H.M. the Emperor of Germany, by ratifying The Hague Convention of 1907,
covenanted (Article 24) that "it is forbidden (c) to kill or wound an
enemy who, having laid down his arms, or being without means of defense,
has surrendered unconditionally. (d) To declare that no quarter shall be
given."
Have the German armies respected these covenants? Throughout Belgian and
French reports depositions such as the following abound. This is taken
from a French Captain of the 288th Infantry:
On the 22d, in the evening, I learned that in the woods, about
one hundred and fifty meters north of the square formed by the
intersection of the great Calonne trench with the road from
Vaux-les-Palameis to Saint-Rémy, there were corpses of French
soldiers shot by the Germans. I went to the spot and found the
bodies of about thirty soldiers within a small space, most of
them prone, but several still kneeling, and _all having a
precisely similar wound_--a bullet through the ear. One only,
seriously wounded in his lower parts, could still speak, and
told me that the Germans before leaving had ordered them to
lie down and that then had them shot through the head; that
he, already wounded had secured indulgence by stating that he
was the father of three small children. The skulls of these
unfortunates were scattered; the guns, broken at the stock,
were scattered here and there; and the blood had besprinkled
the bushes to such an extent that in coming out of the woods
my cape was spattered with it; it was a veritable shambles.
I quote this testimony, not to base any accusations upon it, but simply
to give precision to our indictment. I will not lay stress upon it as
evidence, for I wish to keep to the rule which I have laid down--to have
records of nothing but German sources of information.
I will quote here the text of an order of the day addressed by General
Stenger, in command of the Fifty-eighth German Brigade, on the 26th of
August, to the troops under his orders:
From this day forward no further prisoners will be taken. All
prisoners will be massacred. The wounded, whether in arms or
not in arms, shall be massacred. Even the prisoners already
gathered in convoys will be massacred. No living enemy must
remain behind us.
Signed--First Lieutenant in Command of the Company, Stoy;
Colonel Commanding the Regiment, Neubauer; General in Command
of the Brigade, Stenger.
About thirty soldiers of Stenger's Brigade (112th and 142d Regiments of
Baden Infantry) were questioned. I have read their depositions, taken
under oath and signed with their own names; all confirming the fact that
this order of the day was given to them on the 26th of August. In one
place by the Major Mosebach, in another by Lieut. Curtius, &c. Most of
these witnesses said that they were ignorant whether the order was
carried out, but three among them testified that it was carried out
under their own eyes in the Forest of Thiaville, where ten or twelve
wounded French, already made prisoners by a battalion, were done away
with; two others of the witnesses saw the order carried out along the
road of Thiaville, where several wounded, found in the ditches by the
company as it marched past, were killed.
[Illustration: Figure 13.]
Of course, I cannot here produce the original autograph of General
Stenger, nor am I here called upon to furnish the names of the German
prisoners who gave this testimony. But I shall have no trouble to
establish entirely similar crimes on the faith of German autographs.
For instance, we find in the notebook of Private Albert Delfosse (111th
Infantry of Reserves, Fourteenth Reserve Corps,) (Fig. 13:)
In the woods (near Saint-Rémy, 4th or 5th of September)--Found
a very fine cow and a calf killed; and again the corpses of
Frenchmen horribly mutilated.
Must we understand that these bodies were mutilated by loyal weapons,
torn perhaps by shells? This may be, but it would be a charitable
interpretation, which is belied by this newspaper heading, (Figs. 14 and
15:)
JAUERSCHES TAGEBLATT Amtlicher Anzeiger Für Stadt und Kreis
Jauer Jauer, Sonntag, Den 18, Oktober, 1914. Nr. 245. 106,
Jahrgang.
This is a heading of a newspaper picked up in a German trench. Jauer is
a city of Silesia, about fifty kilometers west of Breslau, where two
battalions of the 154th Regiment of Saxon Infantry are garrisoned. One
Sunday morning, Oct. 18, doubtless at the hour when the
inhabitants--women and children--were wending their way to church, there
was distributed throughout the quiet little town, and through the
hamlets and villages of the district, the issue of this local paper with
the following inscription: "A day of honor for our regiment, Sept. 24,
1914," as the title of an article of some two hundred lines, sent from
the front by a member of the regiment--the sub-officer Klemt of the
First Company, 154th Infantry Regiment.
