recall as a singularly picturesque town on the Meuse, is given by one
witness, who says that the Germans began burning houses in the Rue St.
Jacques on the 21st of August, and that every house in the street was
burned. On the following day an engagement took place between the French
and the Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the cellar of a
bank with his wife and children. On the morning of the 23d, about 5
o'clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately afterward a party of
Germans came to the house. They rang the bell and began to batter at the
door and windows. The witness's wife went to the door and two or three
Germans came in. The family were ordered out into the street. There they
found another family, and the two families were driven with their hands
above their heads along the Rue Grande. All the houses in the street
were burning. The party was eventually put into a forge where there were
a number of other prisoners, about a hundred in all, and were kept there
from 11 A.M. till 2 P.M. They were then taken to the prison. There they
were assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. They
were then passed through into the prison itself and put into cells. The
witness and his wife were separated from each other. During the next
hour the witness heard rifle shots continually, and noticed in the
corner of a courtyard leading off the row of cells the body of a young
man with a mantle thrown over it. He recognized the mantle as having
belonged to his wife. The witness's daughter was allowed to go out to
see what had happened to her mother, and the witness himself was allowed
to go across the courtyard half an hour afterward for the same purpose.
He found his wife lying on the floor in a room. She had bullet wounds in
four places, but was alive and told her husband to return to the
children, and he did so. About 5 o'clock in the evening he saw the
Germans bringing out all the young and middle-aged men from the cells,
and ranging their prisoners, to the number of forty, in three rows in
the middle of the courtyard. About twenty Germans were drawn up
opposite, but before any thing was done there was a tremendous
fusillade from some point near the prison and the civilians were hurried
back to their cells. Half an hour later the same forty men were brought
back into the courtyard. Almost immediately there was a second fusillade
like the first and and they were driven back to the cells again. About 7
o'clock the witness and other prisoners were brought out of their cells
and marched out of the prison. They went between two lines of troops to
Roche Bayard, about a kilometer away. An hour later the women and
children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant,
passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison the witness saw
three lines of bodies which he recognized as being those of neighbors.
They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them.
There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top
of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till 8 o'clock in
the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and
taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in
Germany.
Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison.
About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass
square opposite the convent. They included many relatives of a witness
whose deposition will be found in the appendix. This witness asked a
German officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it
was because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at
the Germans. As a matter of fact one of her sons was at that time in
Liège and the other in Brussels. It is stated that, besides the ninety
corpses referred to above, sixty corpses of civilians were recovered
from a hole in the brewery yard and that forty-eight bodies of women and
children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on fire
by hand grenades.
Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken
and the other injured by a bayonet.
We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave
any provocation, or that any other defense can be put forward to
justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.
As regards this town and the advance of the German Army from Dinant to
Rethel on the Aisne, a graphic account is given in the diary of a Saxon
officer.[1] This diary confirms what is clear from the evidence as a
whole, both as regards these and other districts, that civilians were
constantly taken as prisoners, often dragged from their homes, and shot
under the direction of the authorities without any charge being made
against them. An event of the kind is thus referred to in a diary entry:
"Apparently 200 men were shot. There must have been some
innocent men among them. In future we shall have to hold an
inquiry as to their guilt instead of shooting them."
[Footnote 1: A copy of this diary was given by the French military
authorities to the British Headquarters Staff in France, and the latter
have communicated it to the committee. It will be found in Appendix B
after the German diaries shown to us by the British War Office.]
The shooting of inhabitants, women and children as well as men, went on
after the Germans had passed Dinant on their way into France. The houses
and villages were pillaged and property wantonly destroyed.
AERSCHOT, MALINES, VILVORDE, AND LOUVAIN QUADRANGLE.
About Aug. 9 a powerful screen of cavalry masking the general advance of
the First and Second German Armies was thrown forward into the provinces
of Brabant and Limburg. The progress of the invaders was contested at
several points, probably near Tirlemont on the Louvain road, and at
Diest, Haelen, and Schaffen, on the Aerschot road, by detachments of the
main Belgian Army, which was drawn up upon the line of the Dyle. In
their preliminary skirmishes the Belgians more than once gained
advantages, but after the fall on Aug. 15 of the last of the Liège forts
the great line of railway which runs through Liège toward Brussels and
Antwerp in one direction and toward Namur and the French frontier in
another fell into the hands of the Germans. From this moment the advance
of the main army was swift and irresistible. On Aug. 19 Louvain and
Aerschot were occupied by the Germans, the former without resistance,
the latter after a struggle which resulted early in the day in the
retirement of the Belgian Army upon Antwerp. On Aug. 20 the invaders
made their entry into Brussels.
The quadrangle of territory bounded by the towns of Aerschot, Malines,
Vilvorde, and Louvain is a rich agricultural tract, studded with small
villages and comprising two considerable cities, Louvain and Malines.
This district on Aug. 19 passed into the hands of the Germans, and owing
perhaps to its proximity to Antwerp, then the seat of the Belgian
Government and headquarters of the Belgian Army, it became from that
date a scene of chronic outrage, with respect to which the committee has
received a great mass of evidence.
The witnesses to these occurrences are for the most part imperfectly
educated persons who cannot give accurate dates, so it is impossible in
some cases to fix the dates of particular crimes; and the total number
of outrages is so great that we cannot refer to all of them in the body
of the report or give all the depositions relating to them in the
appendix. The main events, however, are abundantly clear, and group
themselves naturally around three dates--Aug. 19, Aug. 25, and Sept. 11.
The arrival of the Germans in the district on Aug. 19 was marked by
systematic massacres and other outrages at Aerschot itself, Gelrode, and
some other villages.
On Aug. 25 the Belgians, sallying out of the defenses of Antwerp,
attacked the German positions at Malines, drove the enemy from the town,
and reoccupied many of the villages, such as Sempst, Hofstade, and
Eppeghem, in the neighborhood. And, just as numerous outrages against
the civilian population had been the immediate consequence of the
temporary repulse of the German vanguard from Fort Fléron, so a large
body of depositions testify to the fact that a sudden outburst of
cruelty was the response of the German Army to the Belgian victory at
Malines. The advance of the German Army to the Dyle had been accompanied
by reprehensible, and, indeed, (in certain cases,) terrible outrages,
but these had been, it would appear, isolated acts, some of which are
attributed by witnesses to indignation at the check at Haelen, while
others may have been the consequence of drunkenness. But the battle of
Malines had results of a different order. In the first place, it was the
occasion of numerous murders committed by the German Army in retreating
through the villages of Sempst, Hofstade, Eppeghem, Elewyt, and
elsewhere. In the second place, it led, as it will be shown later, to
the massacres, plunderings, and burnings at Louvain, the signal for
which was provided by shots exchanged between the German Army retreating
after its repulse at Malines and some members of the German garrison of
Louvain who mistook their fellow-countrymen for Belgians. Lastly, the
encounter at Malines seems to have stung the Germans into establishing a
reign of terror in so much of the district comprised in the quadrangle
as remained in their power. Many houses were destroyed and their
contents stolen. Hundreds of prisoners were locked up in various
churches and were in some instances marched about from one village to
another. Some of these were finally conducted to Louvain and linked up
with the bands of prisoners taken in Louvain itself, and sent to Germany
and elsewhere.
On Sept. 11, when the Germans were driven out of Aerschot across the
River Demer by a successful sortie from Antwerp, murders of civilians
were taking place in the villages which the Belgian Army then recaptured
from the Germans. These crimes bear a strong resemblance to those
committed in Hofstade and other villages after the battle of Malines.
AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.
Period I., (Aug. 19 and following days.)
AERSCHOT.
The German Army entered Aerschot quite early in the morning. Workmen
going to their work were seized and taken as hostages.
The Germans, apparently already irritated, proceeded to make a search
for the priests and threatened to burn the convent if the priests should
happen to be found there. One priest was accused of inciting the
inhabitants to fire on the troops, and when he denied it the Burgomaster
was blamed by the officer. The priest then showed the officer the
notices on the walls, signed by the Burgomaster, warning the inhabitants
not to intervene in hostilities.
It appears that they accused the priest of having fired at the Germans
from the tower of the church. This is important because it is one of the
not infrequent cases in which the Germans ascribed firing from a church
to priests, whereas in fact this firing came from Belgian soldiers, and
also because it seems to show that the Germans from the moment of their
arrival in Aerschot were seeking to pick a quarrel with the inhabitants,
and this goes far to explain their subsequent conduct. Hostages were
collected until 200 men, some of whom were invalids, were gathered
together.
M. Tielmans, the Burgomaster, was then ordered by some German officers
to address the crowd and to tell them to hand in any weapons which they
might have in their possession at the Town Hall, and to warn them that
any one who was found with weapons would be killed. As a matter of fact,
the arms in the possession of civilians had already been collected at
the beginning of the war. The Burgomaster's speech resulted in the
delivery of one gun, which had been used for pigeon shooting. The
hostages were then released. Throughout the day the town was looted by
the soldiers. Many shop windows were broken, and the contents of the
shop fronts ransacked.
A shot was fired about 7 o'clock in the evening, by which time many of
the soldiers were drunk. The Germans were not of one mind as to the
direction from which the shot proceeded. Some said it came from a
jeweler's shop, and some said it came from other houses. No one was hit
by this shot, but thereafter German soldiers began to fire in various
directions at people in the streets.
It is said that a German General or Colonel was killed at the
Burgomaster's house. As far as the committee have been able to
ascertain, the identity of the officer has never been revealed. The
German version of the story is that he was killed by the 15-year-old son
of the Burgomaster. The committee, however, is satisfied by the evidence
of several independent witnesses that some German officers were standing
at the window of the Burgomaster's house, that a large body of German
troops was in the square, that some of these soldiers were drunk and let
off their rifles, that in the volley one of the officers standing at the
window of the Burgomaster's house fell, that at the time of the accident
the wife and son of the Burgomaster had gone to take refuge in the
cellar, and that neither the Burgomaster nor his son were in the least
degree responsible for the occurrence which served as the pretext for
their subsequent execution, and for the firing and sack of the town.[A]
[Footnote A: This account agrees substantially with that given in a
letter written by Mme. Tielmans, the Burgomaster's wife, which is
printed in the fifth report of the Belgian Commission. The letter is as
follows:
This is how it happened. About 4 in the afternoon my husband
was giving cigars to the sentinels stationed at the door. I
saw that the General and his aides de camp were looking at us
from the balcony and told him to come indoors. Just then I
looked toward the Grand Place, where more than 2,000 Germans
were encamped, and distinctly saw two columns of smoke
followed by a fusillade. The Germans were firing on the houses
and forcing their way into them. My husband, children,
servant, and myself had just time to dash into the staircase
leading to the cellar. The Germans were even firing into the
passages of the houses. After a few minutes of indescribable
horror, one of the General's aides de camp came down and said:
"The General is dead. Where is the Burgomaster?" My husband
said to me, "This will be serious for me." As he went forward
I said to the aide de camp: "You can see for yourself, Sir,
that my husband did not fire." "That makes no difference," he
said. "He is responsible." My husband was taken off. My son,
who was at my side, took us into another cellar. The same aide
de camp came and dragged him out and made him walk in front of
him, kicking him as he went. The poor boy could hardly walk.
