The question as to how far these outrages are attributable to policy
and superior orders becomes imperative. It was at first difficult to
answer. For a long time I did not find, nor did I expect to find, any
documentary orders to that effect. Such orders, if given at all, were
much more likely to be verbal, for it is extremely improbable that the
German authorities would be so unwise as to commit them to writing.
But the outrages upon combatants were so numerous and so collective in
character that I began to suspect policy at a very early stage in my
investigations....
_=Frenzy against British Troops.=_--On the 3rd of May I visited the
Ministry of War in Paris at the invitation of the French military
authorities, and was received by M. le Capitaine René Petit, Chef de
Service du Contentieux, who conducted me to the department where the
diaries of German prisoners were kept. I made a brief preliminary
examination of them, and discovered the following passage (which I
had photographed) in the diary of a German N.C.O., Göttsche, of the
85th Infantry Regiment (the IXth Corps), fourth company detached for
service, under date "Okt. 6, 1914, bei Antwerpen":--
The Captain called us to him and said: "In the fortress [_i.e._
Antwerp] which we have to take there are in all probability
Englishmen. But I do not want to see any Englishmen prisoners in the
hands of this company." A general "Bravo" of assent was the answer.
This malignant frenzy against British troops, so carefully instilled,
is borne out by a passage in another diary, now in the possession of
the French Ministry of War, which was found on the 22nd of April on
the body of Richard Gerhold, of the 71st Regiment of Infantry of the
Reserve, Fourth Army Corps, who was killed in September at Nouvron:--
Here also things occur which should not be. Great atrocities are of
course committed upon Englishmen and Belgians; every one of them is
now knocked on the head without mercy. But woe to the poor German who
falls into their hands.
As regards the last sentence in this diary, which is one long chapter
of horrors and betrays a ferocious credulity, it is worthy of remark
that I have seen at the French Ministry of War the diary of a German
N.C.O. named Schulze, who, judging by internal evidence, was a man
of exceptional intelligence, in which the writer refers to tales of
French and Belgian atrocities circulated among the men by his superior
officers. He shrewdly adds that he believes the officers invented these
stories in order to prevent him and his comrades from surrendering.
A less conclusive passage, but a none the less suspicious one, is
to be found in a diary now in my possession. It is the diary of an
Unteroffizier, named Ragge, of the 158th Regiment, and contains (under
date October 21) the following:--
We pursued the enemy as far as we saw him. We "knocked out" many
English. The English lay on the ground as if sown there. Those of the
Englishmen who were still alive in the trenches were stuck or shot.
Our company made 61 prisoners.
_=Damning Brigade Order.=_--So far I have only dealt with the acts
of small German units--_i.e._, companies of infantry. I now come to
the most damning proofs of a policy of cold-blooded murder of wounded
and prisoners, initiated and carried out by a whole brigade under the
orders of a Brigadier-General. This particular investigation took
me a long time, but the results are, I think, conclusive. It may
be remembered that some months ago the French military authorities
published in the French newspapers what purported to be the text of an
order issued by a German Brigadier-General, named Stenger, commanding
the 58th Brigade, in which he ordered his troops to take no prisoners
and to put to death without mercy every one who fell into their
hands, whether wounded and defenceless or not. The German Government
immediately denounced the alleged order as a forgery. I determined to
see whether I could establish its authenticity, and in February last
I obtained a copy of the original from M. Mollard, of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, who is a member of the Commission appointed by the
French Government to inquire into the alleged German atrocities. The
text of that order was as follows:--
Army Order of 26 Aug., 1914, about 4 p.m., such as was given to his
troops as a Brigade or Army Order by the leader of the 7th Company of
the 112th Regiment of Infantry at Thionville, at the entrance of the
wood of Saint Barbe.
To date from this day no prisoners will be made any longer. All the
prisoners will be executed. The wounded, whether armed or defenceless,
will be executed. Prisoners, even in large and compact formations,
will be executed. Not a man will be left alive behind us.
Taking this alleged order as my starting-point, I began to make
inquiries at British Headquarters as to the existence of any
information about the doings of the 112th Regiment. I soon found that
there was good reason to suspect it. Our Intelligence Department placed
in my hands the records of the examination of two men of this regiment
who had been captured by us. One of them volunteered a statement to
one of our Intelligence Officers on the 23rd of November to the effect
that his regiment had orders to treat Indians well, but were allowed to
treat British prisoners as they pleased. This man's testimony appeared
to be reliable, as statements he made on other points, _i.e._, as to
the German formations, were subsequently found to be true, and his
information as to discrimination in the treatment of Indians entirely
bore out the conclusions I had already arrived at on that particular
point. The German witness in question further stated that 65 out of 150
British prisoners were killed in cold blood by their escort on or about
the 23rd of October on the road to Lille, and that the escort were
praised for their conduct. Other German prisoners have, I may add, also
made statements that they had orders to kill all the English who fell
into their hands....
At the end of April--too late, unfortunately, for use by Lord Bryce's
Committee--one of our Intelligence Officers placed before me the
following entry in the field note-book of a German prisoner, Reinhart
Brenneisen[1], reservist, belonging to the 4th Company, 112th Regiment,
and dated in August (the same month as appears on the face of the order
in question):
Then came a brigade order that all French, whether wounded or not, who
fell into our hands were to be shot. No prisoners were to be made.
This, I think, may be said to put the reality of the brigade order in
question beyond doubt.
The cumulative effect of this evidence, coupled with the statements of
so many of our men who claim to have been eye-witnesses of wholesale
bayoneting of the wounded, certainly confirms suspicions of the
gravest kind as to such acts having been done by authority. Neither
the temperament of the German soldier nor the character of German
discipline (_furchtbar streng_--"frightfully strict"--as a German
prisoner put it to me) makes it probable that the German soldiers acted
on their own initiative. It would, in any case, be incredible that so
many cases of outrage could be sufficiently explained by any law of
averages, or by the idiosyncrasies of the "bad characters" present in
every large congregation of men....