THE THINGS THAT MADE MEN MAD.
GERMANY'S BARBARITY--THE DEVASTATION OF BELGIUM--HUMAN FIENDS--FIREBRAND
AND TORCH--RAPE AND PILLAGE--THE SACKING OF LOUVAIN--WANTON
DESTRUCTION--OFFICIAL PROOF.
The conduct of Germany in ignoring international treaties and invading
Belgium first aroused the antagonism of the United States and the rest
of the civilized world, and furnished the primary glimpse of how
Imperialism made light of human rights. What the Kaiser and his arrogant
followers did is fully set forth in the report which a special envoy,
appointed by King Albert of Belgium, laid before President Wilson on
September 16, 1914.
The mission consisted of Henry Carton de Wiart, Minister of Justice;
Messrs. de Sadeleer, Hymans and Vandervelde, Ministers of State, and
Count Louis de Lichtervelde, serving as secretary of the mission. On
being received by President Wilson, Mr. de Wiart, for the mission,
outlined for the world and for America, the situation in part as
follows:
"His Majesty, the King of the Belgians, has charged us with a special
mission to the President of the United States. Let me say how much we
feel ourselves honored to have been called upon to express the
sentiments of our King and of our whole nation to the illustrious
statesman whom the American people have called to the highest dignity of
the commonwealth.
"Ever since her independence was first established, Belgium has been
declared neutral in perpetuity. This neutrality, guaranteed by the
Powers, has recently been violated by one of them. Had we consented to
abandon our neutrality for the benefit of one of the belligerents, we
would have betrayed our obligations toward the others. And it was the
sense of our international obligations as well as that of our dignity
and honor that has driven us to resistance.
"The consequences suffered by the Belgian nation were not confined
purely to the harm occasioned by the forced march of the invading army.
This army not only seized a great portion of our territory, but it
committed incredible acts of violence, the nature of which is contrary
to the laws of nations.
"Peaceful inhabitants were massacred, defenseless women and children
were outraged; open and undefended towns were destroyed; historical and
religious monuments were reduced to dust and the famous library of the
University of Louvain was given to the flames.
"Our government has appointed a Judicial Commission to make an official
investigation, so as to thoroughly and impartially examine the facts and
to determine the responsibility thereof, and I will have the honor,
Excellency, to hand over to you the proceedings of the inquiry.
THE UNITED STATES' ATTITUDE.
"In this frightful holocaust which is sweeping over Europe, the United
States has adopted a neutral attitude.
"And it is for this reason that your country, standing apart from either
one of the belligerents, is in the best position to judge, without bias
or partiality, the conditions under which the war is being waged.
"It is at the request, even at the initiative of the United States, that
all civilized nations have formulated and adopted at the Hague a law
regulating the laws and usages of war.
"We refuse to believe that war has abolished the family of civilized
powers, or the regulation to which they have freely consented.
"The American people has always displayed its respect for justice, its
search for progress and an instinctive attachment for the laws of
humanity. Therefore, it has won a moral influence which is recognized by
the entire world. It is for this reason that Belgium, bound as she is to
you by ties of commerce and increasing friendship, turns to the American
people at this time to let you know the real truth of the present
situation. Resolved to continue unflinching defence of its sovereignty
and independence, it deems it a duty to bring to the attention of the
civilized world the innumerable grave breaches of rights of mankind, of
which she has been a victim.
"At the very moment we were leaving Belgium, the King recalled to us his
trip to the United States and the vivid and strong impression your
powerful and virile civilization left upon his mind. Our faith in your
fairness, our confidence in your justice, in your spirit of generosity
and sympathy, all these have dictated our present mission."
THE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE.
In the report handed to President Wilson, the preface sets forth that
the committee appointed to investigate the conduct of the German
invaders, and all of the surrounding circumstances, consisted of Messrs.
Cattier, professor at the Brussels University; Nys, counselor of the
Brussels Court of Appeals; Verhaegen, counselor of the Brussels Court of
Appeals; Wodon, professor at the Brussels University; Secretary, Mr.
