GERMAN ATROCITIES
GERMAN ATROCITIES
AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION
BY
J. H. MORGAN, M.A.,
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW,
PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON;
LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
_Mentem mortalia tangunt_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
Printed in the U.S.A.
TO
M. ARMAND MOLLARD
MINISTRE PLENIPOTENTIAIRE,
MEMBER OF “LA COMMISSION INSTITUÉE
EN VUE DE CONSTATER LES ACTES COMMIS
PAR L’ENNEMI EN VIOLATION DU DROIT DES GENS,”
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED
IN RECOGNITION OF HIS COURTESY AND COLLABORATION
IN THE PURSUIT OF A COMMON TASK.
CONTENTS
PAGE
DEDICATION v
PREFATORY NOTE ix
CHAPTER
I.--INTRODUCTORY:
(1) The British Enquiry 1
(2) The German Case--a critical Analysis of
the German White Book 6
(3) German Credibility--a Review of the Evidence 30
(4) The Future of International Law and the
Question of Retribution 44
II.--THE BRITISH ENQUIRY IN FRANCE:
(1) Methods of Enquiry 60
(2) Outrages upon Combatants in the Field 64
(3) Treatment of Civil Population 76
(4) Outrages upon Women--the German Occupation
of Bailleul 81
(5) Private Property 84
(6) Observations on a Tour of the Marne and
the Aisne 85
(7) Bestiality of German Officers and Men 87
(8) Conclusion 90
III.--DOCUMENTARY (NEW EVIDENCE):
(1) Depositions and Statements (Fifty-six in
number) illustrating breaches of the Laws
of War by German Troops, mainly Outrages
on British Soldiers 93
(2) Documents relative to the German Occupation
of Bailleul 122
(3) Evidence relating to the Murder of Eleven
Civilians at Doulieu 134
(4) Deposition of a Survivor of the Massacre of
Tamines 137
(5) Five German Diaries 139
(6) Documents forwarded by the Russian Government 146
(7) The German White Book: The Introductory
Memorandum 158
(8) Depositions relating to the Massacre of
Wounded and Captive Highlanders by a
German Bombing Party on September
25th, 1915, at Haisnes 169
(9) Depositions as to the use of Incendiary Bullets
by the German Troops 174
(10) Depositions as to the Employment by German
Troops of Russian Prisoners upon
Military Works on the Western Front 177
PREFATORY NOTE
Professor Morgan desires to express his obligations to the Russian
Embassy, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the French Ministry of
War, and the General Headquarters Staff of the British Expeditionary
Force for the assistance which they have given him. For the opinions
expressed in Part IV. of the Introductory Chapter Professor Morgan is
alone responsible. The whole of the documents given in the “Documentary
Chapter” of this book (except the Memorandum from the German White Book
which has been published in German, though not, of course, in English)
are now published for the first time.
GERMAN ATROCITIES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
I
THE BRITISH ENQUIRY
The second chapter of this book has already appeared in the pages of
the June issue of the _Nineteenth Century and After_. At the time of
its appearance numerous suggestions were made--notably by the _Morning
Post_ and the _Daily Chronicle_--that it should be republished in a
cheaper and more accessible form. A similar suggestion has come to us
from the Ministry of War in Paris, reinforced by the intimation that
the review containing the article was not obtainable owing to its
having immediately gone out of print. Since then an official reprint
has been largely circulated in neutral countries by the British
Government, and an abbreviated reprint of it has been published by
the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in the form of a pamphlet. The
Secretary to the Committee informs me that considerably over a million
and a half copies of this pamphlet have been circulated.
At the suggestion of Mr. Fisher Unwin, and by the courtesy of the
editor of the _Nineteenth Century_, the article is now republished as
a whole, but with it is published for the first time a documentary
chapter containing a selection of illustrative documents, none of which
have hitherto appeared in print. For permission to publish them I am
chiefly indebted to the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Needless
to say, the original article also was submitted to the Home Office
authorities, by whom it was duly read and approved before publication.
These documents by no means exhaust the unpublished evidence in my
possession, but my object has been not to multiply proofs but to
exemplify them, and, in particular, as is explained in the following
chapter, to supplement the Bryce Report on matters which, owing to the
exigencies of space and the pre-occupation with the case of Belgium,
occupy a comparatively subordinate place in that document. This volume
may, in fact, be regarded as a postscript to the Bryce Report--it does
not pretend to be anything more.[1]
There is, however, an extremely important aspect of the question which
has not yet been the subject of an official report in this country,
and that is the German White Book.[2] It has never been published
in England, and is very difficult to obtain. There is some reason
to believe that the German Government now entertain considerable
misgivings about the expediency of its original publication, and
are none too anxious to circulate it. The reason will, I think, be
tolerably obvious to anyone who will do me the honour to read the
critical analysis which follows.
I will not attempt to prejudice that analysis at this stage. I shall
have something to say later in this chapter as to the credibility of
the German Government in these matters. It is a rule of law that, when
a defendant puts his character in issue, or makes imputations on the
prosecutor or his witnesses, as the Germans have done, his character
may legitimately be the subject of animadversion. To impeach it at this
stage might appear, however, to beg the question of the value of the
White Book, which is best examined as a matter of internal evidence
without the importation of any reflections on the character of its
authors.
As regards the value of the evidence on the other side--the English,
Belgian, and French Reports--I doubt if any careful reader requires
persuasion as to their authenticity. In the case of the Bryce Report,
the studied sobriety of its tone--to say nothing of the known integrity
and judiciousness of its authors--carried instant conviction to
the minds of all honest and thoughtful men, and that conviction was
assuredly not disturbed by the vituperative description of it by the
_Kölnische Zeitung_ as a “mean collection of official lies.” No attempt
has ever been made to answer it. As regards the French Reports, which
are not as fully known in this country as they might be,[3] I had
the honour of working in collaboration with M. Mollard, a member of
the French Commission of Inquiry, and I was greatly impressed with
their scrupulous regard for truth, and their inflexible insistence on
corroboration. My own methods of inquiry are sufficiently indicated in
the chapter which follows, but I may add two illustrations of what,
I think, may fairly be described as the scrupulousness with which
the inquiries at General Headquarters were conducted. The reader may
remember that in May of last year a report as to the crucifixion
of two Canadian soldiers obtained wide currency in this country. A
Staff officer and myself immediately instituted inquiries by means
of a visit to the Canadian Headquarters, at that time situated in
the neighbourhood of Ypres, and by the cross-examination of wounded
Canadians on the way to the base. We found that this atrocity was a
matter of common belief among the Canadian soldiers, and at times we
seemed to be on a hot scent, but eventually we failed to discover any
one who had been an actual eye-witness of the atrocity in question.
It may or may not have occurred--we have had irrefragable proof that
such things have occurred--and it is conceivable that those who saw it
had perished and their testimony with them. But it was felt that mere
hearsay evidence, however strong, was not admissible, and, as a result,
no report was ever issued.
In the other case a man in a Highland regiment, on discovering himself
in hospital in the company of a wounded Prussian, attempted to assault
the latter, swearing that he had seen him bayoneting a wounded British
soldier as he lay helpless upon the field. He was positive as to the
identification and there could be no doubt as to the sincerity of his
statements. But as one Prussian Guardsman is very like another--the
facial and cranial uniformity is remarkable--and there was no
corroboration as to identity, no action was taken. As to the fact of
the atrocity having occurred there could, however, be no doubt.
I may add that the numerous British officers whom I interrogated in
the earlier stages of the war showed a marked disinclination--innate,
I think, in the British character--to believe stories reflecting upon
the honour of the foe to whom they were opposed in the field. But
at a later stage I found that this indulgent scepticism had wholly
disappeared. Facts had been too intractable, experience too harsh,
disillusion too bitter. The lesson has been dearly learnt--many a
brave and chivalrous officer has owed his death to the treachery of a
mean and unscrupulous foe. But it has been learnt once and for all.