That morning when they came to the town the Germans had fired
through the windows of the houses, and a bullet had come into
the room where my son was, and he had been wounded in the calf
by the ricochet. After my husband and son had gone I was
dragged all through the house by Germans, with their revolvers
leveled at my head. I was compelled to see their dead General.
Then my daughter and I were thrown into the street without
cloaks or anything. We were massed in the Grand Place,
surrounded by a cordon of soldiers, and compelled to witness
the destruction of our beloved town. And then, by the hideous
light of the fire, I saw them for the last time, about 1 in
the morning, my husband and my boy tied together. My
brother-in-law was behind them. They were being led out to
execution.]
The houses were set on fire with special apparatus, while people were
dragged from their houses, already burning, and some were shot in the
streets.
Many civilians were marched to a field on the road to Louvain and kept
there all night. Meanwhile many of the inhabitants were collected in the
square. By this time very many of the troops were drunk.
On the following day a number of the civilians were shot under the
orders of an officer, together with the Burgomaster, his brother, and
his son. Of this incident, which is spoken to by many witnesses, a clear
account is given:
"German soldiers came and took hold of me and every other man
they could see, and eventually there were about sixty of us,
including some of 80, (i.e., years of age,) and they made us
accompany them ... all the prisoners had to walk with their
hands above their heads. We were then stopped and made to
stand in a line, and an officer, a big fat man who had a
bluish uniform ... came along the line and picked out the
Burgomaster, his brother, and his son, and some men who had
been employed under the Red Cross. In all, ten men were picked
out ... the remainder were made to turn their backs upon the
ten. I then heard some shots fired, and I and the other men
turned around and we saw all the ten men, including the
Burgomaster, were lying on the ground."
This incident is spoken to by other witnesses also. Some of their
depositions appear in the appendix.
GELRODE.
On the same day at Gelrode, a small village close to Aerschot,
twenty-five civilians were imprisoned in the church. Seven were taken
out by fifteen German soldiers in charge of an officer just outside. One
of the seven tried to run away, whereupon all the six who remained
behind alive were shot. This was on the night of Aug. 19. No provocation
whatever had been given. The men in question had been searched, and no
arms had been found upon them. Here, as at Aerschot, precautions had
been taken previously to secure the delivery up of all arms in the hands
of civilians.
Some of the survivors were compelled to dig graves for the seven. At a
later date the corpses were disinterred and reburied in consecrated
ground. The marks of the bullets in the brick wall against which the six
were shot were then still plainly visible. On the same day a woman was
shot by some German soldiers as she was walking home. This was done at a
distance of 100 yards and for no apparent reason.
An account of a murder by an officer at Campenhout is given in a later
part of this report, and depositions relating to Rotselaer, Tremeloo,
and Wespelaer will be found in the appendix.
The committee is specially impressed by the character of the outrages
committed in the smaller villages. Many of these are exceptionally
shocking and cannot be regarded as contemplated or prescribed by the
responsible commanders of the troops by whom they were committed. The
inference, however, which we draw from these occurrences is that when
once troops have been encouraged in a career of terrorism the more
savage and brutal natures, of whom there are some in every large army,
are liable to run to wild excess, more particularly in those regions
where they are least subject to observation and control.
AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.
Period II., (Aug. 25.)
Immediately after the battle of Malines, which resulted in the
evacuation by the Germans of the district of Malines, Sempst, Hofstade,
and Eppeghem, a long series of murders were committed either just before
or during the retreat of the army. Many of the inhabitants who were
unarmed, including women and young children, were killed--some of them
under revolting circumstances.
Evidence given goes to show that the death of these villagers was due
not to accident, but to deliberate purpose. The wounds were generally
stabs or cuts, and for the most part appear to have been inflicted with
the bayonet.
MALINES.
In Malines itself many bodies were seen. One witness saw a German
soldier cut a woman's breasts after he had murdered her, and saw many
other dead bodies of women in the streets.
HOFSTADE.
In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and many corpses
were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, and some in the streets.
Several examples are given below.
Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a young man pierced by
bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also.
On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen on his doorstep with a
bayonet wound in his stomach, and by his side the dead body of a boy of
5 or 6 with his hands nearly severed.
The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the blacksmith's. They had
been killed with the bayonet.
In a café a young man, also killed with the bayonet, was holding his
hands together as if in the attitude of supplication.
Two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. One had her
breasts cut off, the other had been stabbed.
A young man had been hacked with the bayonet until his entrails
protruded. He also had his hands joined in the attitude of prayer.
In the garden of a house in the main street bodies of two women were
observed, and in another house the body of a boy of 16 with two bayonet
wounds in the chest.
SEMPST.
In Sempst a similar condition of affairs existed. Houses were burning
and in some of them were the charred remains of civilians.
In a bicycle shop a witness saw the burned corpse of a man. Other
witnesses speak to this incident.
Another civilian, unarmed, was shot as he was running away. As will be
remembered, all the arms had been given up some time before by order of
the Burgomaster.
The corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly bound, was
seen by another witness, who also saw a girl of 17 dressed only in a
chemise, and in great distress. She alleged that she herself and other
girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked, and violated, and
that some of them had been killed with the bayonet.
WEERDE.--At Weerde four corpses of civilians were lying in the road. It
was said that these men had fired upon the German soldiers; but this is
denied. The arms had been given up long before.
Two children were killed in a village, apparently Weerde, quite wantonly
as they were standing in the road with their mother. They were 3 or 4
years old and were killed with the bayonet.
A small farm burning close by formed a convenient means of getting rid
of the bodies. They were thrown into the flames from the bayonets. It is
right to add that no commissioned officer was present at the time.
EPPEGHEM.--At Eppeghem on Aug. 25 a pregnant woman who had been wounded
with a bayonet was discovered in the convent. She was dying. On the road
six dead bodies of laborers were seen.
ELEWYT.--At Elewyt a man's naked body was tied up to a ring in the wall
in the back yard of a house. He was dead, and his corpse was mutilated
in a manner too horrible to record. A woman's naked body was also found
in a stable abutting on the same back yard.
VILVORDE.--At Vilvorde corpses of civilians were also found. These
villages are all on the line from Malines to Brussels.
BOORT MEERBEEK.--At Boort Meerbeek a German soldier was seen to fire
three times at a little girl 5 years old. Having failed to hit her, he
subsequently bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle
by a Belgian soldier who had seen him commit this murder from a
distance.
HERENT.--At Herent the charred body of a civilian was found in a
butcher's shop, and in a handcart twenty yards away was the dead body of
a laborer.
Two eyewitnesses relate that a German soldier shot a civilian and
stabbed him with a bayonet as he lay. He then made one of these
witnesses, a civilian prisoner, smell the blood on the bayonet.
HAECHT.--At Haecht the bodies of ten civilians were seen lying in a row
by a brewery wall.
In a laborer's house, which had been broken up, the mutilated corpse of
a woman of 30 to 35 was discovered.
A child of 3 with its stomach cut open by a bayonet was lying near a
house.
WERCHTER.--At Werchter the corpses of a man and woman and four younger
persons were found in one house. It is stated that they had been
murdered because one of the latter, a girl, would not allow the Germans
to outrage her.
This catalogue of crimes does not by any means represent the sum total
of the depositions relating to this district laid before the committee.
The above are given merely as examples of acts which the evidence shows
to have taken place in numbers that might have seemed scarcely credible.
In the rest of the district, that is to say, Aerschot and the other
villages from which the Germans had not been driven, the effect of the
battle was to cause a recrudescence of murder, arson, pillage, and
cruelty, which had to some extent died down after Aug. 20 or 21.
In Aerschot itself fresh prisoners seem to have been taken and added to
those who were already in the church, since it would appear that
prisoners were kept to some extent in the church during the whole of
the German occupation of Aerschot. The second occasion on which large
numbers of prisoners were put there was shortly after the battle of
Malines, and it was then that the priest of Gelrode was brought to
Aerschot Church, treated abominably, and finally murdered.
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON, K.C.B.
Chief of the British General Staff, Who Made a Remarkable Record as
Quartermaster General in France
_(Photo from Bain News Service.)_]
[Illustration: GENERAL FOCH
The Brilliant Strategist Who Commands the French Armies of the North
_(Photo from P.S. Rogers.)_]
One witness describes the scene graphically:
"The whole of the prisoners--men, women and children--were
placed in the church. Nobody was allowed to go outside the
church to obey the calls of nature; the church had to be used
for that purpose. We were afterward allowed to go outside the
church for this purpose, and then I saw the clergyman of
Gelrode standing by the wall of the church with his hands
above his head, being guarded by soldiers."
The actual details of the murder of the priest are as follows: The
priest was struck several times by the soldiers on the head. He was
pushed up against the wall of the church. He asked in Flemish to be
allowed to stand with his face to the wall, and tried to turn around.
The Germans stopped him and then turned him with his face to the wall,
with his hands above his head. An hour later the same witness saw the
priest still standing there. He was then led away by the Germans a
distance of about fifty yards. There, with his face against the wall of
a house, he was shot by five soldiers.
Other murders of which we have evidence appear in the appendix.
Some of the prisoners in the church at Aerschot were actually kept there
until the arrival of the Belgian Army on Sept. 11, when they were
released. Others were marched to Louvain and eventually merged with
other prisoners, both from Louvain itself and the surrounding districts,
and taken to Germany and elsewhere.
It is said by one witness that about 1,500 were marched to Louvain and
that the journey took six hours.
The journey to Louvain is thus described by a witness: We were all
marched off to Louvain, walking. There were some very old people, among
others a man 90 years of age. The very old people were drawn in carts
and barrows by the younger men. There was an officer with a bicycle,
who shouted, as people fell out by the side of the road, "Shoot them!"
AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.
Period III., (September.)
It is unnecessary to describe with much particularity the events of the
period beginning about Sept. 10. The Belgian soldiers, who had
recaptured the place, found corpses of civilians who must have been
murdered in Aerschot itself just as they found them in Sempst and the
other villages on Aug. 25. Some of these bodies were found in wells and
some had been burned alive in their houses.
The prisoners released by the Belgian Army from the church were almost
starved.
HAECHT.--At Haecht several children had been murdered, one of 2 or 3
years of age was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse by its hands
and feet--a crime which seems almost incredible, but the evidence for
which we feel bound to accept. In the garden of this house was the body
of a girl who had been shot in the forehead.
CAPELLE-AU-BOIS.--At Capelle-au-Bois two children were murdered in a
cart and their corpses were seen by many witnesses at different stages
of the cart's journey.
EPPEGHEM.--At Eppeghem the dead body of a child of 2 was seen pinned to
the ground with a German lance. Same witness saw a mutilated woman alive
near Weerde on the same day.
TREMELOO.--Belgian soldiers on patrol duty found a young girl naked on
the ground, covered with scratches. She complained of having been
violated. On the same day an old woman was seen kneeling by the body of
her husband, and she told them that the Germans had shot him as he was
trying to escape from the house.
LOUVAIN AND DISTRICT.
The events spoken to as having occurred in and around Louvain between
the 19th and the 25th of August deserve close attention.