[Illustration: GENERAL VON KUSMANEK
Whose stubborn defense of Przemysl made it one of the most notable
sieges of history.
_(Photo from Underwood & Underwood.)_]
[Illustration: CAPT.-LIEUT. OTTO WEDDIGEN
Whose submarine exploits have done more damage to England's navy than
all Germany's gunners.
_(Photo from The Photo News.)_]
[Illustration: Figure 14.]
[Illustration: Figure 15.]
The sub-officer Klemt relates how, on the 24th of September, his
regiment having left Hannonville in the morning, accompanied by Austrian
batteries, suddenly came up against a double fire of infantry and
artillery. Their losses were terrible, and yet the enemy was still
invisible. Finally, says this officer, it was found that the bullets
came from above, from trees which the French soldiers had climbed.
From this point let me quote verbatim, (Fig. 16:)
[Illustration: Figure 16.]
They're brought down from the trees like squirrels, to get a
hot reception with bayoneted stock; they'll need no more
doctors' care. We are not fighting loyal enemies, but
treacherous brigands. [Note--It is scarcely necessary to point
out that it is no more "treacherous," but quite as lawful, to
fire from the branches of a tree as from a window, or from a
trench, and that, on the contrary, it is rather more
venturesome and more courageous, as the sequel of this story
will show.] We crossed the clearing at a bound. The foe is
hidden here and there among the bushes, and now we are upon
them. No quarter will be given. We fire standing, at will;
very few fire kneeling; nobody dreams of shelter. We finally
reach a slight depression in the ground, and there the red
trousers are lying in masses, here and there--dead or wounded.
We club or stab the wounded, for we know that these rascals,
as soon as we are gone by, will fire from behind. We find one
Frenchman lying at full length upon his face, but he is
counterfeiting death. A kick from a robust fusilier gives him
notice that we are there. Turning over he asks for quarter,
but he gets the reply--"Oh! is that the way, blackguard, that
your tools work?" and he is pinned to the ground. On one side
of me I hear curious cracklings. They're the blows which a
soldier of the 154th is vigorously showering upon the bald
pate of a Frenchman with the stock of his gun; he very wisely
chose for this work a French gun, for fear of breaking his
own. Some men of particularly sensitive soul grant the French
wounded the grace to finish them with a bullet, but others
scatter here and there, wherever they can, their clubbings and
stabbings. Our adversaries have fought bravely. They were
élite troops that we had before us. They had allowed us to
come within thirty, and even within ten, meters--too close.
Their arms and knapsacks thrown down in heaps showed that they
wanted to fly, but upon the appearance of our "gray phantoms"
terror paralyzed them, and, on the narrow path in which they
crowded, the German bullets brought them the order to halt!
There they are at the very entrance of their leafy hiding
places, lying down moaning and asking for quarter, but whether
their wounds are light or grievous, the brave fusiliers saved
their country the expensive care which would have to be given
to such a number of enemies.
Now the recital continues very ornate, very literary, and the writer
relates how his Imperial Highness Prince Oscar of Prussia, being advised
of the exploits (perhaps, indeed, other exploits than these) of the
154th and of the Regiment of Grenadiers, which forms the Brigade with
the 154th, declared them both worthy of the name of "King's Brigade,"
and the recital closes with this phrase: "When night came on, with a
prayer of thankfulness on our lips we fell asleep to await the coming
day." Then adding, by way of postscript, a little phrase "Heimkehr vom
Kampf." He carries the notebook--prose and verse together--to his
Lieutenant, who countersigns it: "Certified as correct, De Niem,
Lieutenant Commanding the Company," and then he sends his paper to his
town of Jauer, where he is quite confident that he will find some
newspaper publisher to accept it, printers to set it up, and a whole
population to enjoy it. Now, let me ask any reader--whatever be his
country--if he can imagine it possible for such a tale to be spread
abroad in any paper in his language, in his native town, for the
edification of his wife and his children. In what other country than in
Germany is such a thing conceivable? Not in France, at all events. Now,
if my readers want another document to show how customary it is in the
German Army to mutilate the wounded, well, I will borrow one from the
notebook of Private Paul Glöde of the Ninth Battalion of Pioneers, Ninth
Corps, (Figs. 17 and 18:)
Aug. 12, 1914, in Belgium.--One can get an idea of the fury of
our soldiers in seeing the destroyed villages. Not one house
left untouched. Everything eatable is requisitioned by the
unofficered soldiers. Several heaps of men and women put to
execution. Young pigs are running about looking for their
mothers. Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the
houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers
is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages,
already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on
fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use
of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their
own country. The atrocities which these non-combatants are
still committing are revenged after a savage fashion.
