Gand, and by shooting this
unfortunate man as he was leaving his house to escape the flames. Then
they dispersed among the houses in the streets, firing off their rifles
on every side. A young man, seventeen years, Georges Lecourtier, who
tried to escape was shot. M. Alfred Lallemand suffered the same fate.
He was pursued into the kitchen of his fellow-citizen Tautelier, and
murdered there, while Tautelier received three bullets in his hand.
“Fearing, not without reason, for their lives, Mlle. Proces, her mother
and her grandmother of seventy-one and her old aunt of eighty-one,
tried to cross the trellis which separates their garden from a
neighboring property with the help of a ladder. The young girl alone
was able to reach the other side and to avoid death by hiding in the
cabbages. As for the other women, they were struck down by rifle shots.
The village curé collected the brains of the aunt on the ground on
which they were strewn and had the bodies carried into Proces’ house.
During the following night, the Germans played the piano near the
bodies.
“While the carnage raged, the fire rapidly spread and devoured
thirty-five houses. An old man of seventy and a child of two months
perished in the flames. M. Igier, who was trying to save his cattle,
was pursued for 300 meters by soldiers, who fired at him ceaselessly.
By a miracle this man had the good fortune not to be wounded, but five
bullets went through his clothing.”
This summary merely hints at the atrocities that were perpetrated.
And these are the crimes that France and Belgium will remember after
indemnities have been paid, after borders have been re-established and
after generations shall have passed. The horrors of blazing villages,
of violated womanhood, of mutilated childhood, of stark and senseless
butcheries, will flash before the minds of French and Belgian men and
women when Germany’s name shall be mentioned long after the declaration
of peace.
_Schrecklichkeit_ had its day. It took its bloody toll of the fairest
and bravest of two gallant nations. It ravaged Poland as well and
wreaked its fiendish will on wounded soldiers on the battlefields.
But _Schrecklichkeit_ is dead. Belgium and France have shown that
murder and rape and arson cannot destroy liberty nor check the
indomitable ambitions of the free peoples of earth.
The lesson to Germany was taught at a terrible cost to humanity, but
it was taught in a fashion that nations hereafter who shall dream of
emulating the Hun will know in advance that frightfulness serves no end
except to feed the lust for destruction that exists only in the most
debased and brutish of men.