For six days the Germans were in peaceful occupation of the city. No
houses were set on fire--no citizens killed. There was a certain amount
of looting of empty houses, but otherwise discipline was effectively
maintained. The condition of Louvain during these days was one of
relative peace and quietude, presenting a striking contrast to the
previous and contemporaneous conduct of the German Army elsewhere.
On the evening of Aug. 25 a sudden change takes place. The Germans, on
that day repulsed by the Belgians, had retreated to and reoccupied
Louvain. Immediately the devastation of that city and the holocaust of
its population commences. The inference is irresistible that the army as
a whole wreaked its vengeance on the civil population and the buildings
of the city in revenge for the setback which the Belgian arms had
inflicted on them. A subsidiary cause alleged was the assertion, often
made before that civilians had fired upon the German Army.
The depositions which relate to Louvain are numerous, and are believed
by the committee to present a true and fairly complete picture of the
events of the 25th and 26th of August and subsequent days. We find no
grounds for thinking that the inhabitants fired upon the German Army on
the evening of the 25th of August. Eyewitnesses worthy of credence
detail exactly when, where, and how the firing commenced. Such firing
was by Germans on Germans. No impartial tribunal could, in our opinion,
come to any other conclusion.
On the evening of the 25th firing could be heard in the direction of
Herent, some three kilometers from Louvain. An alarm was sounded in the
city. There was disorder and confusion, and at 8 o'clock horses attached
to baggage wagons stampeded in the street and rifle fire commenced. This
was in the Rue de la Station and came from the German police guard, (21
in number,) who, seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought it was
the enemy. Then the corps of incendiaries got to work. They had broad
belts with the words "Gott mit uns," and their equipment consisted of a
hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. Fires blazed up in
the direction of the Law Courts, St. Martin's Barracks, and later in the
Place de la Station. Meanwhile an incessant fusillade was kept up on the
windows of the houses. In their efforts to escape the flames the
inhabitants climbed the walls.
"My mother and servants," says a witness, "had to do the same
and took refuge at Monsieur A.'s, whose cellars are vaulted
and afforded a better protection than mine. A little later we
withdrew to Monsieur A.'s stables, where about thirty people
who had got there by climbing the walls were to be found. Some
of these poor wretches had to climb twenty walls. A ring came
at the bell. We opened the door. Several civilians flung
themselves under the porch. The Germans were firing upon them
from the street. Every moment new fires were lighting up,
accompanied by explosions. In the middle of the night I heard
a knock at the outer door of the stable which led into a
little street, and heard a woman's voice crying for help. I
opened the door, and just as I was going to let her in a rifle
shot fired from the street by a German soldier rang out and
the woman fell dead at my feet. About 9 in the morning things
got quieter, and we took the opportunity of venturing into the
street. A German who was carrying a silver pyx and a number of
boxes of cigars told us we were to go to the station, where
trains would be waiting for us. When we got to the Place de la
Station we saw in the square seven or eight dead bodies of
murdered civilians. Not a single house in the place was
standing. A whole row of houses behind the station at Blauwput
was burned. After being driven hither and thither interminably
by officers, who treated us roughly and insulted us
throughout, we were divided."
The prisoners were then distributed between different bodies of troops
and marched in the direction of Herent. Seventy-seven inhabitants of
Louvain, including a number of people of good position, (the names of
several are given,) were thus taken to Herent.
"We found the village of Herent in flames, so much so that we
had to quicken up to prevent ourselves from being suffocated
and burned up by the flames in the middle of the road.
Half-burned corpses of civilians were lying in front of the
houses. During a halt soldiers stole cattle and slaughtered
them where they stood. Firing started on our left. We were
told it was the civilians firing, and that we were going to be
shot. The truth is that it was the Germans themselves who were
firing to frighten us. There was not a single civilian in the
neighborhood. Shortly afterward we proceeded on our march to
Malines. We were insulted and threatened.... The officers were
worse than the men. We got to Campenhout about 7 P.M., and
were locked into the church with all the male population of
the village. Some priests had joined our numbers. We had had
nothing to eat or drink since the evening of the day before. A
few compassionate soldiers gave us water to drink, but no
official took the trouble to see that we were fed."
Next day, Thursday, the 27th, a safe conduct to return to Louvain was
given, but the prisoners had hardly started, when they were stopped and
taken before a Brigade General and handed to another escort. Some were
grossly ill-treated. They were accused of being soldiers out of uniform,
and were told they could not go to Louvain, "as the town was going to be
razed to the ground." Other prisoners were added, even women and
children, until there were more than 200. They were then taken toward
Malines, released, and told to go to that town together, and that those
who separated would be fired on. Other witnesses corroborate the events
described by the witness.
A woman employed by an old gentleman living in the Rue de la Station
tells the story of her master's death:
"We had supper as usual about 8, but two German officers, (who
were staying in the house,) did not come in to supper that
evening. My master went to bed at 8:15, and so did his son.
The servants went to bed at 9:30. Soon after I got to my
bedroom I saw out of my room flames from some burning house
near by. I roused my master and his son. As they came down the
stairs they were seized by German soldiers and both were tied
up and led out, my master being tied with a rope and his son
with a chain. They were dragged outside. I did not actually
see what happened outside, but heard subsequently that my
master was bayoneted and shot, and that his son was shot. I
heard shots from the kitchen, where I was, and was present at
the burial of my master and his son thirteen days later.
German soldiers came back into the house and poured some
inflammable liquid over the floors and set fire to it. I
escaped by another staircase to that which my master and his
son had descended."
On the 26th, (Wednesday,) in the City of Louvain, massacre, fire, and
destruction went on. The university, with its library, the Church of St.
Peter, and many houses were set on fire and burned to the ground.
Citizens were shot and others taken prisoners and compelled to go with
the troops. Soldiers went through the streets saying "Man hat
geschossen."[A] One soldier was seen going along shooting in the air.
[Footnote A: "They have been shooting."]
Many of the people hid in cellars, but the soldiers shot down through
the gratings. Some citizens were shot on opening the doors, others in
endeavoring to escape. Among other persons whose houses were burned was
an old man of 90 lying dangerously ill, who was taken out on his
mattress and left lying in his garden all night. He died shortly after
in the hospital to which a friend took him the following morning.
On Thursday, the 27th, orders were given that every one should leave the
city, which was to be razed to the ground. Some citizens, including a
canon of the cathedral, with his aged mother, were ordered to go to the
station and afterward to take the road to Tirlemont. Among the number
were about twenty priests from Louvain. They were insulted and
threatened, but ultimately allowed to go free and make their way as best
they could, women and sick persons among them, to Tirlemont. Other
groups of prisoners from Louvain were on the same day taken by other
routes, some early in the morning, through various villages in the
direction of Malines, with hands tightly bound by a long cord. More
prisoners were afterward added, and all made to stay the night in the
church at Campenhout. Next day, the 28th, this group, then consisting of
about 1,000 men, women and children, was taken back to Louvain. The
houses along the road were burning and many dead bodies of civilians,
men and women, were seen on the way. Some of the principal streets in
Louvain had by that time been burned out. The prisoners were placed in a
large building on the cavalry exercise ground--"One woman went mad, some
children died, others were born." On the 29th the prisoners were marched
along the Malines road, and at Herent the women and children and men
over 40 were allowed to go; the others were taken to Boort Meerbeek, 15
kilometers from Malines, and told to march straight to Malines or be
shot. At 11 P.M. they reached the fort of Waelhem and were at first
fired on by the sentries, but on calling out they were Belgians were
allowed to pass. These prisoners were practically without food from
early morning on the 26th until midnight on the 29th. Of the corpses
seen on the road, some had their hands tied behind their backs, others
were burned, some had been killed by blows, and some corpses were those
of children who had been shot.
Another witness, a man of independent means, was arrested at noon by the
soldiers of the One Hundred and Sixty-fifth Regiment and taken to the
Place de la Station. He was grossly ill-treated on the way and robbed by
an officer of his purse and keys. His hands were tied behind his back.
His wife was kept a prisoner at the other side of the station. He was
then made to march with about 500 other prisoners until midnight, slept
in the rain that night, and next day, having had no food since leaving
Louvain, was taken to the church in Rotselaer, where there were then
about 1,500 prisoners confined, including some infants. No food was
given, only some water. Next day they were taken through Wespelaer and
back to Louvain. On the way from Rotselaer to Wespelaer fifty bodies
were seen, some naked and carbonized and unrecognizable. When they
arrived at Louvain the Fish Market, the Place Marguerite, the cathedral,
and many other buildings were on fire. In the evening about 100 men,
women, and children were put in horse trucks from which the dung had not
been removed, and at 6 the next morning left for Cologne.
The wife of this witness was also taken prisoner with her husband and
her maid, but was separated from him, and she saw other ladies made to
walk before the soldiers with their hands above their heads. One, an old
lady of 85, (name given,) was dragged from her cellar and taken with
them to the station. They were kept there all night, but set free in the
morning, Thursday, but shortly afterward sent to Tirlemont on foot. A
number of corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners, of whom there are
said to have been thousands, were not allowed even to have water to
drink, although there were streams on the way from which the soldiers
drank. Witness was given some milk at a farm, but as she raised it to
her lips it was taken away from her.
A priest was taken on Friday morning Aug. 28, and placed at the head of
a number of refugees from Wygmael. He was led through Louvain, abused
and ill-treated, and placed with some thousands of other people in the
riding school in the Rue du Manège. The glass roof broke in the night
from the heat of burning buildings around. Next day the prisoners were
marched through the country with an armed guard. Burned farms and burned
corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners were finally separated into
three groups, and the younger men marched through Herent and Bueken to
Campenhout, and ultimately reached the Belgian lines about midnight on
Saturday, Aug. 29. All the houses in Herent, a village of about 5,000
inhabitants, had been burned.
The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens.
Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding
districts, not only from Aerschot and Gelrode as above mentioned, but
also from other places. For example, a witness describes how many women
and children were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a
stable. Of the hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages
and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others
were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain through various
places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th to the Belgian lines at
Malines, others were taken in trucks to Cologne as described below,
others were released. An account of the massacre of some of these
unfortunate civilian prisoners given by two witnesses may be quoted:
"We were all placed in Station Street, Louvain, and the German
soldiers fired upon us. I saw the corpses of some women in the
street. I fell down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top
of me. I did not dare to look at the dead bodies in the
street, there were so many of them. All of them had been shot
by the German soldiers. One woman whom I saw lying dead in the
street was a Miss J., about 35. I also saw the body of A.M.,
(a woman.) She had been shot. I saw an officer pull her corpse
underneath a wagon."
Another witness, who was taken from Aerschot, also describes the
occurrence:
"I was afterward taken with a large number of other civilians
and placed in the church at Louvain. Then we were taken to
Station Street, Louvain. There were about 1,500 civilians of
both sexes, and we had been marched from Aerschot to Louvain.
When we were in Station Street I felt that something was about
to happen, and I tried to shelter in a doorway. The German
soldiers then fired a mitrailleuse and their rifles upon the
people, and the people fell on all sides. Two men next to me
were killed. I afterward saw some one give a signal, and the
firing ceased. I then ran away with a married woman named B.,
(whose maiden name was A.M.,) aged 29, who belonged to
Aerschot, but we were again captured. She was shot by the side
of me, and I saw her fall. Several other people were shot at
the same time. I again ran away, and in my flight saw children
falling out of their mothers' arms. I cannot say whether they
were shot, or whether they fell from their mothers' arms in
the great panic which ensued. I, however, saw children
bleeding."
