DEGREES OF RESPONSIBILITY. CONCLUSION
At this point we shall give our conclusions. We think it necessary to
establish the degrees of responsibility for the above attested facts:
and the reader will think it right for us to add some precise mention of
the authors of the facts. The omission of such a chapter would have the
effect of helping to keep our indignation in the air, and thus leaving
for objects of the blame contained in it only some multitudes of persons,
amongst whom our indictment would be diluted and dispersed. Not that we
desire to take away from the German people as such the responsibility
which attaches to them, but we desire to add some names thereto.
The first responsible party whom we must mention is the German nation,
and explicitly the German army judged by its private soldiers. It is upon
the German private soldier, indisputably, that the shame of what we have
just read recoils. It was the private soldiers who committed the greater
part of the crimes which we have noticed: they were the principal authors
of these crimes. But it must be added that the leaders consistently
encouraged them. In several instances they acted on explicit instructions
from officers, and even from generals.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE LEADERS
At the beginning of this book we noted the fatal teachings of the most
famous military writers of Germany, writers who formed the war-school in
which was developed the military spirit of the officers of 1914. These
teachings were theories of war carried on in defiance of international
law. The putting to death of captured soldiers and defenceless civilians
is latent in such doctrines.
If, then, we wish to sum up in a word the system practised by German
officers, during the course of a war which is still in progress, we
may describe it as the system _of terrorising the enemy on the plea of
military necessity_.
German officers showed themselves liberal in their estimate of the
urgency, extent, and oftener still of the bare existence of such
necessity. Therein we find the source of so many cowardly cruelties and
crimes. “War! it is war,” they say. As the French Commission of Inquiry
observes, for all their exactions, even for all their crimes, there was
no redress; and if any unfortunate dared to beg an officer to deign
to intervene and spare his life, or protect his property, he received
no other reply, if he was not met with threats, than this invariable
formula, accompanied by a smile and ascribing to the inevitable disasters
of war the most cruel atrocities.
The German officer, therefore, has made himself responsible for the
cruelties that have been committed: (1) either by ordering them or
suggesting them to his subalterns or his men; (2) or by himself
performing them: (3) or, finally, by tolerating them when they were
committed under his eyes, or by not punishing the guilty when he was
informed about their crime. By acting in one of these three ways the
German officer has justified the English writer who uttered the following
judgment of the conduct of the Germans in 1870: “The world at least is
indebted to the Germans for having thrown light upon war … in which the
soldier, the thief and the assassin can hardly be distinguished” (J. A.
Farrer, _Military Manners and Customs_, chap. iv., p. 119). It is true,
and we cannot avoid saying so, that in the present war the German officer
has shown an essentially criminal mind. And we now make this accusation,
which we have established by facts; our investigations, and the profound
study which we have made of the subject, allow us completely to justify
the declaration of the French Commission of Inquiry, “the higher command,
up to its most exalted personalities, will bear before the world the
crushing responsibility of crimes committed by the German army.”
THE NAMES OF THE OFFICERS
We shall mention here the names of the officers in question. But we must,
above all, begin with the princes in whose name so many outrages have
been committed.
1. _The Emperor William II._ In a speech addressed to his
troops, on the eve of the battle of the Vistula, the Emperor
William himself uttered these words, which form as it were
the savage programme of all the atrocities that have been
committed: “Woe to the conquered. The conqueror knows no mercy.”
2. _The Emperor Franz Joseph._ In an Imperial order, which
includes instructions to the Austrian soldiers in the war
against the Serbs, the Emperor Franz Joseph depicts the latter
as “moved by a savage hatred against the Austrians. They
deserve,” (he said) “no consideration either of humanity or of
chivalry.” By the terms of this order all francs-tireurs who
were captured were to be put to death.
3. _Prince Eitel-Frederic_, son of the Emperor of Germany. The
Prince stayed for eight days in a château near Liège. The owner
was present. Under the eyes of his hosts the Prince had all the
dresses packed up which he found in the chests of the mistress
of the house and her daughters.
4. _The Duke of Brunswick._ The Prince took part in the pillage
of the same château, near Liège.
5. _Marshal von Hindenburg_, commander-in-chief of the Imperial
troops in East Prussia. This marshal ordered that the bread
found in this province, which had been soaked with petrol,
should serve as food for Russian prisoners.
6. _Marshal von der Goltz_, military governor of Belgium. In a
notice signed by him and posted up on the 5th October, 1914, at
Brussels, the marshal decreed the penalty of death against the
inhabitants, whether guilty or not, in places near which the
telegraph wires had been cut or the railway destroyed.