And, indeed, judging by the information which reaches me from various
sources, the enemy affords our men no chance of forgetting it.
II
THE GERMAN CASE--A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK
On May 10th--some five days before the publication of the Bryce
Report--the German Government drew up a voluminous White Book
purporting to be a Report on Offences against International Law in
the conduct of the war by the Belgians. It may be described as a kind
of intelligent anticipation of the case they might have to meet;
the actual case, as presented in the Bryce Report, they have never
attempted to meet, and to this day that report has never been answered.
The German White Book--of which no translation is accessible to the
public in this country--has attracted very little attention over here,
and I propose to make a close and reasoned analysis of it, for no more
damning and incriminating defence has ever been put forth by a nation
arraigned at the bar of public opinion. In doing so I shall rely on the
German Report itself and shall make no attempt to refute it by drawing
upon the evidence of the English and Belgian Reports, convincing though
that is, because to do so might seem to beg the question at issue,
which is the relative credibility of the parties.
German Invocation of The Hague Conventions.
The case which the German Government had avowedly to meet was the
wholesale slaughter of Belgian civilians, and the fact of such
slaughter having taken place they make no attempt to deny. They enter
a plea of justification and, in a word, they attempt to argue that
the _levée en masse_ or “People’s War” of the Belgian nation was
not conducted in accordance with the terms of the Hague regulations
relating to improvised resistance in cases of this kind. I will not
here go over the well-trodden ground of Belgian neutrality; it is
enough that in a now notorious utterance the Imperial Chancellor has
admitted that the German invasion was a breach of international law.[4]
The substance of the Hague Convention[5] is that the civil population
of a country at war are entitled to recognition as lawful belligerents
if they conform to four conditions. They must have a responsible
commander; they must wear a distinctive and recognisable badge; they
must carry their arms openly; and they must conduct their operations
in accordance with the laws and customs of war. In the case, however,
of an invasion, where there has been no time to organise in conformity
with this article, the first and second conditions are expressly
dispensed with, provided there is compliance with the third and
fourth. Now, not only have these rules been subscribed by the German
representatives and, according to Baron Marschall von Bieberstein,
their principal spokesman at the Hague Conference, such subscription
was absolute and unconditional;[6] but the principle which they embody
has been accepted by all the leading German jurists. “There exists no
ground for denying to the masses of a country the natural right to
defend their Fatherland ...; it is only by such levies that the smaller
and less powerful States can defend themselves.”[7] The same authority
argues that no State is bound to limit itself to its regular army; it
could, he adds, call up civil guards or even women and children, who in
such case would be entitled to the rights of lawful belligerents.[8]
What then is the German justification for the massacre of the Belgian
civilians? Its main contention is that the Belgian Government “had
_sufficient time_ for an _organisation_ of the People’s War as
required by international law”;[9] in other words that a spontaneous
and unorganised resistance in Belgium could not claim the immunities of
Article 2 of the Hague Regulations. The effrontery of this contention
is truly amazing. The Belgian Government had, at the most, two
days--two days in which to organise a whole nation for defence. The
German ultimatum to Belgium was issued on August 2nd; the violation
of Belgian territory took place on August 4th. How could a little
nation with a small standing army organise its whole population on a
military basis within two days against the most powerful and mobile
army in Europe, equipped with all the modern engines of war? The
German Government do, indeed, attempt to support their contention by
urging further that “the preparation of mobilisation began, as can be
proved, at least a week before the invasion of the German Army.”[10]
Now, granting--and it is granting a great deal--that a week would
be sufficient to organise untrained civilians for defence, it would
still remain to be proved that the Belgian Government _did_ begin to
mobilise a week beforehand. The German White Book does not prove it;
the Belgian Grey Book disproves it. The Belgian Government, relying on
the plighted faith of Germany, had not even begun to mobilise on July
29th--six days before the invasion.[11] Indeed, it was only on July
24th that they were sufficiently alarmed to address interrogatories to
the Great Powers, Germany among them, for assurances as to the immunity
of Belgium from attack.[12] As late as July 31st the German Government
effectually concealed its intentions.[13] It is, in fact, a matter of
common notoriety that the German move against Belgium was as sudden in
execution as it was premeditated in design. She entered like a thief in
the night.
Charges against the Belgian Government.
The main contention of the German Government therefore falls to the
ground. What remains? It is here that the German answer betrays itself
by its disingenuousness. There is an old rule of pleading, familiar
to lawyers, which says a traverse must be neither too large nor too
narrow. This is just the error into which the German contention falls.
The apologies are too anxious to prove everything in turn as the
occasion suits, forgetting that one of their contentions often refutes
the other. In the introductory memorandum they argue that Belgium
had time to organise and did not. In their excuse for the massacre
at Dinant, and their zeal to prove that the military exigencies
were overwhelming, they say that “the organisation”--of civilian
resistance--“was remarkable for its careful preparation and wide
extent”; “that the guns were only partly sporting guns and revolvers
but partly also machine guns and Belgian military weapons proves that
the organisation had the support of the Belgian Government.”[14]
In other words, in one part of the White Book they insist that the
resistance was ruthlessly punished because it was not organised;
in another that because it was organised it had to be ruthlessly
repressed. In another place,[15] having to justify their peculiar
principle of vicarious responsibility by which the innocent have to
answer for the guilty, they say that the Belgian Government and the
municipal hostages whom the Germans executed ought to have stopped
“this guerilla warfare,” and did not do so. Now it is well known, and
the German Government admits it, that the public authorities issued
proclamations ordering the people to abstain from hostilities and to
surrender their arms. How does the German Government meet this? The
only evidence they can produce in the whole of their pompous dossier
is (1) the deposition of a German Jew, resident in Brussels, to the
effect that, seeing the proclamation, he sent his servant to the
Belgian authorities to deliver up a revolver, and that the servant
came back and said that the Commissioner of Police had told him not to
trouble as “one need not believe everything that is in the papers”;[16]
(2) the deposition of a German lieutenant that an officer (not named)
once showed him a document (not produced), which, “according to his
own account” he had found in the town hall of a neighbouring village
(not indicated), containing an invitation on the part of the Belgian
Government, addressed to the population, to render armed resistance in
return for payment.[17] On such flimsy hearsay evidence, tendered by
two Germans, rests the whole of the German case against the Belgian
Government.
Belgian “Atrocities.”
Like a defendant who has no case, the German Government attempt to
plead generally in default of being able to plead specifically. They
therefore put forward a sweeping generalisation to the effect that,
quite apart from the question whether the Belgians did or did not
comply with the formal requirements of the Hague Convention, they
violated all the usages of war by “unheard of” atrocities. “Finally
it is proved beyond all doubt that German wounded were robbed and
killed by the Belgian population, and indeed were subjected to horrible
mutilation, and that even women and young girls took part in these
shameful actions. In this way the eyes of German wounded were torn out,
their ears, nose, fingers and sexual organs cut off, or their body cut
open.”[18] Let us consider the depositions with which this accusation
is supported.
(1) Hugo Lagershausen, of the 1st Ersatz Company of the Reserve, his
attention having been drawn to the significance of the oath, declares:
“I lost the other men of the patrol. About noon on August
6th, I came to a dressing station, which was set up on a
farm near the village of Chenée. In the house I found about
fifteen severely wounded German soldiers, of whom four or five
had been horribly mutilated; both their eyes had been gouged
out, and some had had several fingers cut off. Their wounds
were relatively fresh although the blood was already somewhat
coagulated. The men were still living and were groaning. It was
not possible for me to help them, as I had already ascertained
by questioning other wounded men lying in that house, there was
no doctor in the place. I also found in the house six or seven
Belgian civilians, four of whom were women; these gave drinks
to the wounded; the men were entirely passive. I saw no weapons
on them, and I cannot say whether they had blood on their
hands, because they put them in their pockets.”[19]
It is highly probably, is it not? Musketeer Lagershausen falls among
ghouls who hastily put their incriminating hands in their pockets and
allow him who was “entirely alone” and powerless to walk off and inform
against them. Truly they must have been some of the mildest-mannered
men who ever cut a throat.