Gillard, Director of the Department of Justice. Afterwards, when the
invasion made it necessary to transfer the seat of the government from
Brussels to Antwerp, a sub-committee was appointed there, consisting of
Mr. Cooreman, Minister of State; Members, Count Goblet d'Aviella,
Minister of State, Vice President of the Senate; Messrs. Ryckmans,
Senator; Strauss, Alderman of the City of Antwerp; Van Cutsem, Honorary
President of the Law Court of Antwerp. Secretaries, Chevalier Ernst de
Bunswyck, Chief Secretary of the Belgian Minister of Justice; Mr. Orts,
Counselor of the Legation.
In brief the report submits first, that in violation of the perpetual
treaty of June 26, 1831, Germany notified Belgium that France was about
to march upon Germany, and that Germany proposed to frustrate such a
move by sending its soldiers through Belgium; that the German government
had no intention of making war against Belgium, and that if Belgium
made no opposition it would evacuate Belgium after hostilities ceased,
and during the period the German forces were in the country, would buy
everything needed for its army. Belgium replied that it had assurance
from France that France had no intention of invading Belgium, and that
if France attempted to pass through Belgium would oppose such an act
with force. It informed the German Imperial Government that it would
similarly oppose any move on the part of Germany to pass through.
Nevertheless Germany proceeded at once through Belgium. Quoting articles
from the Hague treaty, the commission's report reads:
THE DAYS OF BARBARISM.
"In the days of barbarism, the population of a territory occupied by the
enemy was deprived of all judicial capacity. At that time," as Ghering
writes ironically, "'the enemy was absolutely deprived of rights;
everything he owned belonged to the gallant warrior who had wrenched it
away from him. One had merely to lose it.'
"In our days the rules of warfare clearly establish the difference
between the property of the government of the territory occupied and the
property of individuals. While the present doctrine allows the conqueror
to seize, in a general way, everything in the way of movable property
belonging to the State, it obliges him, on the other hand, to respect
the property of individuals, corporations and public provincial
administrations.
"The Hague Convention, signed October 18, 1897, by all the civilized
States, among others by Germany, contains the following stipulations
regarding laws and customs of warfare on land:
"'Art. 46. The honor and right of the family, the life of the individual
and private property, as well as religious convictions and the exercise
of worship, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated.
"'Art. 47. Pillaging is formally prohibited.
"'Art. 53. When occupying territory, the army can only seize cash as
well as funds and securities belonging entirely to the State; also
depots of arms, ways and means of transportation, warehouses and
provisions, and in a general way all movable property belonging to the
State and liable to be used for warlike operations.
"'Art. 56. Property of municipalities, property of establishments
consecrated to worship, to charity and instruction; to art and science,
even though belonging to the State, will be treated as private
property.'
"In defiance of these conventional rules, voluntarily and solemnly
accepted by Germany, she has committed, from the beginning of her
invasion of Belgian soil, numerous attacks upon private property."
GERMAN CUPIDITY.
At Hasselt, the report shows that on August 12, 1914, the Germans
confiscated the funds of the branch of the National Bank, which amounted
to 2,075,000 francs. At Liege, on entering the city, they forcibly
seized the funds of a branch of the same bank, amounting to 4,000,000
francs. Moreover, upon finding at that branch bundles of bank notes of
5-franc denomination, representing an amount of 400,000 francs, and
which were not yet signed, they forced a printer to sign those bank
notes by means of a rubber stamp, which they had also seized, and
afterwards put the notes in circulation. The bank, it is explained, was
a shareholders' corporation, the capital having been obtained by
subscription from private parties and was in no wise an institution of
the State.
The enormity of this offence is made apparent by the fact that in the
war of 1870, when the Prussians entered Rheims in the Franco-Prussian
war, and they wanted to confiscate the funds of the branch of the
National Bank of France, Crown Prince Frederick ordered that funds which
were found at the bank could not be seized so long as they were not used
for the maintenance of the French army, it having been contended by
directors of the institution that the bank was not a State, but a
private bank. But more than this Germany levied supplies from every
Belgian city and tried to levy upon the city of Brussels the sum of
50,000,000 francs and the province of Brabant 450,000,000 francs.