7. _General von Bülow_, commander-in-chief of the Second German
army. This general ordered the first bombardment of Reims:
on the 22nd August, after the sack of Ardennes, he had the
following notice posted up: “It was with my consent that the
general-in-chief had the whole locality burnt and that about
a hundred persons were shot.” On the 25th August, at Namur,
another proclamation from his hand read as follows: “Belgian
and French soldiers must be given up as prisoners of war before
four o’clock, before the prison. Citizens who do not obey will
be sentenced to forced labour for life in Germany. A strict
inspection of houses will begin at four o’clock. _Every soldier
found will be immediately shot._ Arms, powder, dynamite, must
be given up at four o’clock. _The penalty for default will be
a fusillade_. All the streets will be occupied by a German
guard, who will take ten hostages in every street. _If any
outbreak takes place in the street, the ten hostages will be
shot._”
8. The Austrian _General Horschstein_, commander of the 6th
army corps operating against the Serbians. He is the author
of the following order, issued on the 14th August at Rouma:
“Seeing the hostile attitude of the inhabitants of Klenak and
Chabatz, we must, in all Serbian localities which have either
been occupied or will be occupied, take hostages who will be
kept close to our troops. _In cases where the inhabitants
commit any offence, or make any attack, or are guilty of any
treachery, the hostages will immediately be put to death and
the locality ravaged by fire. The headquarters staff alone has
the right to fire any locality situate in our territory._ This
order will be published by the civil authorities.”
9. _General Heeringen_, commander of the German army of
Champagne. He continued the bombardment of Reims, and was the
cause of the destruction of the cathedral.
10. _General Klauss_, was the cause of the butcheries at
Gerbeviller and Traimbois.
11. _General Forbender_, the author of the monstrous and
inhuman proclamation by which Lunéville found itself mulcted in
taxes.
12 and 13. _General Durach_ and the _Prince of Wittenstein_,
commanders of the Wurtemburg troops and Uhlans during the
burning of Clermont in Argonne.
14. The Baden _General Fabricius_. He emptied the cellars of
Baccarat.
15. _General de Seydewitz._ He was present, and did not
interfere to prevent it, at the pillage of Châlons-sur-Marne,
ordered by one of his subalterns.
16. _General Heindrich_, commander of the German troops at
Lille, who, by exorbitant requisitions, reduced the population
of this town to starvation, and made away with the appeal for
help which the mayor of Lille, on his own advice, had addressed
to the President of the Swiss Republic.
17. _General Stenger_, commander of a brigade in France, who
issued the well-known order of the day giving instructions to
kill the wounded and to execute prisoners of war.
18. _Lieutenant-general Nisher._ He demanded of the little town
of Wavre the exorbitant war-contribution of 3,000,000 francs,
which General Bülow had imposed. “The town of Wavre will be
burnt and destroyed if payment is not made in good time,
without respect of persons—_the innocent will suffer with the
guilty_.”
19. _General Sixtus of Arnim_, commander of the 4th German army
corps, who mulcted the town of Brussels and the province of
Brabant in the monstrous contribution of 500,000,000 francs.
20. _General von Bissing_, commander of the 7th German army
corps, who, in a proclamation to his troops in Belgium, told
them that when “civilians take upon them to fire on us, the
_innocent must suffer with the guilty_”; that “the German
authorities have on several occasions in their instructions
to the troops said that _human life must not be spared in
repressing such acts_”; that “it is doubtless regrettable that
houses, flourishing villages, and even whole towns should be
destroyed, but this must not cause us to be carried away by
feelings of misplaced pity. _All that is not worth the life of
a single German soldier._”
21. _General de Doehm_, commander of the 9th German army corps.
When an American journalist of _The World_ and Mr. Gibson,
secretary of the United States Embassy at Brussels, told him
they had seen the bodies of mutilated women and children
at Louvain, this general replied that such incidents were
“_inevitable in street fighting_.” The American journalist
remarked that a woman’s body had the feet and hands cut off;
that of an old man showed twenty-two bayonet thrusts in the
face; that an old man’s body had been found hanging by his
hands to the beams of his house, and that he had been burnt
alive by lighting a fire underneath him. All that General de
Doehm could say was that he was not responsible.
22. _Baron Merbach_, who, with Prince Eitel and the Duke of
Brunswick, took part in looting a château near Liège.