(2) Musketeer Paul Blankenberg, of Infantry Regiment No. 165, declares:
“We were on the march in closed column and passing through
a Belgian village west of Herve. In the village some German
wounded were lying and I recognised some Jäger of the Jäger
Battalion, No. 4. Suddenly the column marching through was
fired upon from the houses, and accordingly the order was
given that all civilians should be removed from the houses and
driven together to one point. _While this was being done_ I
noticed that girls of eight to ten years old, armed with sharp
instruments, busied themselves with the German wounded. Later,
I ascertained that the ear lobes and upper parts of the ears of
the most seriously injured of the wounded had been cut off.”[20]
That is to say, a whole column of German troops is on the march in
close formation, they round up the civilians and _while they are doing
this_ some little girls continue, in presence of this overwhelming
force, to “busy themselves” by cutting up their comrades with the
contents of their mothers’ work-box.
(3) Landwehrman Alwin Chaton, of the 5th Company of the Reserve
Infantry Regiment No. 78, declared:
“In the course of the street fighting in Charleroi, as we
fought our way through the High Street and had reached a side
street leading off the High Street, I saw, when I had reached
the crossing and shot into the side street, a German dragoon
lying in the street about fifty or sixty paces in front of
me. Three civilians were near him, of whom one was bending
over the soldier, who still kicked with his legs. I shot among
them and hit the last of the civilians; the others fled. When
I approached I saw that the shot civilian had a long knife,
covered with blood, in his hand. The right eye of the German
dragoon was gouged out.”[21]
The witness adds that “much smoke was rising from the body of the
dragoon,” This is to say that a general engagement, one of the hardest
fought during the war, is going on in the middle of a town and three
civilians are discovered within fifty or sixty paces, leisurely carving
up a German dragoon! Is it credible?
(4) My fourth example is too long to quote, but in substance it is
this. Reservist G. Gustav Voigt deposes that on August 6th he and seven
comrades suddenly saw five Belgian soldiers, fully armed, holding up
their arms to surrender. When they went up to them they discovered that
the Belgians had a German hussar strung up and freshly mutilated, and
that they had two other hussars upon whom they were about to perform
similar operations.[22] Without firing a shot, these men, caught
red-handed under circumstances which made their own death inevitable,
surrender immediately.
Now I ask any unbiased reader whether these depositions, in each case
uncorroborated, are such as to carry conviction to any reasonable man?
Yet the whole of the “proofs” adduced as to Belgian atrocities are of
this character.
The Massacres--Andenne.
When we come to the justification alleged for the wholesale massacres
of communities the evidence is even more suspicious. In order to prove
the Belgians unspeakable knaves the German Government have to present
them as incredible fools. At Andenne, “a small town of a population of
about 8,000 people,” there were affrays in which “about 200 inhabitants
lost their lives.”[23] According to the German document, “two infantry
regiments and a Jäger battalion” were marching through this place when
they were set upon by the inhabitants. Two regiments and a battalion
would constitute the greater part of a brigade; they must have amounted
to at least 7,000 men.[24] We are asked to believe that this small
unprotected community (one of the German witnesses expressly says, “I
did not see one single French or Belgian soldier in the entire town
or the environs”)[25] made an unprovoked attack on this overwhelming
force, and that the women assisted with pots of scalding water. Two
hundred of the civilians were, by the German admission, shot. The
German losses were, it is added, “singularly small.” So singularly
small were they that the German Report omits even to enumerate them.
Jamoigne and Tintigny.
In another case--the village of Jamoigne--an ammunition column halted
for water. The attitude of the population “was friendly; water, coffee,
and tobacco were offered to some non-commissioned officers and men.”
Suddenly, while part of the population are standing outside their
doors fully exposed, “a general shooting” is opened upon the crowd
in the streets from the roofs and windows of the houses.[26] Is it
intrinsically probable that Belgian civilians would be so careless of
the lives of their fellow-citizens? Or take the case of Tintigny. An
artillery ammunition column is welcomed, “apparently with the best
goodwill,” assisted to water its horses, and then (but not before)
“when the horses had been again harnessed” and the opportunity for a
surprise attack had passed, the inhabitants opened fire on the whole
column.[27] Statements like these carry their own refutation with them.
The Tragedy of Dinant.
I turn to the case of Dinant, one of the most appalling massacres
that have ever been perpetrated,[28] even by the hordes of Kultur. No
attempt is made to deny the wholesale slaughter; it is freely admitted,
and with sanguinary iteration we are told again and again “a fairly
large number of persons were shot, “all the male hostages assembled
against the garden wall were shot.” Such _battues_ occur on page
after page.[29] What is the German excuse? It is that the civilian
population offered a desperate resistance. To prove how desperate it
was, and consequently to establish the “military necessity,” it has to
be conceded that they were organised. But this is proving too much,
for “organised” civilian combatants are entitled to the privileges of
lawful belligerents. Therefore it is argued that they were “without
military badges”: this phrase occurs with a curious lack of variation
in the words of each witness. It is added that women and “children
(including girls) of ten or twelve years” were armed with revolvers!
“Elderly women,” “a white-haired old man,” fired with insensate fury.
None the less--says one ingenuous German witness--“the people had
all got a very high opinion of Germany.” At intervals during the
engagement not only were groups of civilians, alleged to have arms in
their hands, shot in groups, but unarmed civilians were shot--“all the
male hostages.” In other words the whole of the German defence that
the German troops were punishing illicit _francs-tireurs_ is suddenly
abandoned. Tiring apparently of these laboured inventions, the German
staff, in a grim and sombre sentence, suddenly throws off the mask:
“In judging the attitude which the troops of the 12th Corps
took against such a population, our starting point must be that
the _tactical object_ of the 12th Corps was to cross the Meuse
_with speed_, and to drive the enemy from the left bank of the
Meuse; speedily to overcome the opposition of the inhabitants
who were working in direct opposition to this _was to be
striven for in every way_.... Hostages were shot at various
places and this procedure is amply justified.”[30]
It has been estimated that about eight hundred civilians perished in
this massacre. The German White Book freely concedes that the number
was large; indeed by a simple process of induction from the German
evidence it is clear that it was very large. It appears that a whole
Army Corps (the 1st Royal Saxon) was engaged and that the armed troops
of the Allies were encountered in force. The German troops received
a check and it seems fairly obvious that they simply wreaked their
vengeance, as they have so often done, on an unoffending population,
presumably in order to intimidate the enemy in the field. Not for the
first time they attempted to do by terror what they could not do by
force of arms.
“We gave them coffee.”
It is characteristic of the whole _apologia_ that having admitted to
an indiscriminate butchery the Germans attempt to gain credit for
preserving throughout its course the most tender sentiments. In fact
they are surprised at their own sensibility. “I have subsequently
often wondered,” says a Major Schlick, “that our men should have
remained so calm in the face of such beasts.”[31] Major Bauer says,
that he and his “manifested a most notable kindness to women, old
men and children”; so notable that he suggests that “it is worthy of
recognition in the special circumstances.” Major Bauer evidently thinks
it a case for the Iron Cross. And in proof of this humanity he points
out that the widows and orphans of the murdered husbands and fathers
“all received coffee”[32] from the field kitchen the next morning.
Perhaps Major Bauer bethinks himself of a certain cup of cold water.
The Children were “quite happy.”