TREATY OBLIGATIONS.
Categorically, the violation and disregard of every phase of the Hague
treaty is described. In spite of the strict provision that undefended
cities, villages and dwellings are not to be bombarded, and where
bombardment is necessary the commanding officer of the attacking party
must warn the authorities that such bombardment is to take place, German
aeroplanes and dirigibles bombarded relentlessly from the beginning. In
Antwerp a Zeppelin threw explosive bombs at the Royal Palace, but the
missiles went astray, demolishing private residences, killing eight
persons and injuring many. Servants were killed in their beds in one
private house when the bombs tore away the top of the building.
"In the Place du Poids Public a bomb fell on the pavement. Fragments
scattered all over the place. Not a house facing the square was
untouched. A policeman was cut to pieces, all that was found of him
being a leg covered with a few rags of his uniform. Five other persons
who opened their windows were blown to atoms. The bed-rooms of two
houses facing one another were visited. In the first there were three
corpses. Blood was scattered all over the place. The floor was covered
with fragments of windows and with blood-soaked underwear. On the
ceiling and walls, parts of intestines and brains were visible. In the
other house two old persons had been killed while looking down upon the
street. Later Antwerp was bombarded, as was Heyst-op-den-Berg and the
city of Malines, which was undefended, and where there was not a Belgian
soldier. At Malines the batteries fired shell after shell in the
direction of the Cathedral of Saint Rombault, a beautiful edifice, which
was hit many times and badly damaged, though there was no military
reason for the assault as the town was practically abandoned."
The commission turned over to President Wilson explosive bullets used by
the Germans at Werchter, and submitted briefs from physicians who
treated wounds made by the explosive bullets.
DETAILED ATROCITIES OUTLINED.
A few details of the atrocities are outlined as follows:
"German cavalry, occupying the village of Linsmeau, were attacked by
some Belgian infantry and two Gendarmes. A German officer was killed by
our troops during the fight, and subsequently buried at the request of
the Belgian officer in command. None of the civilian population took
part in the fight. Nevertheless, the village was invaded at dusk on
August 10 by a strong force of German cavalry, artillery and machine
guns. In spite of the assurance given by the Burgomaster that none of
the peasants had taken part in the previous fighting two farms and six
outlying houses were destroyed by gunfire and burned. All the male
population were compelled to come forward and hand over what they
possessed. No recently discharged firearms were found, but the invaders
divided the peasants into three groups. Those in one group were bound
and eleven of them placed in a ditch, whither they were afterward found
dead, their skulls fractured by the butts of German rifles.
"During the night of August 10, German cavalry entered Velm in great
numbers; the inhabitants were asleep. The Germans, without provocation,
fired upon Mr. Deglimme-Gever's house, broke into it, destroyed
furniture, looted money, burned barns, hay, corn stacks, farm
implements, six oxen, and the contents of the farmyard. They carried off
Mme. Deglimme half-naked, to a place two miles away. She was then let go
and was fired upon as she fled, without being hit. Her husband was
carried away in another direction."
Farmer Jeff Dierckx, of Neerhespen, bears witness to the following acts
of cruelty committed by German cavalry at Orsmael Neerhespen, on August
10, 11 and 12:
SHOCKING BARBARITIES.
"An old man of the latter village had his arm sliced in three
longitudinal cuts; he was then hanged head downward and burned alive.
Young girls have been raped and little children outraged at Orsmael,
where several inhabitants suffered mutilations too horrible to describe.
A Belgian soldier belonging to a battalion of cyclist carbineers who had
been wounded and made prisoner was hanged, while another who was tending
his comrade was bound to a telegraph pole and shot."
The sacking of Louvain, which was one of the vile acts of the Germans
during the early days of the war, is described briefly in the report of
the commission as follows:
"The Germans entered Louvain on Wednesday, August 19, after having set
fire to the towns through which they passed.
"From the moment of their having entered the city of Louvain, the
Germans requisitioned lodgings and victuals for their troops. They
entered every private bank of the city and took over the bank funds.
German soldiers broke the doors of houses abandoned by their
inhabitants, pillaged them and indulged in orgies.