23. The _Duke of Gronau_. After the château of Villers, Notre
Dame, in Belgium, had been occupied by his headquarters he
himself caused the following to be taken and sent to Germany:
146 sets of cutlery, 236 silver-gilt spoons, 3 gold watches, 9
savings-bank deposit books, 1500 bottles of wine, 62 hens, 32
ducks, evening clothes, works of art, and a quantity of baby
linen.
24 and 25. _Count Zichy_ and _Baron Sardas_, who presided over
the pillage from the estate, château, and farm of M. Budny, in
South Prussia, of property to the value of 100,000 roubles.
26. _Colonel Goeppel_, Professor at the Academy of War in
Berlin, who compelled the Lille “Croix” to pay a sum of 150,000
francs for calling the German army “a flood of Teutons.”
27. _Colonel Zollern_, commandant of the Imperial Army at
Tchenstokhova in Poland, which he ordered to be pillaged and
destroyed, in proof of which we have the text of the following
proclamation made on his arrival into this town: “Houses and
quarters of the town the inhabitants of which are suspected of
hostile acts towards the army will immediately be pulled down
and destroyed. Women and children will not be allowed to leave
these houses.”
28. _Lieutenant-colonel Preuster_, commandant at Kalich, in
Poland, who ordered the massacres and destruction of the town.
29. _Colonel Hannapel_, commander of the 8th Bavarian regiment,
who gave the order to burn down the village of Nomény.
30. _Modeiski_, major of the German cuirassiers, who gave
explicit instructions to hang all the Cossacks who were taken
prisoners.
31. The Hanoverian _Lieutenant von Halden_, who was found
carrying dum-dum bullets.
32. _Captain Curtins_, commander of the 3rd company of the
112th German infantry regiment, who gave the order to make no
more wounded prisoners.
33. _Commandant de Schaffenberg._ A French lieutenant whom
he found lying wounded on the field of battle in Louvain was
robbed by him of 250 francs in gold. The commandant threatened
the wounded man with his revolver. The French officer’s
orderly, who was lying wounded at his side, was also robbed.
34. _Major von Mehring_, commandant at Valenciennes, who
declared in a proclamation: “I have destroyed the whole town.
_The ancient town of Vichies, a place of 5000 inhabitants, no
longer exists._ The houses, town hall, and church have been
annihilated.”
35. _Major de Honved_, in command of the 22nd Hungarian
regiment, operating against the Russians. Addressing the
recruits, he said: “When you have penetrated into Russia,
_grant no quarter and no mercy to old men, women, and children
even if unborn_.”
36. _Lieutenant-colonel Blegen_, who ordered the massacres and
sack of Dinant.
37. _Major Botzwitz_, who ordered his troops to kill the
wounded and murder prisoners of war.
38. _Major Manteuffel_, who ordered the destruction of Louvain
and the horrible atrocities committed in it.
39. _Major Sommerfeld_, who ordered the destruction of Termonde
(in Belgium).
40. _Major Müller_, who ordered the destruction of
Châlons-sur-Marne.
41 and 42. _Baron von Waldersee_ and _Major Ledebur_, who
broke open the writing-desks and jewel-cases of the château of
Beaumont.
43. _Major von Bülow_, who ordered the massacres and
destruction of Aerschot.
44. _Major Dreckmann._ In a proclamation under date 6th
September (Guvegnee, Belgium): “The life of hostages
depends on whether the inhabitants remain peaceful under
all circumstances”; and that, if the first hostages are not
replaced in forty-eight hours by others, _the hostage runs the
risk of death_, and whoever does not obey the command “Lift
your arms!” is punishable with the penalty of death.
45. _Commandant Chrenzer_, of the 26th Austro-Hungarian
regiment, operating against the Serbians, who himself massacred
prisoners and peasants who were brought to him.
46. _Commandant Reimond_, of the 13th Austro-Hungarian corps,
operating against the Serbians, who authorised the massacre of
twenty-four peasants, the most part of them old folk of both
sexes.
47 and 48. The commandants of the 11th and 4th detachments
operating against the Serbians, who ordered their soldiers to
annihilate everything Serbian.
49 and 50. _Commandant Zerfert_, of the 25th regiment, and
_Captain Zfail_, of the 37th Austrian regiment, who caused
houses in Serbia to be fired.
51 and 52. _Captain Kozda_, of the 79th regiment, and _Captain
Vouitch_, of the 21st Austrian regiment, who treated every
Serbian soldier on the third conscript list as a franc-tireur
and had him shot.
53. _Captain Zirgow_, who authorised the pillage of Albert in
France.