More than this, the children seem rather to have enjoyed the novel
experience. A German staff-surgeon whose gruesome task it was to search
a heap of forty corpses, “women and young lads,” who had been put up
against a garden wall for execution, says:[33]
“Under the heap I discovered a girl of about five years of age,
and without any injuries. I took her out and brought her down
to the house where the women were. _She took chocolate, was
quite happy, and was clearly unaware of the seriousness of the
situation._”
And with that amazing statement we may fitly leave this amazing
narrative.
Aerschot.
The case of Dinant may be taken as typical. The evidence as to
Louvain and Aerschot is not less incredible. We are asked to
believe that at Aerschot[34] the population of a small town suddenly
rose in arms against a whole brigade, although the population was
quite unprotected--“we ascertained that there was no enemy in the
neighbourhood.”[35] To explain this surprising and suicidal impulse the
Germans produce--it is their only evidence--the statement of a Captain
Karge, that he had “heard rumours from various German officers” that
the Belgian Government, “in particular the King of the Belgians,” had
decreed that every male Belgian was to do the German Army “as much harm
as possible.” “It _is said_ that such an order was found on a captured
Belgian soldier.” Strangely enough, the order is not produced--not a
word of it. Also, “an officer _told_ me that he himself had _read_
on a church door of a place near Aerschot that the Belgians were not
allowed to hold captured German officers on parole, but were bound to
shoot them.” He adds that he “cannot repeat the words of this officer
exactly.”[36]
Louvain.
Let us now turn to Louvain. “The _insurrection_ of the town of
Louvain,” say the authors of the White Book with some naïveté, “against
the German garrison and the punishment which was meted out to the town
have found a long-drawn-out echo in the whole world.” Some twenty-eight
thousand words are therefore devoted to establishing the thesis that
the German troops in occupation of the town were the victims of a
carefully organised, long premeditated, and diabolically executed
attack on the part of the inhabitants assisted by the _Garde Civique_.
Thus:
“We are evidently dealing with a carefully planned assault
which was carried on for several days with the greatest
obstinacy. The long duration of the insurrection against the
German military power in itself disposes of any planless action
committed by individuals in excitement. The leadership of the
treacherous revolt must have lain in the hands of a higher
authority.”--Summarising Report.
Great emphasis is laid on the formidable nature of the attack and the
heavy odds against which the Germans had to contend. The fire of the
Belgians was “murderous” (D 11, D 13), “fearful” (D 9), “violent” (D
36), “furious” (D 41); it was supported by machine-guns (D 28, 29,
37, 38, 40) and hand-grenades (D 46), and was materially assisted by
Belgian soldiers in disguise (Appendix D 1, 19, 38), and by the _Garde
Civique_ (D 45, 46), who occupied houses with the most “elaborate
preparations.” In spite of this careful preparation the German troops,
who had been in the town six days and had there established the
Head-quarters of a whole Army Corps (the 9th Reserve Corps), were so
impressed by the “extraordinarily good” behaviour of the inhabitants
that on the evening of August 25th, about 7.30 or 8 p.m., they were
taken completely by surprise. “It was impossible to foresee,” says
Lieutenant von Sandt (D 8), “that the inhabitants were planning an
assault.” Other witnesses say, however, that “a remarkable number
of young men” were observed congregating in the streets some hours
beforehand. None the less the German authorities exhibited an ingenuous
trustfulness and, what is even more remarkable, a complete disregard
of the most ordinary police precautions, which will come as a surprise
to anyone who has studied the German Proclamations and the drastic
measures usually taken by them immediately upon their occupation of a
town.
A “murderous” attack; German casualties--five.
Such was the situation when at seven o’clock on a summer evening
(August 25th) of notorious memory, the deep-laid plans of the Belgian
authorities suddenly and murderously revealed themselves. A German
company of Landsturm[37] was marching through the town; the main
body of the German troops quartered there were engaged several miles
away, and only a few details remained in the city. This small body of
unsuspecting soldiers--a company numbers not more than two or three
hundred men--were suddenly set upon, at a signal given by rockets, by
trained marksmen of the Belgian Army and the _Garde Civique_, disguised
as civilians, acting with the aid of machine-guns and hand-grenades and
actively assisted by the greater part of a large civilian population.
The fire, as various soldiers of the Landsturm testify, was not only
carefully controlled and directed, but was “murderous” in the extreme.
Yet, after carefully searching through their depositions, we find that
only “_five men of the company were wounded_” (D 8)! Lieutenant Sandt
and Dr. Berghausen feel constrained to explain these remarkably light
casualties. They can only account for them by saying that in spite of
the “carefully planned” and disciplined attack the Belgians, shooting
from carefully chosen positions, shot “too high” (D 8), “at night” (D
8, D 9) although the light at eight o’clock on an August evening is
usually remarkably good, and one of the witnesses (D 26) says that at
8 p.m. it was “fairly light.” The company appear to have disarmed the
infuriated Belgians with remarkable ease, going into the houses two or
three at a time (D 9), and finding the occupants apparently as docile
as sheep, so that although found with arms in their hands they allowed
themselves to be led out in “a crowd” and “immediately shot” (D 44).
In one case, on entering an inn, the Germans found “behind the bar, a
waiter,” who had apparently taken up this strong strategical position
alone with “a case for shot placed by his side with the corresponding
ammunition.” He also allowed himself to be led forth like a lamb to the
slaughter (D 37).
Contradictory witnesses.
It is extraordinary also that although this murderous and carefully
planned attack began at 7.30 “I had just finished my soup,” says Major
von Manteuffel, who sat down to dinner at 7.30--(Appendix D 3), or at
8 p.m. (D 6), yet at 9 p.m., says Corporal Hohne, who entered the town
with his regiment at that hour (D 36), “the conduct of the civilians
was quiet and not unfriendly,” and his regiment was allowed to march
right into the town--“up till then nothing noteworthy had occurred.”
A N.C.O. of the same battalion says that “between 9 and 10 p.m.” the
Belgians were standing about the streets; all was “quiet,” and they
were “not unfriendly” (D 36). Another witness heard nothing till “9 or
9.30” (D 25). Another says (D 45) the signal was given at “9 o’clock.”
To the same effect another soldier (D 18). What is even more remarkable
is the statement of Major von Klewitz that at 4 a.m. the next morning,
after the Landsturm had cleared the houses, the infatuated inhabitants
opened fire on an Army Corps which appears to have arrived in the
interval and was then “moving out to battle” (D 2); and the presence
of a whole brigade of Landwehr (D 1) does not seem to have exercised
any restraining influence on these insane civilians. Like flies to
wanton boys was a whole Army Corps to the burgesses of Louvain, who
killed it for their sport. The German authorities contend that, with
intermittent executions, they tolerated this kind of thing for two
whole days. They appear, however, to have borne a charmed life--the
chief casualties among them were horses. Battalion Surgeon Georg
Berghausen, in particular, who records as a remarkable fact that he
once paid a hotelkeeper (“to please him and his employees”) for meals
he had ordered, was “repeatedly shot at” the whole length of a street
but never so much as hit. He thinks this was due to its being so dark,
though whenever the witnesses are concerned to testify that the firing
was undoubtedly by civilians, or by soldiers disguised as such, they
can see “quite plainly.”
The Priests.
Never since the Day of Pentecost was there such a confusion of tongues.
One witness labours to prove that no executions took place without a
most decorous court-martial in the station square, the same soldier
combining apparently the office of prosecutor and judge (D 38); another
says that of “a crowd” of persons taken out of a house, the males were
“immediately shot” (D 44); yet a third says that a body of hostages
were placed in front of a machine-gun with an intimation that they
would be shot as a matter of course if there were any more disturbance
(D 37). It is admitted that a hundred civilians were shot, “including
ten or fifteen priests” (D 38). One German witness says it is all the
fault of the priests (D 38); another says it’s the fault of the _Garde
Civique_ (D 45)--both being apparently at some pains to exculpate the
unhappy civilians. The quality of the evidence against the priests (and
the civil population) may be gathered from the following deposition (D
42) of Captain Hermansen. He interviewed a priest who, he says, had
behaved well on one occasion:
“I rejoined that if his clerical brethren had acted in that
[the same] manner, the Belgians and we would have been spared
many unpleasant experiences. _He did not contradict me._”--(D
42.)