"The German authorities took hostages; the mayor of the city, Senator
Vander Kelen, the Vice Rector of the Catholic University, the Dean of
the City; magistrates and aldermen were also detained. All arms down to
fencing foils had been handed over to the town administration and
deposited by the said authorities in the Church of St. Peter.
"In the neighboring village, Corbeck-Loo, a young matron, 22 years old,
whose husband was in the army, was surprised on Wednesday, August 19,
with several of her relatives, by a band of German soldiers. The persons
who accompanied her were locked in an abandoned house, while she was
taken into another house, where she was successively violated by five
soldiers.
LUSTFUL CRUELTY OF THE GERMANS.
"In the same village, on Thursday, August 20, German soldiers were
searching a house where a young girl of 16 lived with her parents. They
carried her into an abandoned house and, while some of them kept the
father and mother off, others went into the house, the cellar of which
was open, and forced the young woman to drink. Afterwards they carried
her out on the lawn in front of the house and violated her successively.
She continued to resist and they pierced her breast with bayonets.
Having been abandoned by the soldiers after their abominable attacks,
the girl was carried off by her parents, and the following day, owing to
the gravity of her condition, she was administered the last rites of the
church by the priest of the parish and carried to the hospital at
Louvain."
Upon entering villages occupied by the Germans after they were driven
back to Louvain, the report says the Belgian soldiers found that the
German soldiers had sacked, ravaged and set fire to the villages
everywhere, taking with them and driving before them all the male
inhabitants. "Upon entering Hofstade, the Belgian soldiers found the
corpse of an old woman who had been killed by bayonet thrusts; she still
held in her hand the needle with which she was sewing when attacked; one
mother and her son, aged about 15 years, lay there pierced with bayonet
wounds; one man was found hung.
"In Sempst, a neighboring village, were found corpses of two men
partially burned. One of them was found with legs cut off to the knees;
the other was minus his arms and legs. A workman had been pierced with
bayonets, afterward while he was still living the Germans soaked him
with petroleum and locked him in a house which they set on fire. An old
man and his son had been killed by sabre cuts; a cyclist had been killed
by bullets; a woman coming out of her house had been stricken down in
the same manner."
A LAME EXCUSE OFFERED.
Concerning the sacking of Louvain itself, the report says that one
detachment of the Germans met another detachment while in full flight
from the Belgian soldiers, and attacked one another. This was the basis
for the pretext that they had been attacked by the citizenry of Louvain
and was responsible for the bombardment of the city. The bombarding
lasted until 10 o'clock at night, and afterward the German soldiers set
fire to the city.
"The houses which had not taken fire were entered by German soldiers,
who were throwing fire grenades, some of which seem to have been
provided for the occasion. The largest part of the city of Louvain,
especially the quarters of 'Ville Haute,' comprising the modern houses,
the Cathedral of St. Peter, the University Halls, with the whole library
of the University with its manuscripts, its collections, the largest
part of the scientific institutions and the town theatre were at the
moment being consumed by flames.
"The commission deems it necessary, in the midst of these horrors, to
insist on the crime of lese-humanity which the deliberate annihilation
of an academic library--a library which was one of the treasures of our
time--constitutes.
"Numerous corpses of civilians covered the streets and squares. On the
routes from Louvain to Tirlemont alone one witness testifies to having
seen more than fifty of them. On the threshold of houses were found
burnt corpses of people, who, surprised in their cellars by the fire,
had tried to escape and fell into the heap of live embers. The suburbs
of Louvain were given up to the same fate. It can be said that the whole
region between Malines and Louvain and most of the suburbs of Louvain
have been devastated and destroyed.
BASE INDIGNITIES TO CLERGYMEN.
"A group of 75 persons, among whom were several notables of the city,
such as Father Coloboet and a Spanish priest, and also an American
priest, were conducted, during the morning of Wednesday, August 26, to
the square in front of the station. The men were brutally separated from
their wives and children, after having received the most abominable
treatment after repeated threats of being shot, and were driven in front
of the German troops as far as the village of Campenhout. They were
locked, during the night, in the church. The following day, at 4
o'clock, a German officer came to tell them that they might all confess
themselves and that they would be shot half an hour later. When,
finally, they were released, the report continues, they were recaptured
by another German brigade and compelled to march to Malines, where they
were finally liberated.