JOURNEY TO COLOGNE.
The greatest number of prisoners from Louvain, however, were assembled
at the station and taken by trains to Cologne. Several witnesses
describe their sufferings and the ill-treatment they received on the
journey. One of the first trains started in the afternoon. It consisted
of cattle trucks, about 100 being in each truck. It took three days to
get to Cologne. The prisoners had nothing to eat but a few biscuits
each, and they were not allowed to get out for water and none was given.
On a wagon the words "Civilians who shot at the soldiers at Louvain"
were written. Some were marched through Cologne afterward for the people
to see. Ropes were put about the necks of some and they were told they
would be hanged. An order then came that they were to be shot instead of
hanged. A firing squad was prepared and five or six prisoners were put
up, but were not shot. After being kept a week at Cologne some of these
prisoners were taken back--this time only thirty or forty in a
truck--and allowed to go free on arriving at Limburg. Several witnesses
who were taken in other trains to Cologne describe their experiences in
detail. Some of the trucks were abominably filthy. Prisoners were not
allowed to leave to obey the calls of nature; one man who quitted the
truck for the purpose was killed by a bayonet. Describing what happened
to another body of prisoners, a witness says that they were made to
cross Station Street, where the houses were burning, and taken to the
station, placed in horse trucks, crowded together, men, women, and
children, in each wagon. They were kept at the station during the night,
and the following day left for Cologne. For two days and a half they
were without food, and then they received a loaf of bread among ten
persons, and some water. The prisoners were afterward taken back to
Belgium. They were, in all, eight days in the train, crowded and almost
without food. Two of the men went mad. The women and children were
separated from the men at Brussels. The men were taken to a suburb and
then to the villages of Herent, Vilvorde, and Sempst, and afterward set
at liberty.
This taking of the inhabitants, including some of the influential
citizens, in groups and marching them to various places, and in
particular the sending of them to Malines and the dispatch of great
numbers to Cologne, must evidently have been done under the direction of
the higher military authorities. The ill-treatment of the prisoners was
under the eyes and often by the direction or with the sanction of
officers, and officers themselves took part in it.
The object of taking many hundreds of prisoners to Cologne and back into
Belgium is at first sight difficult to understand. Possibly it is to be
regarded as part of the policy of punishment for Belgian resistance and
general terrorization of the inhabitants--possibly as a desire to show
these people to the population of a German city and thus to confirm the
belief that the Belgians had shot at their troops.
Whatever may have been the case when the burning began on the evening of
the 25th, it appears clear that the subsequent destruction and outrages
were done with a set purpose. It was not until the 26th that the
library, and other university buildings, the Church of St. Peter and
many houses were set on fire. It is to be noticed that cases occur in
the depositions in which humane acts by individual officers and soldiers
are mentioned, or in which officers are said to have expressed regret at
being obliged to carry out orders for cruel action against the
civilians. Similarly, we find entries in diaries which reveal a genuine
pity for the population and disgust at the conduct of the army. It
appears that a German non-commissioned officer stated definitely that he
"was acting under orders and executing them with great unwillingness." A
commissioned officer on being asked at Louvain by a witness--a highly
educated man--about the horrible acts committed by the soldiers, said he
"was merely executing orders," and that he himself would be shot if he
did not execute them. Others gave less credible excuses, one stating
that the inhabitants of Louvain had burned the city themselves because
they did not wish to supply food and quarters for the German Army. It
was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in the army
that these outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic,
were due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses that
they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had been decreed for
the others which were not so marked.
We are driven to the conclusion that the harrying of the villages in the
district, the burning of a large part of Louvain, the massacres there,
the marching out of the prisoners, and the transport to Cologne, (all
done without inquiry as to whether the particular persons seized or
killed had committed any wrongful act,) were due to a calculated policy
carried out scientifically and deliberately, not merely with the
sanction but under the direction of higher military authorities, and
were not due to any provocation or resistance by the civilian
population.
TERMONDE.
To understand the depositions describing what happened at Termonde it is
necessary to remember that the German Army occupied the town on two
occasions, the first, from Friday, Sept. 4, to Sunday, Sept. 6, and
again later in the month, about the 16th. The civilians had delivered up
their arms a fortnight before the arrival of the Germans.
Early in the month, probably about the 4th, a witness saw two civilians
murdered by Uhlans. Another witness saw their dead bodies, which
remained in the street for ten days. Two hundred civilians were utilized
as a screen by the German troops about this date.
On the 5th the town was partially burned. One witness was taken prisoner
in the street by some German soldiers, together with several other
civilians. At about 12 o'clock some of the tallest and strongest men
among the prisoners were picked out to go around the streets with
paraffin. Three or four carts containing paraffin tanks were brought up,
and a syringe was used to put paraffin on to the houses, which were then
fired. The process of destruction began with the houses of rich people,
and afterward the houses of the poorer classes were treated in the same
manner. German soldiers had previously told this witness that if the
Burgomaster of Termonde, who was out of town, did not return by 12
o'clock that day the town would be set on fire. The firing of the town
was in consequence of his failure to return. The prisoners were
afterward taken to a factory and searched for weapons. They were
subsequently provided with passports enabling them to go anywhere in the
town, but not outside. The witness in question managed to effect his
escape by swimming across the river.
Another witness describes how the tower of the Church of Termonde St.
Gilles was utilized by the Belgian troops for offensive purposes. They
had in fact mounted a machine gun there. This witness was subsequently
taken prisoner in a cellar in Termonde in which he had taken refuge with
other people. All the men were taken from the cellar and the women were
left behind. About seventy prisoners in all were taken; one, a brewer
who could not walk fast enough, was wounded with a bayonet. He fell down
and was compelled to get up and follow the soldiers. The prisoners had
to hold up their hands, and if they dropped their hands they were struck
on the back with the butt end of rifles. They were taken to Lebbeke,
where there were in all 300 prisoners, and there they were locked up in
the church for three days and with scarcely any food.
A witness living at Baesrode was taken prisoner with 250 others and kept
all night in a field. The prisoners were released on the following
morning. This witness saw three corpses of civilians, and says that the
Germans on Sunday, the 6th, plundered and destroyed the houses of those
who had fled. The Germans left on the following day, taking about thirty
men with them, one a man of 72 years of age.
Later in the month civilians were again used as a screen, and there is
evidence of other acts of outrage.
ALOST.
Alost was the scene of fighting between the Belgian and German Armies
during the whole of the latter part of the month of September. In
connection with the fighting numerous cruelties appear to have been
perpetrated by the German troops.
On Saturday, Sept. 11, a weaver was bayoneted in the street. Another
civilian was shot dead at his door on the same night. On the following
day the witness was taken prisoner together with thirty others. The
money of the prisoners was confiscated, and they were subsequently used
as a screen for the German troops who were at that moment engaged in a
conflict with the Belgian Army in the town itself. The Germans burned a
number of houses at this time. Corpses of 14 civilians were seen in the
streets on this occasion.
A well-educated witness, who visited the Wetteren Hospital shortly after
this date, saw the dead bodies of a number of civilians belonging to
Alost, and other civilians wounded. One of these stated that he took
refuge in the house of his sister-in-law; that the Germans dragged the
people out of the house, which was on fire, seized him, threw him on the
ground, and hit him on the head with the butt end of a rifle, and ran
him through the thigh with a bayonet. They then placed him with
seventeen or eighteen others in front of the German troops, threatening
them with revolvers. They said that they were going to make the people
of Alost pay for the losses sustained by the Germans. At this hospital
was an old woman of 80 completely transfixed by a bayonet.
Other crimes on noncombatants at Alost belong to the end of the month of
September. Many witnesses speak to the murder of harmless civilians.
In Binnenstraat the Germans broke open the windows of the houses and
threw fluid inside, and the houses burst into flames. Some of the
inhabitants were burned to death.
The civilians were utilized on Saturday, Sept. 26, as a screen. During
their retreat the Germans fired twelve houses in Rue des Trois Clefs,
and three civilians, whose names are given, were shot dead in that
street after the firing of the houses. On the following day a heap of
nine dead civilians were lying in the Rue de l'Argent.
Similar outrages occurred at Erpe, a village a few miles from Alost,
about the same date. The village was deliberately burned. The houses
were plundered and some civilians were murdered.
Civilians were apparently used as a screen at Erpe, but they were
prisoners taken from Alost and not dwellers in that village.
DIARIES OF GERMAN SOLDIERS.
This disregard for the lives of civilians is strikingly shown in
extracts from German soldiers' diaries, of which the following are
representative examples.
Barthel, who was a Sergeant and standard bearer of the Second Company of
the First Guards Regiment of Foot, and who during the campaign received
the Iron Cross, says, under date Aug. 10, 1914:
"A transport of 300 Belgians came through Duisburg in the
morning. Of these, eighty, including the Oberburgomaster, were
shot according to martial law."
Matbern of the Fourth Company of Jägers, No. 11, from Marburg, states
that at a village between Birnal and Dinant on Sunday, Aug. 23, the
Pioneers and Infantry Regiment One Hundred and Seventy-eight were fired
upon by the inhabitants. He gives no particulars beyond this. He
continues:
"About 220 inhabitants were shot, and the village was burned.
Artillery is continuously shooting--the village lies in a
large ravine. Just now, 6 o'clock in the afternoon, the
crossing of the Meuse begins near Dinant. All villages,
châteaux and houses are burned down during the night. It is a
beautiful sight to see the fires all around us in the
distance."
Bombardier Wetzel of the Second Mounted Battery, First Kurhessian Field
Artillery Regiment, No. 11, records an incident which happened in French
territory near Lille on Oct. 11: "We had no fight, but we caught about
twenty men and shot them." By this time killing not in a fight would
seem to have passed into a habit.
Diary No. 32 gives an accurate picture of what took place in Louvain:
"What a sad scene--all the houses surrounding the railway
station completely destroyed--only some foundation walls still
standing. On the station square captured guns. At the end of a
main street there is the Council Hall which has been
completely preserved with all its beautiful turrets; a sharp
contrast: 180 inhabitants are stated to have been shot after
they had dug their own graves."
The last and most important entry is that contained in Diary No. 19.
This is a blue book interleaved with blotting paper, and contains no
name and address; there is, however, one circumstance which makes it
possible to speak with certainty as to the regiment of the writer. He
gives the names of First Lieutenant von Oppen, Count Eulenburg, Captain
von Roeder, First Lieutenant von Bock und Polach, Second Lieutenant
Count Hardenberg, and Lieutenant Engelbrecht. A perusal of the Prussian
Army list of June, 1914, shows that all these officers, with the
exception of Lieutenant Engelbrecht, belonged to the First Regiment of
Foot Guards. On Aug. 24, 1914, the writer was in Ermeton. The exact
translation of the extract, grim in its brevity, is as follows:
"24.8.14. We took about 1,000 prisoners: at least 500 were
shot. The village was burned because inhabitants had also
shot. Two civilians were shot at once."
We may now sum up and endeavor to explain the character and significance
of the wrongful acts done by the German Army in Belgium.