In witness whereof Captain von Vethacke comes forward and says:
“In so far as priests were shot they too had been found guilty
by the court. I came to know the priest mentioned by Captain
Hermansen at the end of his declaration. He made an excellent
impression on me also; and _he did not contradict me either_,
when I expressed to him my opinion that certain of the clergy
had stirred up the people and taken part in the attack.”--(D
43.)
Truly, a remarkable example of the _argumentum ab silentio_! Perhaps
the unfortunate priest remembered what happened to Faithful when he
contradicted Chief Justice Hategood.
All the evidence adduced, where it is not that of the German soldiers,
is of this character. It is all hearsay, the Belgian witnesses quoted
are invariably anonymous, and there are only five of them at that (D
30, 34, 37, 38, 42). At Bueken “the clergymen” are accused of having
incited the population to attack the German troops. The proof adduced
is that the priest “left the church” when the firing began!
What is the true explanation?
One thing emerges quite clearly from these disorderly depositions
and that is a great confusion of mind. The evidence from Belgian
sources, very carefully sifted by a Committee[38] (presided over by
Sir Mackenzie Chalmers) of the Belgian Commission and, independently,
by the Bryce Committee,[39] is to the effect that two detachments
of German troops fired on one another and then threw the blame on
the innocent inhabitants. This explanation certainly receives some
countenance from the German depositions, which, as I have said,
exhibit a kind of turbulent confusion. The N.C.O.‘s of two battalions
which entered the town at 9 p.m. say “the noise and confusion was
very great,” and “to what extent our fire was returned I cannot say”;
“we shot the street lamps to pieces”; “our opponents were not to be
seen since it was already dark,” and “we only saw the flash of the
discharges and _supposed_ that they came from the houses” (D 36, 37);
and here again, as in the case of the company of Landsturm previously
referred to, only “five men” were known to be hit. During the greater
part of the day (August 25th) there was only[40] one company of
Landsturm and sixty men of a railway detachment in the town (D 8).
It is surely rather remarkable that “a well-prepared and elaborately
designed attack on the part of the civil population” (D 41) should
have halted all day and then begun either at or a short time before
(the German evidence is, as we have seen, very conflicting) German
reinforcements were entering the town, and then tarried again until
the whole or the greater part of a German Army Corps had arrived: the
only thing that the German evidence proves is the sinister fact that
the arrival of each detachment of German forces coincided with renewed
massacres of the civilian population. Such is the ugly story that
emerges from these ill-nourished and contradictory testimonies.
Such is the German White Book. I think it is not too much to say that
it bears the stamp of the forger’s hand upon it, the same hand that
forged the Ems telegram and garbled the Belgian documents captured in
Brussels. It was conceived in iniquity and brought forth in falsehood.
It confesses, but does not avoid.
III
GERMAN CREDIBILITY--A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE
The German Diaries.
I have allowed the German White Book to speak for itself. It is a
well-known rule of law that a party is “estopped” from denying his own
admissions, and the incriminating character of these admissions is, as
we have seen, conclusive against the German Government. Had I desired,
I could have reinforced it by other evidence, also emanating from
German sources, in the shape of Proclamations and diaries (of which I
have seen some hundreds at the Ministry of War in Paris), which amply
corroborate the conclusions already arrived at. The German pretence
of a judicial inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the victims of
their sanguinary fury is refuted by the simple fact that their own
Proclamations frankly intimate that the principle of decimation and
of vicarious punishment will be adopted, in the case of infractions,
whether real or assumed, of what they choose to call their commands.
A hostage may fail to turn up as a substitute, an inhabitant may be
found with a litre of benzol unaccounted for, another may dig potatoes
in the field, yet another may fail to salute or to hold his hands up
with sufficient promptitude--and the penalty decreed is invariably the
same: he, or a substitute, will be shot--“the innocent will suffer
with the guilty.”[41] Not only so, but as a rule no attempt was
made to discover whether any offence had been committed or not. In
the diary of a German officer which came into my possession an entry
recording the undiscriminating butchery of some two hundred civilians
concluded with the otiose remark: “In future there ought to be an
inquiry into their guilt instead of shooting them.” An unpublished
Proclamation in my possession, which was handed to me by the _maire_ of
a town now in our occupation, declared that the civils, “ou peutêtre
les militaires en civil,” had fired on the troops; the parenthesis
damns its authors beyond redemption. And when all other tests fail,
when every international convention has been repudiated, there still
remains the elementary rule, which not only jurists but soldiers have
always emphasized, that in reprisals and retribution there should
always be some _proportion_ between the offence and its punishment.
What then is to be thought of the admission of a German soldier that
sixty villagers, including women in travail, were shot “because,” he
adds laconically, “they had telephoned to the enemy”? The critic who
carefully collates the diaries, published and unpublished, will find
overwhelming evidence of indiscriminate and lawless butchery--“Befehl
ergangen sämtliche männliche Personen zu erschiessen.... Ein
schrecklicher Sonntag” (Order passed to shoot all the male
inhabitants.... A frightful Sunday); “Ein schreckliches Blutbad” (A
frightful blood-bath); “Sämtliche Rechtsnormen sind aufgelöst” (All the
rules of law are cast to the winds). And nothing is more instructive
than to observe how each lays the blame for the worst outrages upon
the other, while incidentally admitting those of his own unit. One
says, “It’s the infantry who are to blame”; another says, “The pioneers
are the worst and those brigands of artillerymen”; a third writes,
“It’s all the fault of the transport.” The cumulative effect of these
recriminations is to inculpate the whole.[42]
German Credibility.
Quite apart from this inductive evidence there is the fact that the
German Government is so tainted with the infamy of indisputable
mendacity that no sober and impartial man can credit a single word
of what it says. It has deliberately forged Belgian documents which
have come into its possession in order to make out a case against the
Belgian Government;[43] it has repeatedly broken faith with the British
Government and the Vatican;[44] it has abused the Geneva Convention
in order to make use of a hospital ship as an instrument of war.[45]
Berlin itself is one great factory of lies, and its official Press
service, to quote the words of our Ambassador, “a vast system of
international blackmail.”[46] As is the Government, so are the people.
Its merchants forge manifests and falsify bills of lading in order
to secure the immunity of their property from capture at sea.[47] A
journal under German control[48] has admitted that the stories of
mutilation so industriously circulated by the German Government and
its agents are entirely the product of hysterical “suggestion.” Often
its pretexts are a shameless afterthought. In co-operation with the
French authorities I was instrumental in tracking down a now notorious
order issued by a German Brigadier-General to butcher all the wounded
who fell into German hands. At first its authenticity was denied by
the German Government, but, when it was established beyond doubt, they
published a statement that a similar order had been issued by one of
our own Generals some twelve months ago. The excuse was as belated as
it was mendacious, and to this day not the slightest proof has been
adduced in support of it.
The German authorities seem to suffer from a malady which can only
be described as moral perversion. It is a kind of moral insanity. In
defending the sinking of the _Lusitania_ with its freight of innocent
women and children the German Government wrote:
“The case of the _Lusitania_ shows _with horrible clearness_ to
what jeopardising of human lives the manner of war conducted by
our adversaries leads.”[49]
This affectation of horror at the consequences of its own crimes and
the imputation of the guilt of them to others is surely one of the
most remarkable revelations of the moral obliquity of the German mind.
