I must admit that, out of the forty notebooks, or thereabout, that I
have handled, there are six or seven that do not relate any exactions,
either from hypocritical reticence or because there are some regiments
which do not make war in this vile fashion. And there are as many as
three notebooks whose writers, in relating these ignoble things, express
astonishment, indignation, and sorrow. I will not give the names of
these, because they deserve our regard, and I wish to spare them the
risk of being some day blamed or punished by their own.
[Illustration: Figure 10.]
The first, the Private X., who belongs to the Sixty-fifth Infantry,
Regiment of Landwehr, says of certain of his companions in arms, (Fig.
10:)
They do not behave as soldiers, but rather as highwaymen,
bandits, and brigands, and are a dishonor to our regiment and
to our army.
Another, Lieut. Y., of the Seventy-seventh Infantry of Reserves, says:
No discipline, ... the Pioneers are well nigh worthless; as to
the artillery, it is a band of robbers.
The third, Private Z., of the Twelfth Infantry of Reserves, First Corps,
writes, (Fig. 11:)
[Illustration: Figure 11.]
Unfortunately, I am forced to make note of a fact which should
not have occurred, but there are to be found, even in our own
army, creatures who are no longer men, but hogs, to whom
nothing is sacred. One of these broke into a sacristy; it was
locked, and where the Blessed Sacrament was kept. A
Protestant, out of respect, had refused to sleep there. This
man used it as a deposit for his excrements. How is it
possible there should be such creatures? Last night one of the
men of the Landwehr, more than thirty-five years of age,
married, tried to rape the daughter of the inhabitant where
he had taken up his quarters--a mere girl--and when the father
intervened he pressed his bayonet against his breast.
Beyond these three, who are still worthy of the name of soldiers, the
other thirty are all alike, and the same soul (if we can talk of souls
among such as these) animates them low and frantic. I say they are all
about alike, but there are shades of difference. There are some who,
like subtle jurists, make distinctions, blaming here and approving
there--"Dort war ein Exempel am Platze." Others laugh and say "Krieg ist
Krieg," or sometimes they add in French, to emphasize their derision,
"Ja, Ja, c'est la guerre," and some among them, when their ugly business
is done, turn to their book of canticles and sing psalms, such as the
Saxon Lieut. Reislang, who relates how one day he left his drinking bout
to _assist at the "Gottesdienst"_, but having eaten too much and drunken
too much, had to quit the holy place in haste; and the Private Moritz
Grosse of the 177th Infantry, who, after depicting the sacking of
Saint-Vieth, (Aug. 22,) the sacking of Dinant, (Aug. 23,) writes this
phrase:
Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses, and in the
evening a military chorus--"Now let all give thanks to God."
(Fig. 12.)
They're all of a like tenor. Now, if we consider that I could exchange
the preceding texts with others quite similar, quite as cynical, and
taken at random, for instance--from the notebook of the Reservist
Lautenschlager of the First Battalion, Sixty-sixth Regiment of Infantry,
or the notebook of the Private Eduard Holl of the Eighth Corps, or the
notebook of the sub-officer Reinhold Koehn of the Second Battalion of
Pomeranian Pioneers, or that of the sub-officer Otto Brandt of the
Second Section of Reserve Ambulances, or of the Reservist Martin Müller
of the 100th Saxon Reserve, or of Lieut. Karl Zimmer of the Fifty-fifth
Infantry, or that of the Private Erich Pressler of the 100th Grenadiers,
First Saxon Corps, &c., and if we will note that, among the exactions
reported above, there are very few that are the work of isolated brutes,
(such as, unfortunately, may be found even in the most noble armies,)
but that, on the contrary, the crimes represented here are collective
actions in obedience to service orders, and such as rest upon and
dishonor not only the individual but the entire troop, the officers, and
the nation; and if we will further note that these thirty notebooks
taken at random--Bavarian, Saxon, Pomeranian, Brandeburger, or from the
provinces of Baden and the Rhine--must of necessity represent hundreds
and thousands of others quite similar, as we may judge from the
frightful monotony of their recitals; if we consider all this, we must,
I think, be forced to admit that these atrocities are nothing less than
the practical application of a methodically organized system.
[Illustration: Figure 12.]