If a line is drawn on a map from the Belgian frontier to Liège and
continued to Charleroi, and a second line drawn from Liège to Malines, a
sort of figure resembling an irregular Y will be formed. It is along
this Y that most of the systematic (as opposed to isolated) outrages
were committed. If the period from Aug. 4 to Aug. 30 is taken it will be
found to cover most of these organized outrages. Termonde and Alost
extend, it is true, beyond the Y lines, and they belong to the month of
September. Murder, rape, arson, and pillage began from the moment when
the German Army crossed the frontier. For the first fortnight of the war
the towns and villages near Liège were the chief sufferers. From Aug. 19
to the end of the month, outrages spread in the directions of Charleroi
and Malines and reach their period of greatest intensity. There is a
certain significance in the fact that the outrages around Liège
coincide with the unexpected resistance of the Belgian Army in that
district, and that the slaughter which reigned from Aug. 19 to the end
of the month is contemporaneous with the period when the German Army's
need for a quick passage through Belgium at all costs was deemed
imperative.
Here let a distinction be drawn between two classes of outrages.
Individual acts of brutality--ill-treatment of civilians, rape, plunder,
and the like--were very widely committed. These are more numerous and
more shocking than would be expected in warfare between civilized
powers, but they differ rather in extent than in kind from what has
happened in previous though not recent wars.
In all wars many shocking and outrageous acts must be expected, for in
every large army there must be a proportion of men of criminal instincts
whose worst passions are unloosed by the immunity which the conditions
of warfare afford. Drunkenness, moreover, may turn even a soldier who
has no criminal habits into a brute, who may commit outrages at which he
would himself be shocked in his sober moments, and there is evidence
that intoxication was extremely prevalent among the German Army, both in
Belgium and in France, for plenty of wine was to be found in the
villages and country houses which were pillaged. Many of the worst
outrages appear to have been perpetrated by men under the influence of
drink. Unfortunately, little seems to have been done to repress this
source of danger.
In the present war, however--and this is the gravest charge against the
German Army--the evidence shows that the killing of noncombatants was
carried out to an extent for which no previous war between nations
claiming to be civilized, (for such cases as the atrocities perpetrated
by the Turks on the Bulgarian Christians in 1876, and on the Armenian
Christians in 1895 and 1896, do not belong to that category,) furnishes
any precedent. That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan
is clear from the facts hereinbefore set forth regarding Louvain,
Aerschot, Dinant, and other towns. The killing was done under orders in
each place. It began at a certain fixed date, and stopped, (with some
few exceptions,) at another fixed date. Some of the officers who carried
out the work did it reluctantly, and said they were obeying directions
from their chiefs. The same remarks apply to the destruction of
property. House burning was part of the program; and villages, even
large parts of a city, were given to the flames as part of the
terrorizing policy.
Citizens of neutral States who visited Belgium in December and January
report that the German authorities do not deny that noncombatants were
systematically killed in large numbers during the first weeks of the
invasion, and this, so far as we know, has never been officially denied.
If it were denied, the flight and continued voluntary exile of thousands
of Belgian refugees would go far to contradict a denial, for there is no
historical parallel in modern times for the flight of a large part of a
nation before an invader.
The German Government have, however, sought to justify their severities
on the grounds of military necessity, and have excused them as
retaliation for cases in which civilians fired on German troops. There
may have been cases in which such firing occurred, but no proof has ever
been given, or, to our knowledge, attempted to be given, of such cases,
nor of the stories of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and
women on German soldiers.
The inherent improbability of the German contention is shown by the fact
that after the first few days of the invasion every possible precaution
had been taken by the Belgian authorities, by way of placards and
handbills, to warn the civilian population not to intervene in
hostilities. Throughout Belgium steps had been taken to secure the
handing over of all firearms in the possession of civilians before the
German Army arrived. These steps were sometimes taken by the police and
sometimes by the military authorities.
The invaders appear to have proceeded upon the theory that any chance
shot coming from an unexpected place was fired by civilians. One
favorite form of this allegation was that priests had fired from the
church tower. In many instances the soldiers of the allied armies used
church towers and private houses as cover for their operations. At
Aerschot, where the Belgian soldiers were stationed in the church tower
and fired upon the Germans as they advanced, it was at once alleged by
the Germans when they entered the town, and with difficulty disproved,
that the firing had come from civilians. Thus one elementary error
creeps at once into the German argument, for they were likely to
confound, and did in some instances certainly confound, legitimate
military operations with the hostile intervention of civilians.
Troops belonging to the same army often fire by mistake upon each other.
That the German Army was no exception to this rule is proved not only by
many Belgian witnesses, but by the most irrefragable kind of
evidence--the admission of German soldiers themselves, recorded in their
war diaries. Thus Otto Clepp, Second Company of the Reserve, says, under
date of Aug. 22: "Three A.M. Two infantry regiments shot at each
other--9 dead and 50 wounded--fault not yet ascertained." In this
connection the diaries of Kurt Hoffman and a soldier of the 112th
Regiment, (Diary No. 14,) will repay study. In such cases the obvious
interest of the soldier is to conceal his mistake, and a convenient
method of doing so is to raise the cry of "francs-tireurs!"
Doubtless the German soldiers often believed that the civilian
population, naturally hostile, had, in fact, attacked them. This
attitude of mind may have been fostered by the German authorities
themselves before the troops passed the frontier, and thereafter stories
of alleged atrocities committed by Belgians upon Germans, such as the
myth referred to in one of the diaries relating to Liège, were
circulated among the troops and roused their anger.
The diary of Barthel, when still in Germany on Aug. 10, shows that he
believed that the Oberburgomaster of Liège had murdered a Surgeon
General. The fact is that no violence was inflicted on the inhabitants
at Liège until the 19th, and no one who studies these pages can have any
doubt that Liège would immediately have been given over to murder and
destruction if any such incident had occurred.
Letters written to their homes which have been found on the bodies of
dead Germans bear witness, in a way that now sounds pathetic, to the
kindness with which they were received by the civil population. Their
evident surprise at this reception was due to the stories which had been
dinned into their ears of soldiers with their eyes gouged out,
treacherous murders, and poisoned food--stories which may have been
encouraged by the higher military authorities in order to impress the
mind of the troops, as well as for the sake of justifying the measures
which they took to terrify the civil population. If there is any truth
in such stories, no attempt has been made to establish it. For instance,
the Chancellor of the German Empire, in a communication made to the
press on Sept. 2 and printed in the Nord Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of
Sept. 21, said as follows:
"Belgian girls gouged out the eyes of the German wounded.
Officials of Belgian cities have invited our officers to
dinner and shot and killed them across the table. Contrary to
all international law, the whole civilian population of
Belgium was called out and, after having at first shown
friendliness, carried on in the rear of our troops terrible
warfare with concealed weapons. Belgian women cut the throats
of soldiers whom they had quartered in their homes while they
were sleeping."
No evidence whatever seems to have been adduced to prove these tales,
and though there may be cases in which individual Belgians fired on the
Germans, the statement that "the whole civilian population of Belgium
was called out" is utterly opposed to the fact.
An invading army may be entitled to shoot at sight a civilian caught
redhanded, or any one who, though not caught redhanded, is proved guilty
on inquiry. But this was not the practice followed by the German troops.
They do not seem to have made any inquiry. They seized the civilians of
the villages indiscriminately and killed them, or such as they selected
from among them, without the least regard to guilt or innocence. The
mere cry, "Civilisten haben geschossen!" was enough to hand over a whole
village or district, and even outlying places, to ruthless slaughter.
We gladly record the instances where the evidence shows that humanity
had not wholly disappeared from some members of the German Army, and
that they realized that the responsible heads of that organization were
employing them not in war, but in butchery: "I am merely executing
orders, and I should be shot if I did not execute them," said an officer
to a witness at Louvain. At Brussels another officer says: "I have not
done one-hundredth part of what we have been ordered to do by the high
German military authorities."
As we have already observed, it would be unjust to charge upon the
German Army generally acts of cruelty which, whether due to drunkenness
or not, were done by men of brutal instincts and unbridled passions.
Such crimes were sometimes punished by the officers. They were in some
cases offset by acts of humanity and kindliness. But when an army is
directed or permitted to kill noncombatants on a large scale the
ferocity of the worst natures springs into fuller life, and both lust
and the thirst of blood become more widespread and more formidable. Had
less license been allowed to the soldiers and had they not been set to
work to slaughter civilians there would have been fewer of those painful
cases in which a depraved and morbid cruelty appears.
Two classes of murders in particular require special mention because one
of them is almost new and the other altogether unprecedented. The former
is the seizure of peaceful citizens as so-called hostages, to be kept as
a pledge for the conduct of the civil population or as a means to
secure some military advantage or to compel the payment of a
contribution, the hostages being shot if the condition imposed by the
arbitrary will of the invader is not fulfilled. Such hostage-taking,
with the penalty of death attached, has now and then happened, the most
notable case being the shooting of the Archbishop of Paris and some of
his clergy by the Communards of Paris in 1871, but it is opposed both to
the rules of war and to every principle of justice and humanity. The
latter kind of murder is the killing of the innocent inhabitants of a
village because shots have been fired, or are alleged to have been
fired, on the troops by some one in the village. For this practice no
previous example and no justification have been or can be pleaded.
Soldiers suppressing an insurrection may have sometimes slain civilians
mingled with insurgents, and Napoleon's forces in Spain are said to have
now and then killed promiscuously when trying to clear guerrillas out of
a village. But in Belgium large bodies of men, sometimes including the
Burgomaster and the priest, were seized, marched by officers to a spot
chosen for the purpose, and there shot in cold blood, without any
attempt at trial or even inquiry, under the pretense of inflicting
punishment upon the village, though these unhappy victims were not even
charged with having themselves committed any wrongful act, and though,
in some cases at least, the village authorities had done all in their
power to prevent any molestation of the invading force. Such acts are no
part of war, for innocence is entitled to respect even in war. They are
mere murders, just as the drowning of the innocent passengers and crews
on a merchant ship is murder and not an act of war.
That these acts should have been perpetrated on the peaceful population
of an unoffending country which was not at war with its invaders, but
merely defending its own neutrality, guaranteed by the invading power,
may excite amazement and even incredulity. It was with amazement and
almost with incredulity that the committee first read the depositions
relating to such acts. But when the evidence regarding Liège was
followed by that regarding Aerschot, Louvain, Andenne, Dinant, and the
other towns and villages, the cumulative effect of such a mass of
concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to the
conclusion that the things described had really happened. The question
then arose, how they could have happened. Not from mere military
license, for the discipline of the German Army is proverbially
stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not from any special ferocity of
the troops, for whoever has traveled among the German peasantry knows
that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe, and
those who can recall the war of 1870 will remember that no charges
resembling those proved by these depositions were then established. The
excesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover too widespread and
too uniform in their character to be mere sporadic outbursts of passion
or rapacity.
The explanation seems to be that these excesses were committed--in some
cases ordered, in others allowed--on a system and in pursuance of a set
purpose. That purpose was to strike terror into the civil population and
dishearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and
extinguish the very spirit of self-defense. The pretext that civilians
had fired upon the invading troops was used to justify not merely the
shooting of individual francs-tireurs, but the murder of large numbers
of innocent civilians, an act absolutely forbidden by the rules of
civilized warfare.[A]
[Footnote A: As to this, see, in appendix, the Rules of The Hague
Convention of 1907, to which Germany was a signatory.]