_Mutilations of the wounded are the order of the day._
This was written as early as the 12th of August--the tenth day after the
invasion of innocent Belgium--and these wounded creatures that were
tortured had done nothing more than defend their land against
Germany--their native land--which Germany had sworn, not only to respect
but, if need be, to defend. And yet, in many countries pharisees reading
these lines will go forward tranquilly to their churches, or their
temples, or their banking houses, or their foreign offices, saying: "In
what do these things concern us?" "Ja, ja, this is war." Yes, it is war,
but war such as was never made by the soldiers of Marceau, such as never
will be made by the soldiers of Joffre, such as never has been made and
never will be made by France--"Mother of Arts, of Arms, and of Laws."
Yes, it is war, but war such as Attila would not have carried on if he
had subscribed to certain stipulations; for, in subscribing them, he
would have awakened to the notion, which _alone_ distinguishes the
civilized man from the barbarian, distinguishes a nation from a
horde--respect for the word once given. Yes, it is war, but war the
theory of which could only be made up by such pedant megalomaniacs as
the Julius von Hartmanns, the Bernhardis, and the Treitschkes; the
theory which accords to the elect people the right to uproot from the
laws and customs of war what centuries of humanity, of Christianity, and
chivalry have at great pains injected into it; the theory of systematic
and organized ferocity; today exposed to public reprobation, not only as
an odious thing, but no less silly and absurd. For have we not reached
the ridiculous when the incendiaries of Louvain, and Malines, and
Rheims, the assassins of women and children, and of the wounded, already
find it necessary to repudiate their actions, at least in words, and to
impose upon the servility of their ninety-three Kulturträger such
denials as this: "It is not true that we are making war in contempt of
the law of nations, nor that our soldiers are committing acts of
cruelty, or of insubordination, or indiscipline.... We will carry this
conflict through to the end as a civilized people, and we answer for
this upon our good name and upon our honor!" Why this humble and pitiful
repudiation? Perhaps because their theory of war rested upon the
postulate of their invincibility, and that, in the first shiver of their
defeat upon the Marne, it collapsed, and now their repudiation quickly
follows--in dread of the _lex talionis_.
[Illustration: Figure 17.]
[Illustration: Figure 18. [Continuation of Figure 17.]]
I will stop here. I leave the conclusion to the allied armies, already
in sight of victory.
NOTE.--General Stenger's order of the day, mentioned on page
[Transcriber's Note: blank in original], was communicated
orally by various officers in various units of the brigade.
Consequently, the form in which we have received it may
possibly be incomplete or altered. In face of any doubt, the
French Government has ordered an inquiry to be made into the
prisoners' camps. Not one of the prisoners to whom our
magistrates presented the order of the day in the
above-mentioned form found a word to alter. They one and all
declared that this was the order of the day which had been
orally given in the ranks, repeated from man to man; many
added the names of the officers who had communicated the order
to them; some related in what a vile way it had been carried
out under their eyes. All the evidence of these German
soldiers was collected in a legal manner, under the sanction
of an oath, and it is after reading their depositions that I
wrote the order of the day.
The text of all this evidence was transmitted to all the
French Embassies and Legations in foreign countries on the
24th of October, 1914. Every neutral wishing to clear his
conscience is at liberty to obtain it from the representatives
of the French Republic, who will certainly respond willingly.