54. The German officer, _Walter Bloem_, who was entrusted with
the task of making an inquiry in Belgium (see the _Cologne
Gazette_ of the 10th February, 1915), and who confessed without
any sense of shame that all that had happened was part of a
system, the principle of which was that “the whole community
to which a culprit belonged must pay the penalty, and that the
innocent must suffer in their stead, not because a crime has
been committed, but in order that a crime may not be committed
again.”
55. _Lieutenant Bertich_, 29th Austro-Hungarian regiment
operating against the Serbs, who killed at Lasnitza seven
innocent peasants.
56. _Lieutenant Eberlein_, who, in the _Münchener Neueste
Nachrichten_ told the story of the monstrous treachery to which
he resorted to get into Saint Dié—viz. using civilians as a
screen for his troops.
The above are German generals and officers whose names are known to us.
There are many others. But the impossibility of naming them all does not
prevent us from holding up to the execration of the civilised world, by
printing their names here, those whom the reports supplied to us have
mentioned.
In addition to the two emperors, there are two marshals, four generals,
six princes and nobles, five colonels, sixteen commandants and majors,
thirteen other subaltern officers, written on the picture of horror,
which we have sketched, and of which they and the whole of the German
people are the individual and responsible authors.
Is “German militarism” alone responsible? We say _the German people_, for
it would be a mistake not to recognise as the authors of these crimes
merely the army which performed them, the officers who tolerated them,
approved them or ordered them—in a word, only the German military element
known as “militarism.” For this militarism is in very truth the offspring
of the whole nation, as well as of causes which have nothing military
about them—to wit, the teaching in the universities, which has been
shaping it for a hundred years.
The cult of force which to the German is the cult of brutal force imposed
without mercy, goes down to the very roots of his thought. This must not
be confounded with the spirit of violence to which, at all ages of the
world, barbarian conquerors have given way. This cult proceeds from the
fact that Germany considers herself the only nation worthy of the name,
as _the_ people _par excellence_ upon whom, by law of nature, devolves
the management of the modern world, around which it is the historic and
philosophic duty of Europe to rally until absorbed in it, and until
the civilised world is only one vast Germany in fact. When the German
declares that force is superior to right, he does not mean force in
itself, any force whatever, but his own force, which is right.
Such are the notions taught by the members of the German cabinet, by its
professors, by the universities of Berlin, Munich, Halle, and Bonn for
one hundred years. Such is the teaching promulgated in Fichte’s famous
“Addresses to the German Nation,” uttered in 1808. We shall easily
understand that a nation which incarnates in itself all law, all history,
all the future, all rational truth, all philosophic influence, hardly
needs to think of the means by which it puts itself forward. From the
relative point of view of human interest, as from the impartial point of
view of eternal ideas, one thing alone matters and that is that Germany
should triumph, and that Germanism should grow.
To this there is only need to add one point, that this perverted
refinement of thought, this sophism, grows and is developed among a
nation which is brutal and barbarous among all others, so that the
inclinations of flesh and blood are in it ready to respond to the
suggestions of a corrupt philosophy. In Germany the sophist unchains the
beast: the man of letters lets slip the barbarian, or, as was forcibly
said by Hugo, an old admirer of Germany, when he had become enlightened
by the sinister glare of the events of 1870, _the pedant is the ally of
the trooper_. The fusion of these two elements, the intimate union of
German thought and of its military counterpart, welding together the
whole of the classes intermediate between them: in a word, that is to
say, the whole of Germany—all this must not be forgotten in any just
appraisement of the foregoing events. So we see that in fact all Germany
approves the actions of which we have just told the story, and the German
intellectuals have taken the course of identifying themselves with them
in their well-known but shameful “appeal to the civilised world.”
CONCLUSION
The _theoretic responsibility_ for German cruelties, therefore, falls
upon the military writers of Germany directly; but fundamentally, and
probing more deeply, upon her professors, historians, and philosophers.
Then come the heads of the army, who were the first to carry out these
teachings.
But the _verdict of mankind_ condemns the whole of Germany; for all her
citizens, from the highest to lowest, appear in the eyes of the world,
which was at first amazed and then indignant, as identifying themselves
with the work of devastation, murder, pillage, and cowardice by which,
in the judgment of history, the war that Germany launched upon the world
will be noted.
We, at least, who are neutral of nationality and impartial in judgment,
lump them all together, in the feeling of contempt and of disgust which
they have roused in our indignant breast, and in the stern but just
judgment which our reason, bitterly disappointed as it has been, has
meted out to them.
THE END
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