In the minds of Prussian officers war seems to have become a sort of
sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the omnipotent State,
which is itself as much an army as a State. Ordinary morality and the
ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in its presence, superseded by a new
standard, which justifies to the soldier every means that can conduce to
success, however shocking to a natural sense of justice and humanity,
however revolting to his own feelings. The spirit of war is deified.
Obedience to the State and its war lord leaves no room for any other
duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory.
Proclaimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to have
permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, leading
them to justify the killing of noncombatants as an act of war, and so
accustoming them to slaughter that even women and children become at
last the victims. It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine, for
it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German
people as they have heretofore been known to other nations. It is a
specifically military doctrine, the outcome of a theory held by a ruling
caste who have brooded and thought, written and talked, and dreamed
about war until they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized
by its spirit.
The doctrine is plainly set forth in the German Official Monograph on
the usages of war on land, issued under the direction of the German
Staff. This book is pervaded throughout by the view that whatever
military needs suggest becomes thereby lawful, and upon this principle,
as the diaries show, the German officers acted.[A]
[Footnote A: "Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege," Berlin, 1902, in Vol. VI., in
the series entitled "Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften," published in
1905. A translation of this monograph, by Professor J.H. Morgan, has
recently been published.]
If this explanation be the true one, the mystery is solved, and that
which seemed scarcely credible becomes more intelligible, though not
less pernicious. This is not the only case that history records in which
a false theory, disguising itself as loyalty to a State or to a Church,
has perverted the conception of duty and become a source of danger to
the world.
PART II.
Having thus narrated the offenses committed in Belgium, which it has
been proper to consider as a whole, we now turn to another branch of the
subject, the breaches of the usages of war which appear in the conduct
of the German Army generally.
This branch has been considered under the following heads:
First.--The treatment of noncombatants, whether in Belgium or
in France, including--
(a) The killing of noncombatants in France;
(b) The treatment of women and children;
(c) The using of innocent noncombatants as a screen or shield
in the conduct of military operations;
(d) Looting, burning, and the wanton destruction of property.
Second.--Offenses committed in the course of ordinary military
operations which violate the usages of war and the provisions
of The Hague Convention.
This division includes:
_(a) Killing of wounded or prisoners;_
_(b) Firing on hospitals or on the Red Cross ambulances and
stretcher bearers;_
_(c) Abuse of the Red Cross or of the white flag._
TREATMENT OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION.
(a) Killing of Noncombatants.
The killing of civilians in Belgium has been already described
sufficiently. Outrages on the civilian population of the invaded
districts, the burning of villages, the shooting of innocent
inhabitants, and the taking of hostages, pillage, and destruction
continued as the German armies passed into France. The diary of the
Saxon officer above referred to describes acts of this kind committed by
the German soldiers in advancing to the Aisne at the end of August and
after they had passed the French frontier, as well as when they were in
Belgian territory.
A proclamation, (a specimen of which was produced to the committee,)
issued at Rheims and placarded over the town, affords a clear
illustration of the methods adopted by the German Higher Command. The
population of Rheims is warned that on the slightest disturbance part or
the whole of the city will be burned to the ground and all the hostages
taken from the city (a long list of whom is given in the proclamation)
immediately shot.
The evidence, however, submitted to the committee with regard to the
conduct of the German Army in France is not nearly so full as that with
regard to Belgium. There is no body of civilian refugees in England, and
the French witnesses have generally laid their evidence before their own
Government. The evidence forwarded to us consists principally of the
statements of British officers and soldiers who took part in the retreat
after the battle of Mons and in the subsequent advance, following the
Germans from the Marne. The area covered is relatively small, and it is
from French reports that any complete account of what occurred in the
invaded districts in France as a whole must be obtained.
Naturally, soldiers in a foreign country, with which they were
unacquainted, cannot be expected always to give accurately the names of
villages through which they passed on their marches, but this does not
prevent their evidence from being definite as to what they actually saw
in the farms and houses where the German troops had recently been. Many
shocking outrages are recorded. Three examples may here suffice; others
are given in the appendix. A Sergeant who had been through the retreat
from Mons and then taken part in the advance from the Marne, and who had
been engaged in driving out some German troops from a village, states
that his troop halted outside a bakery just inside the village. It was a
private house where baking was done, "not like our bakeries here." Two
or three women were standing at the door. The women motioned them to
come into the house, as did also three civilian Frenchmen who were
there. They took them into a garden at the back of the house. At the end
of the garden was the bakery. They saw two old men between 60 and 70
years of age and one old woman lying close to each other in the garden.
All three had the scalps cut right through and the brains were hanging
out. They were still bleeding. Apparently they had only just been
killed. The three French civilians belonged to this same house. One of
them spoke a few words of English. He gave them to understand that these
three had been killed by the Germans because they had refused to bake
bread for them.
Another witness states that two German soldiers took hold of a young
civilian named D. and bound his hands behind his back, and struck him in
the face with their fists. They then tied his hands in front and
fastened the cord to the tail of the horse. The horse dragged him for
about fifty yards, and then the Germans loosened his hands and left him.
The whole of his face was cut and torn, and his arms and legs were
bruised. On the following day one of his sisters, whose husband was a
soldier, came to their house with her four children. His brother, who
was also married and who lived in a village near Valenciennes, went to
fetch the bread for his sister. On the way back to their house he met a
patrol of Uhlans, who took him to the market place at Valenciennes, and
then shot him. About twelve other civilians were also shot in the market
place. The Uhlans then burned nineteen houses in the village, and
afterward burned the corpses of the civilians, including that of his
brother. His father and his uncle afterward went to see the dead body of
his brother, but the German soldiers refused to allow them to pass.
A lance corporal in the Rifles, who was on patrol duty with five
privates during the retirement of the Germans after the Marne, states
that they entered a house in a small village and took ten Uhlans
prisoners, and then searched the house and found two women and two
children. One was dead, but the body not yet cold. The left arm had been
cut off just below the elbow. The floor was covered with blood. The
woman's clothing was disarranged. The other woman was alive but
unconscious. Her right leg had been cut off above the knee. There were
two little children, a boy about 4 or 5 and a girl of about 6 or 7. The
boy's left hand was cut off at the wrist and the girl's right hand at
the same place. They were both quite dead. The same witness states that
he saw several women and children lying dead in various other places,
but says he could not say whether this might not have been accidentally
caused in legitimate fighting.
The evidence before us proves that in the parts of France referred to
murder of unoffending civilians and other acts of cruelty, including
aggravated cases of rape, carried out under threat of death, and
sometimes actually followed by murder of the victim, were committed by
some of the German troops.
(b) The Treatment of Women and Children.
The evidence shows that the German authorities, when carrying out a
policy of systematic arson and plunder in selected districts, usually
drew some distinction between the adult male population on the one hand
and the women and children on the other. It was a frequent practice to
set apart the adult males of the condemned district with a view to the
execution of a suitable number--preferably of the younger and more
vigorous--and to reserve the women and children for milder treatment.
The depositions, however, present many instances of calculated cruelty,
often going the length of murder, toward the women and children of the
condemned area. We have already referred to the case of Aerschot, where
the women and children were herded in a church which had recently been
used as a stable, detained for forty-eight hours with no food other than
coarse bread, and denied the common decencies of life. At Dinant sixty
women and children were confined in the cellar of a convent from Sunday
morning till the following Friday, (Aug. 28,) sleeping on the ground,
for there were no beds, with nothing to drink during the whole period,
and given no food until the Wednesday, "when somebody threw into the
cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot for each prisoner." In other
cases the women and children were marched for long distances along
roads, (e.g., march of women from Louvain to Tirlemont, Aug. 28,) the
laggards pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having
been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck with the butt end
of rifles. At Louvain, at Liège, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny,
at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not
restrained from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot to be trusted
to observe the rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are
called upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the
very first women were not safe. At Liège women and children were chased
about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very
circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the
market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At
Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning
houses. At Liège, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to
death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the fumes of
the conflagration or because they were prevented from escaping by German
soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women, and
children from Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly
exposed to a fire from a mitrailleuse and rifles. "We were all placed,"
recounts a sufferer, "in Station Street, Louvain, and the German
soldiers fired on us. I saw the corpses of some women in the street. I
fell down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top of me." Women and
children suddenly turned out into the streets, and, compelled to witness
the destruction by fire of their homes, provided a sad spectacle to such
as were sober enough to see. A humane German officer, witnessing the
ruin of Aerschot, exclaims in disgust: "I am a father myself, and I
cannot bear this. It is not war, but butchery." Officers as well as men
succumbed to the temptation of drink, with results which may be
illustrated by an incident which occurred at Campenhout. In this village
there was a certain well-to-do merchant (name given) who had a good
cellar of champagne. On the afternoon of the 14th or 15th of August
three German cavalry officers entered the house and demanded champagne.
Having drunk ten bottles and invited five or six officers and three or
four private soldiers to join them, they continued their carouse, and
then called for the master and mistress of the house.
"Immediately my mistress came in," says the valet de chambre,
"one of the officers who was sitting on the floor got up, and,
putting a revolver to my mistress temple, shot her dead. The
officer was obviously drunk. The other officers continued to
drink and sing, and they did not pay great attention to the
killing of my mistress. The officer who shot my mistress then
told my master to dig a grave and bury my mistress. My master
and the officer went into the garden, the officer threatening
my master with a pistol. My master was then forced to dig the
grave and to bury the body of my mistress in it. I cannot say
for what reason they killed my mistress. The officer who did
it was singing all the time."
In the evidence before us there are cases tending to show that
aggravated crimes against women were sometimes severely punished. One
witness reports that a young girl who was being pursued by a drunken
soldier at Louvain appealed to a German officer, and that the offender
was then and there shot. Another describes how an officer of the
Thirty-second Regiment of the Line was led out to execution for the
violation of two young girls, but reprieved at the request or with the
consent of the girls' mother. These instances are sufficient to show
that the maltreatment of women was no part of the military scheme of the
invaders, however much it may appear to have been the inevitable result
of the system of terror deliberately adopted in certain regions. Indeed,
so much is avowed. "I asked the commander why we had been spared," says
a lady in Louvain, who deposes to having suffered much brutal treatment
during the sack. He said: "We will not hurt you any more. Stay in
Louvain. All is finished." It was Saturday, Aug. 29, and the reign of
terror was over.
Apart from the crimes committed in special areas and belonging to a
scheme of systematic reprisals for the alleged shooting by civilians,
there is evidence of offenses committed against women and children by
individual soldiers, or by small groups of soldiers, both in the advance
through Belgium and France as in the retreat from the Marne. Indeed, the
discipline appears to have been loose during the retreat, and there is
evidence as to the burning of villages and the murder and violation of
their female inhabitants during this episode of the war.
In this tale of horrors hideous forms of mutilation occur with some
frequency in the depositions, two of which may be connected in some
instances with a perverted form of sexual instinct.
A third form of mutilation, the cutting of one or both hands, is
frequently said to have taken place. In some cases where this form of
mutilation is alleged to have occurred it may be the consequence of a
cavalry charge up a village street, hacking and slashing at everything
in the way; in others the victim may possibly have held a weapon; in
others the motive may have been the theft of rings.