"An eye witness testified that he met nothing except burned villages,
crazed peasants, lifting to each comer their arms, as mark of
submission. From each house was hanging a white flag, even from those
that had been set on fire, and rags of them were found hanging from the
ruins. The fire began a little above the American College, and the city
is entirely destroyed, with the exception of the town hall and the
depot. Today the fire continues and the Germans, instead of trying to
stop it--seem rather to maintain it by throwing straw into the flames,
as I have myself seen behind the Hotel de Ville. The Cathedral and the
theatre have been destroyed and fallen in, and also the library. The
town resembles an old city in ruins, in the midst of which drunken
soldiers are circulating, carrying around bottles of wine and liquor;
the officers themselves being installed in arm chairs, sitting around
tables and drinking like their own men.
"In the streets dead horses are decaying, horses which are completely
inflated, and the smell of the fire and the decaying animals is such
that it has followed me for a long time."
And the policy which developed such outrageous conduct on the part of
the Kaiser's soldiers in the early days of the war, against which
Belgium protested to the world, inspired brutal acts, ruthlessness and
cruelty at every stage and during every period of the war. Nowhere is
there written a single line which tells of the humanitarian acts of the
German soldiers. Those who fight against them acknowledge their stoical
bravery, the efficiency of the army, the navy and the people as a whole,
but there is no reflection of refined instincts in any of the acts of
Germany or the Germans.
THE AMERICAN MINISTER'S REPORT.
Of those conditions which existed in Belgium when the German soldiers
overran the country, America's own minister to the devastated country,
Brand Whitlock, sent a report to the State Department in the beginning
of 1917, when President Wilson was protesting against the treatment
accorded the helpless people of Belgium by the Germans.
Mr. Whitlock tells how the Germans determined to put the Belgians thrown
out of employment to work for them. "In August," says the report,
dealing with the treatment of the helpless Belgians, "Von Hindenburg was
appointed supreme commander. He is said to have criticised Von Bissing's
policy as too mild, and there was a quarrel; Von Bissing went to Berlin
to protest, threatened to resign, but did not. He returned, and a German
official said that Belgium would now be subjected to a more terrible
regime, would learn what war was. The prophecy has been vindicated.
"The deportations began in October in the Etape, at Ghent and at
Bruges. The policy spread; the rich industrial districts at Hainaut, the
mines and steel works about Charleroi were next attacked, and they
seized men in Brabant, even in Brussels, despite some indications and
even predictions of the civil authorities that the policy was about to
be abandoned.
"As by one of the ironies of life the winter has been more excessively
cold than Belgium has ever known it and while many of those who
presented themselves were adequately protected against the cold, many of
them were without overcoats. The men, shivering from cold and fear, the
parting from weeping wives and children, the barrels of brutal Uhlans,
all this made the scene a pitiable and distressing one.
RAGE, TERROR AND DESPAIR.
"The rage, the terror and despair excited by this measure all over
Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans
poured into Brussels. The delegates of the commission for relief in
Belgium, returning to Brussels, told the most distressing stories of the
scenes of cruelty and sorrow attending the seizures. And daily, hourly
almost, since that time, appalling stories have been related by Belgians
coming to the legation. It is impossible for us to verify them, first
because it is necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in dealing
with the subject at all, and secondly because there is no means of
communication between the Occupations Gebiet and the Etappey Gebiet.
"I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that tend
to bear the stories one constantly hears of brutality and cruelty. A
number of men sent back to Mons are said to be in a dying condition,
many of them tubercular. At Molines and at Antwerp returned men have
died, their friends asserting that they have been victims of neglect and
cruelty, of cold, of exposure, of hunger.
"I have had requests from the burgomasters of ten communes asking that
permission be obtained to send to the deported men in Germany packages
of food similar to those that are being sent to prisoners of war. Thus
far the German authorities have refused to permit this except in special
instances, and returning Belgians claim that even when such packages are
received they are used by the camp authorities only as another means of
coercing them to sign the agreements to work.