Yet it by no means stands alone. The Proclamations, issued in Belgium,
threaten the inhabitants with fire and sword, the scaffold and the
firing-party, for the least infraction of the most trivial regulations,
and then conclude with the aspersion that by such infraction they will
commit “the horrible crime” of compromising the existence of a whole
community and placing it “outside the pale of international law.”[50]
The man who omits to put his hands up with acrobatic promptitude will
“make himself guilty” of the penalty of death. All through the German
utterances there runs an infatuated obsession that the Germans enjoy
a kind of moral prerogative in virtue of which they are entitled to
violate all the laws which they rigidly prescribe for others.[51] We
have lately had an example of this which is of supreme horror. The
Power which has broken all laws, human and divine, sought to dignify
its condemnation of Edith Cavell with all the pomp and circumstance
of a tribunal of justice. While thousands of ravishers and spoilers
go free, one woman, who had spent her life in ministries to such as
were sick and afflicted, was handed over to the executioner. Truly,
there has been no such trial in history since Barabbas was released and
Christ led forth to the hill of Calvary.
The Guilt of the German People.
It is the fondest of delusions to imagine that all this
blood-guiltiness is confined to the German Government and the General
Staff. The whole people is stained with it. The innumerable diaries
of common soldiers in the ranks which I have read betray a common
sentiment of hate, rapine, and ferocious credulity.[52] Again and again
English soldiers have told me how their German captors delighted to
offer them food in their famished state and then to snatch it away
again. The progress of French, British, and Russian prisoners, civil
as well as military, through Germany has been a veritable Calvary.[53]
The helplessness which in others would excite forbearance if not pity
has in the German populace provoked only derision and insult.[54] The
“old gentleman with a grey beard and gold spectacles” who broke his
umbrella over the back of a Russian lady (the wife of a diplomatist),
the loafers who boarded a train and under the eyes of the indulgent
sentries poked their fingers in the blind eye of a wounded Irishman
who had had half his face shot away, the men and women who spat upon
helpless prisoners and threatened them with death, the guards who
prodded them with bayonets, worried them with dogs, and dispatched
those who could not keep up--these were not a Prussian caste, but the
German people. What is to be thought of a people, one of whose leading
journals publishes[55] with approval the letter of a German officer
describing “the brilliant idea” (ein guter Gedanke) which inspired him
to place civilians on chairs in the middle of the street of a town
attacked by the French and use them as a screen for his men, in spite
of their “prayers of anguish.”
New Russian Evidence.
This question of the culpability of the German people, civilians and
soldiers in the ranks, as distinct from the German Government, is one
of supreme importance, and I would like to draw the reader’s attention
to the mass of unpublished evidence (from which some selections are
given in Part VI. of the Documentary Chapter of this book) placed at my
disposal by the Russian Embassy. In addition to the documents I have
printed in that chapter--I refer the reader to No. 7 in particular--I
will here quote the following unpublished deposition as to the conduct
of the German guards in a prison camp. These barbarities, it should
be remembered, were not done in the heat of action, but represent
the leisurely amusement of guards whose only provocation was the
helplessness of the famished men in their charge.
“In their leisure moments the German soldiers amused themselves
with practical joking at the expense of the prisoners. They
announced that an extra portion of food would be given out,
and when the Russians hurried to the kitchen, a whole pack of
dogs were let loose on them. The animals flew at the prisoners
and dispersed them in all directions, while the Germans looked
on and roared with laughter. Sometimes the prisoners were
offered an extra ladle of soup, or piece of bread if they would
expose their backs to a certain number of blows with a whip.
Our hungry and tormented soldiers often bought an extra piece
of bread at this price, and it was thrown to them as if they
had been dogs.”
The Germans appear in the case of the Russian, as in that of the
British, Belgian, and French prisoners, to have taken a malignant and
bestial delight in outraging their feelings of self-respect, and men
were herded together day and night in cattle-trucks deep in manure,
and forced to perform their natural functions where they stood, packed
together so close that they could not sit and dared not lie down. At
each station they were exhibited like a travelling menagerie to the
curiosity and insult of the populace. The quality of mercy was not
shown even where one might most expect to find it, namely, at the hands
of the German surgeons and nurses who wore the Red Cross. Here is the
deposition of Vasili Tretiakov:
“Having received no food for two days, the Russian prisoners,
who fully expected to get some bread at this station, were
gazing with hungry and longing looks into the distance, when
they saw women dressed as Sisters of Mercy distributing bread
and sausages to the German soldiers. One of these Sisters went
up to the truck in which I was standing, and a Russian soldier
at the door stretched out his hand for something to eat, but
the woman simply struck it and smeared the soldier’s face with
a piece of sausage. She then called all the prisoners ‘Russian
swine’ and went away from the side of the train.”
Well may the Russian Government say in their covering communication
that “the forms of punishment”--if we can speak of punishment when no
offence had been committed--“remind one of the tortures of the Middle
Ages.” Other documents in my possession recite how the prisoners were
harnessed to ploughs and carts, like cattle, and lashed with long
leather whips; how a man who fainted from exhaustion was immediately
bayoneted, while another who fell out of the ranks to pick up a rotten
turnip shared a like fate; how wounded men were forced to stand naked
for hours in the frost until gangrene set in, tied up for hours to
posts with their toes just touching the ground until, the blood rising
to the head, copious hæmorrhage took place from the nose, mouth, and
ears; how yet others who, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, could not
keep up on the march were bayoneted or clubbed where they lay. As for
the conduct of the German populace let the following speak for itself:
“The peaceful inhabitants along the routes traversed in
Germany showed the greatest hostility towards the prisoners,
whom they reviled as ‘Russian swine and dogs.’ Women and even
children threw stones and sand at them, and spat right in
their faces.... Even the wounded men were not spared by these
demented Germans who struck them, pulled their moustaches, and
spat in their faces.”
The German Ideal--Europe in Chains.
The conception of the educated classes of Germany as to the future
of Europe we have on record: it is to be a tributary Europe, vast
satrapies of subject populations more rightless than the mediæval
villein, their language proscribed, their liberties disfranchised,
their commerce prohibited, their lands expropriated, hewers of wood and
drawers of water for the conqueror. The ill-disguised slavery under
which Belgium[56] and the occupied French Departments[57] groan to-day
is to be perpetuated. The small nations of Europe are to exchange
the protection of Europe for the suzerainty of Germany and to live
under the German “shield.” Their territories are to be to Germany
what the provinces were to Rome at her worst--great praedial estates,
the peasantry of which are either to be “cleared” or to remain as the
menials of the conqueror. The German dream is the dream of the Latin
historian who sighed for more provinces to conquer in order that
liberty might be “banished from the sight”[58] of those already under
his heel. What Germany cannot annex she will ruin, so that borne down
by heavy indemnities France shall never be able to lift her head again.
Such are the “terms of peace” proclaimed by the German Professors, a
body of men who, it should be remembered, in Germany hold their chairs
at the pleasure of the State and are, in fact, a branch of the Civil
Service. They therefore speak as men having authority.[59]
A Moral Distemper.