We find many well-established cases of the slaughter (often accompanied
by mutilation) of whole families, including not infrequently that of
quite small children. In two cases it seems to be clear that
preparations were made to burn a family alive. These crimes were
committed over a period of many weeks and simultaneously in many places,
and the authorities must have known, or ought to have known, that
cruelties of this character were being perpetrated; nor can any one
doubt that they could have been stopped by swift and decisive action on
the part of the heads of the German Army.
The use of women and even children as a screen for the protection of the
German troops is referred to in a later part of this report. From the
number of troops concerned, it must have been commanded or acquiesced in
by officers, and in some cases the presence and connivance of officers
is proved.
The cases of violation, sometimes under threat of death, are numerous
and clearly proved. We referred here to comparatively few out of the
many that have been placed in the appendix, because the circumstances
are in most instances much the same. They were often accompanied with
cruelty, and the slaughter of women after violation is more than once
credibly attested.
It is quite possible that in some cases where the body of a Belgian or a
French woman is reported as lying on the roadside pierced with bayonet
wounds or hanging naked from a tree, or else as lying gashed and
mutilated in a cottage kitchen or bedroom, the woman in question gave
some provocation. She may by act or word have irritated her assailant
and in certain instances evidence has been supplied both as to the
provocation offered and as to the retribution inflicted.
(1) "Just before we got to Melen," says a witness who had
fallen into the hands of the Germans on Aug. 5, "I saw a woman
with a child in her arms standing on the side of the road on
our left-hand side watching the soldiers go by. Her name was
G., aged about 63, and a neighbor of mine. The officer asked
the woman for some water in good French. She went inside her
son's cottage to get some and brought it immediately he had
stopped. The officer went into the cottage garden and drank
the water. The woman then said, when she saw the prisoners,
'Instead of giving you water you deserve to be shot.' The
officer shouted to us, 'March.' We went on, and immediately I
saw the officer draw his revolver and shoot the woman and
child. One shot killed both."
Two old men and one old woman refused to bake bread for the
Germans. They were butchered.
Aug. 23--I went with two friends (names given) to see what we
could see. About three hours out of Malines we were taken
prisoners by a German patrol--an officer and six men--and
marched off into a little wood of saplings, where there was a
house. The officer spoke Flemish. He knocked at the door; the
peasant did not come. The officer ordered the soldiers to
break down the door, which two of them did. The peasant came
and asked what they were doing. The officer said he did not
come quickly enough and that they had "trained up" plenty of
others. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was
shot at once without a moment's delay. The wife came out
with a little sucking child. She put the child down and sprang
at the Germans like a lioness. She clawed their faces. One of
the Germans took a rifle and struck her a tremendous blow with
the butt on the head. Another took his bayonet and fixed it
and thrust it through the child. He then put his rifle on his
shoulder with the child upon it; its little arms stretched out
once or twice. The officers ordered the houses to be set on
fire, and straw was obtained and it was done. The man and his
wife and the child were thrown on the top of the straw. There
were about forty other peasant prisoners there also, and the
officer said: "I am doing this as a lesson and example to you.
When a German tells you to do something next time you must
move more quickly." The regiment of Germans was a regiment of
Hussars, with crossbones and a death's head on the cap.
[Illustration: BARON STEPHAN BURIAN VON RAJECZ
The Hungarian Who Succeeded Count Berchtold as Austro-Hungarian Foreign
Minister and President of the Common Ministerial Council]
[Illustration: H.M. FERDINAND I.
The New King of Rumania, in succession to his uncle the late King
Charles I.
_(Photo from P.S. Rogers.)_]
Can any one think that such acts as these, committed by women in the
circumstances created by the invasion of Belgium, were deserving of the
extreme form of vengeance attested by these and other depositions?
In considering the question of provocation it is pertinent to take into
account the numerous cases in which old women and very small children
have been shot, bayoneted, and even mutilated. Whatever excuse may be
offered by the Germans for the killing of grown-up women, there can be
no possible defense for the murder of children, and if it can be shown
that infants and small children were not infrequently bayoneted and shot
it is a fair inference that many of the offenses against women require
no explanation more recondite than the unbridled violence of brutal or
drunken criminals.
It is clearly shown that many offenses were committed against infants
and quite young children. On one occasion children were even roped
together and used as a military screen against the enemy; on another
three soldiers went into action carrying small children to protect
themselves from flank fire. A shocking case of the murder of a baby by a
drunken soldier at Malines is thus recorded by one eyewitness and
confirmed by another:
"One day when the Germans were not actually bombarding the
town I left my house to go to my mother's house in High
Street. My husband was with me. I saw eight German soldiers,
and they were drunk. They were singing and making a lot of
noise and dancing about. As the German soldiers came along the
street I saw a small child, whether boy or girl I could not
see, come out of a house. The child was about two years of
age. The child came into the middle of the street so as to be
in the way of the soldiers. The soldiers were walking in twos.
The first line of two passed the child. One of the second
line, the man on the left, stepped aside and drove his bayonet
with both hands into the child's stomach, lifting the child
into the air on his bayonet and carrying it away on his
bayonet, he and his comrades still singing. The child screamed
when the soldier struck it with his bayonet but not
afterward."
These, no doubt, were for the most part the acts of drunken soldiers,
but an incident has been recorded which discloses the fact that even
sober and highly placed officers were not always disposed to place a
high value on child life. Thus the General, wishing to be conducted to
the Town Hall at Lebbeke, remarked in French to his guide, who was
accompanied by a small boy: "If you do not show me the right way I will
shoot you and your boy." There was no need to carry the threat into
execution, but that the threat should have been made is significant.
We cannot tell whether these acts of cruelty to children were part of
the scheme for inducing submission by inspiring terror. In Louvain,
where the system of terrorizing was carried to the furthest limit,
outrages on children were uncommon. The same, however, cannot be said of
some of the smaller villages which were subjected to the system. In
Hofstade and Sempst, in Haecht, Rotselaer, and Wespelaer, many children
were murdered. Nor can it be said of the village of Tamines, where three
small children (whose names are given by an eye witness of the crime)
were slaughtered on the green for no apparent motive. It is difficult
to imagine the motives which may have prompted such acts. Whether or no
Belgian civilians fired on German soldiers, young children at any rate
did not fire. The number and character of these murders constitute the
most distressing feature connected with the conduct of the war so far as
it is revealed in the depositions submitted to the committee.
(c) The Use of Civilians as Screens.
We have before us a considerable body of evidence with reference to the
practice of the Germans of using civilians and sometimes military
prisoners as screens from behind which they could fire upon the Belgian
troops, in the hope that the Belgians would not return the fire for fear
of killing or wounding their own fellow-countrymen.
In some cases this evidence refers to places where fighting was actually
going on in the streets of a town or village, and to these cases we
attach little importance. It might well happen when terrified civilians
were rushing about to seek safety that groups of them might be used as a
screen by either side of the combatants without any intention of
inhumanity or of any breach of the rules of civilized warfare. But,
setting aside these doubtful cases, there remains evidence which
satisfies us that on so many occasions as to justify its being described
as a practice the German soldiers, under the eyes and by the direction
of their officers, were guilty of this act.
Thus, for instance, outside Fort Fléron, near Liège, men and children
were marched in front of the Germans to prevent the Belgian soldiers
from firing.
The progress of the Germans through Mons was marked by many incidents of
this character. Thus, on Aug. 22 half a dozen Belgian colliers returning
from work were marching in front of some German troops who were pursuing
the English, and in the opinion of the witnesses they must have been
placed there intentionally. An English officer describes how he caused a
barricade to be erected in a main thoroughfare leading out of Mons when
the Germans, in order to reach a crossroad in the rear, fetched
civilians out of the houses on each side of the main road and compelled
them to hold up white flags and act as cover.
Another British officer who saw this incident is convinced that the
Germans were acting deliberately for the purpose of protecting
themselves from the fire of the British troops. Apart from this
protection the Germans could not have advanced, as the street was
straight and commanded by the British rifle fire at a range of 700 or
800 yards. Several British soldiers also speak to this incident, and
their story is confirmed by a Flemish witness in a side street.
On Aug. 24 men, women, and children were actually pushed into the front
of the German position outside Mons. The witness speaks of 16 to 20
women, about a dozen children, and half a dozen men being there.
Seven or eight women and five or six very young children were utilized
in this way by some Uhlans between Landrécies and Guise.
A Belgian soldier saw an incident of this character during the retreat
from Namur.
At the battle of Malines 60 or 80 Belgian civilians, among whom were
some women, were driven before the German troops. Another witness saw a
similar incident near Malines, but a much larger number of civilians was
involved, and a priest was in front with a white flag.
In another instance, related by a Belgian soldier, the civilians were
tied by the wrists in groups.
At Eppeghem, where the Germans were driven back by the Belgian sortie
from Antwerp, civilians were used as a cover for the German retreat.
Near Malines, early in September, about 10 children, roped together,
were driven in front of a German force.
At Londerzeel 30 or 40 civilians, men, women, and children, were placed
at the head of a German column.
One witness from Termonde was made to stand in front of the Germans,
together with others, all with their hands above their heads. Those who
allowed their hands to drop were at once prodded with the bayonet.
Again, at Termonde, about Sept. 10, a number of civilians were shot by
the Belgian soldiers, who were compelled to fire at the Germans, taking
the risk of killing their own countrymen.
At Tournai 400 Belgian civilians, men, women, and children, were placed
in front of the Germans, who then engaged the French.
The operations outside Antwerp were not free from incidents of this
character. Near Willebroeck some civilians, including a number of
children, a woman, and one old man, were driven in front of the German
troops. German officers were present, and one woman who refused to
advance was stabbed twice with the bayonet, and a little child who ran
up to her as she fell had half its head blown away by a shot from a
rifle.
Other incidents of the same kind are reported from Nazareth and Ypres.
The British troops were compelled to fire, in some cases at the risk of
killing civilians.
At Ypres the Germans drove women in front of them by pricking them with
bayonets. The wounds were afterward seen by the witness.
(d) Looting, Burning, and Destruction of Property.
There is an overwhelming mass of evidence of the deliberate destruction
of private property by the German soldiers. The destruction in most
cases was effected by fire, and the German troops, as will be seen from
earlier passages in the report, had been provided beforehand with
appliances for rapidly setting fire to houses. Among the appliances
enumerated by witnesses are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for
throwing small inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable
material. Specimens of the last mentioned have been shown to members of
the committee. Besides burning houses, the Germans frequently smashed
furniture and pictures; they also broke in doors and windows.
Frequently, too, they defiled houses by relieving the wants of nature
upon the floor. They also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness
upon piled up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not
themselves consume. They also on numerous occasions threw corpses into
wells, or left in them the bodies of persons murdered by drowning.
