Frequently when a German troop want to carry a position, they place
before them civilians--men, women, and children--and find shelter behind
these ramparts of living flesh. As such a stratagem is essentially
playing upon the nobility of heart of the adversary, and saying to him
"you won't fire upon these unfortunates, I know it, and I hold you at my
mercy, unarmed, because you are not as craven as I am," as it implies a
homage to the enemy and the self-degradation of the one employing it, it
is almost inconceivable that soldiers should resort to it; it represents
a new invention in the long story of human vileness, which even the
dreadful Penitentiels of the Middle Ages had not discovered. In reading
the stories from French, Belgian, and English sources, attributing such
practices to the Germans, it has made me doubt, if not the truthfulness,
at least the detailed exactness of the stories. It seemed to me that the
tales must be of crimes by men who would be disavowed, individual
lapses, which do not dishonor the nation, because the nation on
ascertaining them would repudiate them. But how can we doubt that the
German Nation has, on the contrary, accepted these acts as exploits
worthy of herself, that in them she recognizes her own aptitudes, and
finds pleasure in the contemplation; how, I ask, can we doubt this in
reading the following narrative signed by a Bavarian officer, Lieut. A.
Eberlein, spread out in the columns of one of the best known periodicals
of Germany, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, in its issue of Wednesday,
Oct. 7, 1914, Page 22, Lieut. Eberlein relates there the occupation of
Saint-Dié at the end of August. He entered the town at the head of a
column, and while waiting for reinforcements was compelled to barricade
himself in a house, (Fig. 9:)
[Illustration: Figure 9.]
We arrested three civilians, and a bright idea struck me. We
furnished them with chairs and made them seat themselves in
the middle of the street. There were supplications on one
part, and some blows with the stocks of our guns on the other.
One, little by little, gets terribly hardened. Finally, there
they were sitting in the street. How many anguished prayers
they may have muttered, I cannot say, but during the whole
time their hands were joined in nervous contraction. I am
sorry for them, but the stratagem was of immediate effect. The
enfilading directed from the houses diminished at once; we
were able then to take possession of the house opposite, and
thus became masters of the principal street. From that moment
every one that showed his face in the street was shot. And the
artillery meanwhile kept up vigorous work, so that at about 7
o'clock in the evening, when the brigade advanced to rescue
us, I could report "Saint-Dié has been emptied of all
enemies."
As I learned later, the ---- Regiment of Reserves, which came
into Saint-Dié further north, had experiences entirely similar
to our own. The four civilians whom they had placed on chairs
in the middle of the street were killed by French bullets. I
saw them myself stretched out in the street near the hospital.