I have been told that there are still some individuals in England who
cherish the idea that this vast orgy of blood, lust, rapine, hate,
and pride is in some peculiar way merely the _Bacchanalia_ of troops
unused to the heady bouquet of the wines of Champagne or, stranger
still, that it is the mental aberration of a people seduced by idle
tales into these courses by its rulers. It is no part of my task to
find explanations. But if the reader is astonished, as well he may be,
at the disgusting repetition of stories of rape and sodomy let him
study the statistics of crime in Germany during the first decade of
this century, issued by the Imperial Government; he will find in them
much to confirm the impression that the whole people is infected with
some kind of moral distemper.[60] The seduction of a people by its
rulers is impossible; such hypnotic susceptibility to the influences
of “suggestion” would, of itself, be a symptom of mental degeneration
in the people itself. It is impossible to believe that the most highly
educated nation in Europe is either so ignorant or so credulous as
such an explanation would suggest. It is not in their ignorance
but in their turpitude that the clue to these barbarities is to be
found. This is a sombre fact which has to be faced or these appalling
records will have been sifted and published in vain. The problem of
explanation is ultimately one for the anthropologist rather than the
lawyer, and there may be force in the contention of those who believe
that the Prussian is not a member of the Teutonic family at all, but
a “throw-back” to some Tartar stock. Certain it is that he exhibits
an insensibility to the feelings of others which is only equalled by
his extreme sensitiveness as to his own.[61] This morbid insensibility
is, of course, the secret of German “Terrorism,” and of the immense
influence which it has exerted on the theory and practice of war among
the German nation. It explains their singular ingenuity in finding
means to an end, and between the German trooper who dips a baby’s head
into scalding water in order to get more coffee from its mother[62]
to the commandant who at the point of the bayonet thrusts a living
screen of priests, old men, and women with babes at the breast[63]
between his own troops and those of the enemy there is a difference of
degree rather than of kind. Similarly the dark passage in the German
War Book which hints that there may be occasions on which it will be
profitable to massacre prisoners of war reveals the same quality of
mind as the order to shoot helpless sailors who are struggling for
their lives in the sea.[64] All things are lawful which are expedient,
and if your enemy has ties of affection, the better he lends himself to
your belligerent exploitation. _Mentem mortalia tangunt_--human things
touch the heart--acquires for the German Staff a new and sinister
significance. Every tender feeling that their enemy has becomes a
hostage for his tractability, because it can be violated if he is
contumacious. His churches can be profaned, his priests murdered, his
boys driven into exile, his women-folk handed over to the lust of a
licentious soldiery, and his home destroyed. If his troops defeat one
in the field, the civilian population can be made to pay for it with
their lives,[65] so that eventually he may be disarmed not by defeat
but by horror. His own humanity will be his undoing. Not fear but
anguish will bring him to his knees.
This is the German doctrine, secreted in the pages of many a German
manual,[66] and now published to the world in the German Proclamations
and the evil deeds which they both excuse and provoke. This it is which
has made the German nation, in the words of Lord Rosebery, “the enemy
of the human race,” and has caused the very name of this bestial and
servile people to stink in the nostrils of mankind.
IV
THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE QUESTION OF RETRIBUTION
The Dissolution of Europe.
Many years ago the most distinguished of the modern school of French
historians wrote a remarkable essay on the subject of “Diplomacy and
Progress.”[67] He knew Europe as few had known it; he had spent his
life in its chancelleries and its archives, and his wisdom was only
equalled by his knowledge, for he had studied not only books but men.
In that essay he speculated as to the effect of the progress of
mechanical invention in the arts of war upon the prospects of European
peace, and he confessed to a mournful depression. But the source of
his apprehension was not Europe but Asia. He foresaw the possibility
of some potent Oriental nation awaking from its secular meditations
and applying itself in a single generation to an apprenticeship in
those mechanical arts which are no longer the peculiar mystery and
the prerogative of the Western world. A nation thus acquiring the
destructive resources of the West, while retaining the peculiar
morality of the East--its ruthlessness, its contempt for human
life, its sombre fatalism, its indifference to personal liberty,
its chicanery, its love of espionage--might, he apprehended, fall
upon Europe in a catastrophic assault as unforeseen as it would be
unprovoked, and threaten her with destruction.
The catastrophe has fallen, but the foes of Europe have been those of
her own household, and we have discovered with a shock of dismay that
the comity of European nations has harboured a Power which is European
in nothing but in name, and is more completely alien to Western ideals
than the tribes of Afghanistan. A hybrid nation of this type which is
intellectual without being refined, which can discipline its mind but
cannot control its appetites, which can acquire the idiom of Europe and
yet retain the instincts of Asia or rather of some pre-Asiatic horde,
presents the greatest problem that has ever perplexed the civilisation
of man. It is like an intellectual savage who has learnt the language
and studied the dress and deportment of polite society, but all the
while nurtures dark atavisms and murderous impulses in the centres of
his brain. The subtle danger of the presence of such a nation in the
European comity is that it uses the language of that international
society, and yet all the while means something different, and that with
every appearance of solemn subscription to its forms and treaties it
is making mental reservations and “economies” which strike at the very
root of them.
The Casuistry of the Intellectual Savage.
In the hands of such a nation an international convention is not merely
idle and impotent; the convention itself becomes positively dangerous,
simply because it can be perverted. It can be used to invest the most
barbarous acts with a specious plausibility, and can be turned against
the very people whom it was designed to protect. Any one who takes the
trouble to study the official proclamations of the German military
authorities, or the introductory memorandum to the German White Book,
cannot fail to be struck by this. A civilian who fires on the enemy
forfeits under international law the privileges of a non-combatant.
The rule means as much as it says, and no more; it does not impose on
a civil community the obligation to prove that it is a non-combatant.
But in nine out of ten German proclamations the rule is invoked as
an excuse for involving a whole community in responsibility with
their lives for the acts or omissions, real or alleged, of single
individuals--“the innocent will suffer with the guilty”[68]--and the
“law of nations” is invoked to put a whole population “outside the
pale” of it.[69] At one stroke we are carried back to the days of
the blood-feud and of vicarious punishment, and the law of nations
is perverted from an instrument of progress to an organon of bloody
sophistries. So, too, the Hague Convention which requires that
requisitions of supplies should not be made without giving receipts
is observed in the letter and violated in the spirit; receipts are
given, but they are forged. The obligation of a treaty guaranteeing the
neutrality of Belgium is admitted, but a false charge and a falsified
document is advanced to justify its breach. A brigade order to kill
all prisoners is first denied, and then when denial becomes futile,
a fictitious order of a prior date is alleged against us in order to
dignify the real order with the sanction of “reprisals.” Defenceless
merchantmen are attacked and sunk at first sight, and then when they
carry guns for their protection their precautions for defence are used
as a retrospective pretext for attack. The same curious casuistry is
invoked to excuse the attacks on Scarborough and London, and the Hague
Convention is interpreted, in defiance of its authors, to support the
plea that whatever barbarity is not expressly prohibited is thereby
condoned.
Germany as a Moral Pervert.
It is this terrible perversion, this prostitution of words until,
to quote a classical expression of Thucydides, they have lost their
meaning in relation to things, that seems to me the most intractable
problem that we have to face. To my mind it is this pathological aspect
of the German temperament which presents a far more serious obstacle
to a restoration of the European comity based on the readmission of
Germany to membership than the German dogma of war. You may, perhaps,
extirpate a dogma but you cannot alter a temperament. To regard Germany
as the misguided pupil of a military caste which alone stands in the
way of her reformation seems to me to ignore the volume of evidence as
to the complicity of officers and men in those orgies of outrage. I
cannot avoid the conclusion that the whole people is infected with a
kind of moral distemper.
“Look, Madame,” said a German soldier to a French woman who
witnessed the execution of three poor travellers who with their
hands tied behind their backs with napkins were led into a
field close to her house and shot by six soldiers under the
command of a German officer, “Look! isn’t it fine! See them
shoot some French civilians. A fine feat that! All the others
ought to be killed in the same way.”[70]
The sentiment is typical; German diaries are full of such things.
Nor is it reasonable to suppose that the kind of teaching which has
made Clausewitz and Treitschke and Bernhardi the gospel of the German
people, and has found authoritative expression in the German War Book,
could have commanded the prestige which it does command in Germany if
it had not found a people apt and eager by temperament to receive it.
Germany stands alone among modern nations in extending its official
conception, and even its academic analysis[71] of war, to include the
deliberate “terrorization” of non-combatants. She alone has taught,
both by precept and example, that there are no limitations to what
is justifiable by the exigencies of war. “_C’est la guerre_” is the
common answer of German officers when implored by the victims to
stop the lust and rapine of their men.[72] It follows from all this
that war as taught and practised by the Germans exceeds in savagery
even the practices of the ancient world, in which it was thought
the mark of barbarism to poison wells, desecrate temples and murder
priests--practices which the Germans have not hesitated to pursue.