In addition to these acts of destruction the German troops, both in
Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent
looting. In the majority of cases the looting took place from houses,
but there is also evidence that German soldiers and even officers robbed
their prisoners, both civil and military, of sums of money and other
portable possessions. It was apparently well known throughout the German
Army that towns and villages would be burned whenever it appeared that
any civilians had fired upon the German troops, and there is reason to
suspect that this known intention of the German military authorities in
some cases explains the sequence of events which led up to the burning
and sacking of a town or village. The soldiers, knowing that they would
have an opportunity of plunder if the place was condemned, had a motive
for arranging some incident which would provide the necessary excuse for
condemnation. More than one witness alleges that shots coming from the
window of a house were fired by German soldiers who had forced their way
into the house for the purpose of thus creating an alarm. It is also
alleged that German soldiers on some occasions merely fired their rifles
in the air in a side street and then reported to their officers that
they had been fired at. On the report that firing had taken place orders
were given for wholesale destruction, and houses were destroyed in
streets and districts where there was no allegation that firing had
taken place, as well as in those where the charge arose. That the
destruction could have been limited is proved by the care taken to
preserve particular houses whose occupants had made themselves in one
way or another agreeable to the conquerors. These houses were marked in
chalk, ordering them to be spared, and spared they were.
The above statements have reference to the burning of towns and
villages. In addition, the German troops in numerous instances have set
fire to farmhouses and farm buildings. Here, however, the plea of
military necessity can more safely be alleged. A farmhouse may afford
convenient shelter to an enemy, and where such use is probable it may be
urged that the destruction of the buildings is justifiable. It is
clearly, however, the duty of the soldiers who destroy the buildings to
give reasonable warning to the occupants so that they may escape.
Doubtless this was in many cases done by the German commanders, but
there is testimony that in some cases the burning of the farmhouse was
accompanied by the murder of the inhabitants.
The same fact stands out clearly in the more extensive burning of houses
in towns and villages. In some cases, indeed, as a prelude to the
burning, inhabitants were cleared out of their houses and driven along
the streets, often with much accompanying brutality--some to a place of
execution, others to prolonged detention in a church or other public
buildings. In other cases witnesses assert that they saw German soldiers
forcing back into the flames men, women, and children who were trying to
escape from the burning houses. There is also evidence that soldiers
deliberately shot down civilians as they fled from the fire.
The general conclusion is that the burning and destruction of property
which took place was only in a very small minority of cases justified by
military necessity, and that even then the destruction was seldom
accompanied by that care for the lives of noncombatants which has
hitherto been expected from a military commander belonging to a
civilized nation. On the contrary, it is plain that in many cases German
officers and soldiers deliberately added to the sufferings of the
unfortunate people whose property they were destroying.
OFFENSES AGAINST COMBATANTS.
_(a) The Killing of the Wounded and of Prisoners._
In dealing with the treatment of the wounded and of prisoners and the
cases in which the former appear to have been killed when helpless, and
the latter at, or after, the moment of capture, we are met by some
peculiar difficulties, because such acts may not in all cases be
deliberate and cold-blooded violations of the usages of war. Soldiers
who are advancing over a spot where the wounded have fallen may
conceivably think that some of these lying prostrate are shamming dead,
or, at any rate, are so slightly wounded as to be able to attack or to
fire from behind when the advancing force has passed, and thus they may
be led into killing those whom they would otherwise have spared. There
will also be instances in which men intoxicated with the frenzy of
battle slay even those whom on reflection they might have seen to be
incapable of further harming them. The same kind of fury may vent itself
on persons who are already surrendering, and even a soldier who is
usually self-controlled or humane may, in the heat of the moment, go on
killing, especially in a general mêlée, those who were offering to
surrender. This is most likely to happen when such a soldier has been
incensed by an act of treachery or is stirred to revenge by the death of
a comrade to whom he is attached. Some cases of this kind appear in the
evidence. Such things happen in a1l wars as isolated instances, and the
circumstances may be pleaded in extenuation of acts otherwise shocking.
We have made due allowance for these considerations and have rejected
those cases in which there is a reasonable doubt as to whether those who
killed the wounded knew that the latter were completely disabled.
Nevertheless, after making all allowances, there remain certain
instances in which it is clear that quarter was refused to persons
desiring to surrender when it ought to have been given, or that persons
already so wounded as to be incapable of fighting further were wantonly
shot or bayoneted.
The cases to which references are given all present features generally
similar, and in several of them men who had been left wounded in the
trenches when a trench was carried by the enemy were found, when their
comrades subsequently retook the trench, to have been slaughtered,
although evidently helpless, or else they would have escaped with the
rest of the retreating force. For instance, a witness says:
"About Sept. 20 our regiment took part in an engagement with
the Germans. After we had retired into our trenches, a few
minutes after we got back into them, the Germans retired into
their trenches. The distance between the trenches of the
opposing forces was about 400 yards. I should say about fifty
or sixty of our men had been left lying on the field from our
trenches. After we got back to them I distinctly saw German
soldiers come out of their trenches, go over the spots where
our men were lying, and bayonet them. Some of our men were
lying nearly half way between the trenches."
Another says:
"The Germans advanced over the trenches of the headquarters
trench, where I had been on guard for three days. When the
Germans reached our wounded I saw their officer using his
sword to cut them down."
Another witness says:
"Outside Ypres we were in trenches and were attacked, and had
to retire until reinforced by other companies of the Royal
Fusiliers. Then we took the trenches and found the wounded,
between twenty and thirty, lying in the trenches with bayonet
wounds, and some shot. Most of them, say three-quarters, had
their throats cut."
In one case, given very circumstantially, a witness tells how a party of
wounded British soldiers were left in a chalk pit, all very badly hurt,
and quite unable to make resistance. One of them, an officer, held up
his handkerchief as a white flag, and this
"attracted the attention of a party of about eight Germans.
The Germans came to the edge of the pit. It was getting dusk,
but the light was still good, and everything clearly
discernible. One of them, who appeared to be carrying no arms
and who, at any rate, had no rifle, came a few feet down the
slope into the chalk pit, within eight or ten yards of some of
the wounded men."
He looked at the men, laughed, and said something in German to the
Germans who were waiting on the edge of the pit. Immediately one of them
fired at the officer, then three or four of these ten soldiers were
shot, then another officer and the witness, and the rest of them.
"After an interval of some time I sat up and found that I was
the only man of the ten who were living when the Germans came
into the pit remaining alive and that all the rest were dead."
Another witness describes a painful case in which five soldiers, two
Belgians and three French, were tied to trees by German soldiers
apparently drunk, who stuck knives in their faces, pricked them with
their bayonets, and ultimately shot them.
We have no evidence to show whether and in what cases orders proceeded
from the officer in command to give no quarter, but there are some
instances in which persons obviously desiring to surrender were,
nevertheless, killed.
_(b) Firing on Hospitals or on the Red Cross Ambulances or Stretcher
Bearers._
This subject may conveniently be divided into three subdivisions,
namely, firing on--
(1) Hospital buildings and other Red Cross establishments.
(2) Ambulances.
(3) Stretcher bearers.
Under the first and second categories there is obvious difficulty in
proving intention, especially under the conditions of modern long-range
artillery fire. A commanding officer's duty is to give strict orders to
respect hospitals, ambulances, &c., and also to place Red Cross units as
far away as possible from any legitimate line of fire. But with all care
some accidents must happen, and many reported cases will be ambiguous.
At the same time, when military observers have formed a distinct opinion
that buildings and persons under the recognizable protection of the Red
Cross were willfully fired upon, such opinions cannot be disregarded.
Between thirty and forty of the depositions submitted related to this
offense. This number does not in itself seem so great as to be
inconsistent with the possibility of accident.
In one case a Red Cross depôt was shelled on most days throughout the
week. This is hardly reconcilable with the enemy's gunners having taken
any care to avoid it.
There are other cases of conspicuous hospitals being shelled, in the
witnesses' opinion, purposely.
In one of these the witness, a Sergeant Major, makes a suggestion which
appears plausible, namely, that the German gunners use any conspicuous
building as a mark to verify their ranges rather than for the purpose of
destruction. It would be quite according to the modern system of what
German writers call _Kriegsräson_ to hold that the convenience of
range-finding is a sufficient military necessity to justify disregarding
any immunity conferred on a building by the Red Cross or otherwise. In
any case, artillery fire on a hospital at such a moderate range as about
1,000 yards can hardly be thought accidental.
(2) As to firing on ambulances, the evidence is more explicit.
In one case the witness is quite clear that the ambulances were aimed
at.
In another case of firing at an ambulance train the range was quite
short.
In another a Belgian Red Cross party is stated to have been ambushed.
On the whole we do not find proof of a general or systematic firing on
hospitals or ambulances; but it is not possible to believe that much
care was taken to avoid this.
(3) As to firing on stretcher bearers in the course of trench warfare,
the testimony is abundant, and the facts do not seem explicable by
accident. It may be that sometimes the bearers were suspected of seeing
too much; and it is plain from the general military policy of the German
armies that very slight suspicion would be acted on in case of doubt.
_(c) Abuse of the Red Cross and of the White Flag._
THE RED CROSS.
Cases of the Red Cross being abused are much more definite.
There are several accounts of fire being opened, sometimes at very short
range, by machine guns which had been disguised in a German Red Cross
ambulance or car. This was aggravated in one case near Tirlemont by the
German soldiers wearing Belgian uniforms.
Witness speaks also of a stretcher party with the Red Cross being used
to cover an attack and of a German Red Cross man working a machine gun.
There is also a well-attested case of a Red Cross motor car being used
to carry ammunition under command of officers.
Unless all these statements are willfully false, which the committee
sees no reason to believe, these acts must have been deliberate, and it
does not seem possible that a Red Cross car could be equipped with a
machine gun by soldiers acting without orders. There is also one case of
firing from a cottage where the Red Cross flag was flying, and this
could not be accidental.
On the whole, there is distinct evidence of the Red Cross having been
deliberately misused for offensive purposes, and seemingly under orders,
on some, though not many, occasions.
ABUSE OF THE WHITE FLAG.
Cases of this kind are numerous. It is possible that a small group of
men may show a white flag without authority from any proper officer, in
which case their action is, of course, not binding on the rest of the
platoon or other unit. But this will not apply to the case of a whole
unit advancing as if to surrender, or letting the other side advance to
receive the pretended surrender and then opening fire. Under this head
we find many depositions by British soldiers and several by officers. In
some cases the firing was from a machine gun brought up under cover of
the white flag.
The depositions taken by Professor Morgan in France strongly corroborate
the evidence collected in this country.
The case numbered h 70 may be noted as very clearly stated. The Germans,
who had "put up a white flag on a lance and ceased fire," and thereby
induced a company to advance in order to take them prisoners, "dropped
the white flag and opened fire at a distance of 100 yards." This was
near Nesle, on Sept. 6, 1914. It seems clearly proved that in some
divisions at least of the German Army this practice is very common. The
incidents as reported cannot be explained by unauthorized surrenders of
small groups.
There is, in our opinion, sufficient evidence that these offenses have
been frequent, deliberate, and in many cases committed by whole units
under orders. All the acts mentioned in this part of the report are in
contravention of The Hague Convention, signed by the great powers,
including France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, in
1907, as may be seen by a reference to Appendix D, in which the
provisions of that convention relating to the conduct of war on land are
set forth.
CONCLUSIONS.
From the foregoing pages it will be seen that the committee have come to
a definite conclusion upon each of the heads under which the evidence
has been classified.
It is proved--
(i.) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and
systematically organized massacres of the civil population,
accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.
(ii.) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent
civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers,
women violated, and children murdered.