Incitement to assassination, which was thought a mean and dishonourable
thing by the Roman mind,[73] is specifically recommended in the German
War Book.
In the ancient world the vanquished were regarded as rightless, and
whole populations were sold into slavery after they had been decimated
by the slaughter of their leading citizens. The German practice is
not intrinsically different; municipal magistrates, parish priests,
and one in three of the civil population have been butchered, many
civilians carried off to Germany to work in the fields, and those who
are left behind forced to dig trenches for their captors while their
wives and daughters are handed over to the lust of the soldiery, and
their movable property transported. It is difficult to see how this
differs in anything but name from the tragic fate of those unhappy
communities who in the laconic phrase of the ancient world passed _sub
corona_ and were sold by auction. All this differs from the practices
of the ancient world in nothing except a certain affectation, the one
concession to modern sentiment being a studious defamation by the
Germans of the people whom they ravish and despoil. It seems to me that
bad as the German crimes are the German justification for them is even
worse. For it betrays a real corruption of mind. The ancients were
often brutal but they were never hypocritical.
The Bankruptcy of The Hague Conventions.
What hope then can there be of a restoration of the comity of European
nations, and the re-establishment of the Hague Conventions? I confess I
can see none. The German Empire was conceived in duplicity and brought
forth in war, and three times within living memory, as Sir Edward Grey
has reminded us, she has wantonly provoked war in Europe in pursuance
of her predatory designs. I can see no way out of the present travail
except an armed peace, with the elimination as its basis for a long
time to come of Germany from the councils of Europe. What hope of
understanding can there be with a nation which does not observe the
ordinary rules of diplomatic intercourse, that _jus fetiale_ which
even the ancient world regarded as sacred? The world has seen with
stupefaction--there has, I think, been no such case for hundreds of
years--the Ambassador of the Austrian Government taking advantage of
his immunities and sovereign character to suborn seditious conspiracy
in the State to which he was accredited?[74] It is difficult to believe
that this case now stands alone. Conventions with such a Power are
both a delusion and a snare. They delude us with an appearance of
agreement where none exists. In unscrupulous hands, the more precise
and technical they are, the more do they lend themselves to casuistry,
adding, as some one has said, the terrors of law to the horrors of war.
I am afraid that such conventions are now hopelessly discredited. I
doubt if we shall hear very much in future of the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants, or of the sanctity of the _levée en
masse_ as a medium of lawful transition from the one to the other;
he who studies the German White Book on hostilities in Belgium will
see how easily a belligerent, if he be so minded, can dispose with a
quibble of the obligations to respect an improvised force which has
“no time” to organise. A belligerent contemplating a sudden attack
and a belligerent having to meet it will entertain very different
conceptions as to what is meant by “no time.” War has, indeed, come to
be, as von der Goltz prophesied it would be, a war not between armies
but between peoples, and we are further than ever from the oft-quoted
maxim of Rousseau that “War is not a relation of Man to Man but of
States to States,” in which particular individuals are enemies only by
the accident of a uniform. That was the voice of Individualism; but
States grow more and more collectivist, and never so collectivist as in
war. If, as an eminent writer has remarked, “out of the inner life of a
nation comes its foreign policy,” so, we may add, out of its municipal
law, its military usages, and its economic necessities will come its
construction of international law.
The Effect on International Law.
It surely cannot be too clearly recognised that Germany’s successive
violations of the laws of war have brought the whole fabric down like a
house of cards. When the Germans began to sink neutral merchantmen by
way of vindicating what they were pleased to call the freedom of the
seas, England was forced to jettison much of that famous Declaration
of London, which seemed at one time to be as complete an expression
of a consensus of international opinion as the world of jurists had
yet attained. We have gone further, as we were bound to do, and have
so extended the theory of blockade as to qualify very considerably the
Declaration of Paris. The Foreign Office has supported these departures
by the logic of reprisals--in my humble opinion very properly--but
“reprisals” are, juridically speaking, a kind of counsel of despair.
In books on international law they receive a kind of shame-faced
recognition; their place is always at the end and the chapter devoted
to them is often brief and generally apologetic. For the jurist knows
that they partake of the character of law about as much as trial by
battle. The voice of America is a voice crying in the wilderness; both
groups of belligerents deny the American contention that peace, and
with it the commerce of neutrals, should govern the construction of the
rules of war. How can it be otherwise in a struggle for existence? I
very much doubt whether, for a long time to come, international lawyers
can afford to assume, as they have been in the habit of doing, that
peace, not war, is the normal conditions of nations. A nation which
like Germany will not admit your major premises will certainly reject
your conclusions when it suits her convenience. The dilemma therefore
is inexorable: we can readmit Germany to international society and
lower our standard of International Law to her level, or we can exclude
her and raise it. There is no third course.
These are the hard facts to which any one who attempts to take stock
of the present situation and immediate prospects of International
Law must address himself. International Law rests on a reciprocity of
obligation; if one belligerent fails to observe it the other is, as a
mere matter of self-preservation, released from its observance towards
him, and is bound not by law but by morality, by his own conception
of what he owes to his own self-respect. It is well that our own
conception has been rather in advance of International Law than behind
it, and long may it so remain. But in proportion as our conception is
high and the German conception is low, it seems to me incumbent on us
to place our hopes for the future in the strength of our right arm and
in that alone. And if, in Burke’s noble phrase, we are to consider
ourselves for the future “embodied with Europe” so that, sympathetic
with the adversity or the happiness of mankind, we feel that nothing
human is alien to us, then we must be prepared to support our treaty
guarantees of the independence of the small nations with an adequate
armed force; otherwise they will regard our friendship as an equivocal
and compromising thing. If we are to offer them the protection of
Europe in place of the suzerainty of Germany, we must be in a position
to honour our promissory notes or they will indeed be but a scrap of
paper--a cruel and otiose encouragement to the weak to defy the strong.
The German as Outlaw.
As for Germany, I can see little hope except in a sentence of
outlawry. Mere black-listing of the names of responsible German
commanders, although worth doing (and I have reason to believe that at
the French War Office it is being done) with a view to retribution,
is not going to change the German character. We shall have to revise
our notions of both municipal and international law as regards her.
The tendency of English law has long been, as an acute jurist has
pointed out,[75] to lay more emphasis on domicile than on nationality,
the disabilities of the alien have been diminished almost to
vanishing-point, and British citizenship itself could be had almost for
the asking. Not of it need the alien knocking at our hospitable doors
say, in the words of the chief captain, “With a great sum obtained I
this freedom.” It has been made disastrously cheap. All that is likely
to be changed. It is not a little significant that already the courts
have begun to take judicial notice of the peculiar morality of the
German and have expressly made it the basis of a decision extending the
conception of what constitutes a prisoner of war.[76] And alone among
the emergency legislation the drastic Aliens Act is not limited in its
preamble, as are the other Acts, to the duration of the war. These
things are portents. It is impossible to believe that a revolution
more catastrophic than anything through which Europe has passed, a
revolution beside which the French Revolution assumes the proportions
of a storm in a tea-cup, can leave our conceptions of law, whether
municipal or international, unchanged.
* * * * *
Conclusion.
I make no apology, and I trust that none is needed, for these
speculations. Reports of atrocities can serve no useful purpose unless
they move men to reflect no less resolutely than deeply upon what is to
be done to deliver Europe from the scourge of their repetition. It may
well be that my own reflections will seem cynical to one, depressing
to another, arbitrary to a third. They are not the idols of the
theatre, and in academic circles they may not be fashionable. But the
catastrophe that has disturbed the dreams of the idealogues must teach
jurists and statesmen to beware of the opiate of words and sacramental
phrases. That, however, is a task which belongs to the future. The
immediate enterprise is not for lawyers but for our gallant men in the
field. They, and they alone, can lay the foundations of an enduring
peace by an unremitting and inexorable war. They are the true ministers
of justice.