A MORTAL BLOW TO BELGIANS.
"By the deportation of Belgians to work in Germany," says Mr. Whitlock's
report, "they have dealt a mortal blow to any prospect they may ever
have had of being tolerated by the population of Flanders; in tearing
away from nearly every humble home in the land a husband and a father or
a son and brother; they have lighted a fire of hatred that will never go
out; they have brought home to every heart in the land, in a way that
will impress its horror indelibly on the memory of three generations, a
realization of what German methods mean, not as with the early
atrocities in the heat of passion and the first lust of war, but by one
of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race, a
deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and
systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said
to have wept in its execution, and so monstrous that even German
officers are now said to be ashamed."
And if these acts were not sufficient to convince the world that Germany
"is without the pale" so far as civilized warfare is concerned her
conduct in wantonly destroying property in Flanders while in retreat
could permit of no other conclusion.
After the violation of Belgium and the destruction of the Lusitania and
the adoption of the policy of sinking neutral ships on sight for
military advantage, or "necessity," why shouldn't the soldiers pollute
wells, kill trees, carry off the girls, smash the household furniture
not worth taking away and smear the pictures on the wall, just for
revenge or in the sheer lust of destruction?
It makes no difference, so far as the principles of humanity are
concerned, whether the German army is in victory or suffering defeat,
advancing or retreating. The treatment accorded the evacuated cities of
the Somme district was foretold by the treatment of the cities occupied
early in the war. Here is the wording of an order posted during the
victorious invasion of Belgium:
"Order--To the people of Liege. The population of Andenne, after making
a display of peaceful intentions toward our troops, attacked them in the
most treacherous manner. With my authority the general commanding these
troops has reduced the town to ashes and has had 110 persons shot. I
bring this fact to the knowledge of the people of Liege in order that
they may know what fate to expect should they adopt a similar attitude.
GENERAL VON BULOW.
Liege, Aug. 22, 1914."
CRUEL EXTREME OF PUNISHMENT.
And yet this order showed only a cruel extreme of punishment where some
punishment was to be expected. It was left for the retreating Germans of
1917 to destroy, without provocation and without purpose, motived by
revenge and obsessed by the Nietschean doctrine of "spare not."
Before Bapaume was evacuated it was deliberately converted into a mass
of muck. There is no Bapaume now. It is perfectly understandable that
the retreating soldiers should destroy their trenches and put up the
question, "Tommy, how do you like your new trenches?" But why smear
filth over the photograph of three little girls, a family treasure? All
around Bapaume the villages were looted and the night the deliverers
entered the destroyers made the sky lurid with the fires of towns and
hamlets. Some 300 in the evacuated region were burned.
At Nesle, Roye and Ham there was not time enough to destroy everything.
The house of a doctor at Nesle, a specially attractive home, was not
blown down for strategic purposes, but some soldiers did find time to
drive axes through the mahogany panels of the beds and smash the clocks
and mirrors. They were angry at being compelled to leave the house.
Villages like Cressy, near Nesle, where a shell never fell in the course
of the war, have been completely destroyed.
PERONNE A HOPELESS RUIN.
There is not a habitable house left in Peronne. The sixteenth century
church of St. Jean is but a relic. W. Beach Thomas wrote after the
retreat that nothing was left that was valuable enough to be worth
collection by a penny tinker or a rag-and-bone merchant. Foul what you
cannot have, was the motto.
The famous ruins of the Feudal Castle of Coucy, one of the finest relics
of architecture of its period, was wantonly blown up by the Germans on
retreat. It was built in the thirteenth century by Enguerrand III and
passed to the French crown in 1498, and was one of the great historic
landmarks of Northern France.
Coucy was one of the noblest relics of the Middle Ages, respected by the
most barbarous wars of the past, whose donjon (greatest in all Europe)
dates almost from Charlemagne, harmless, time-wrecked, illustrious
Coucy!
To give an idea of Coucy's importance, the French, in their first
astonishment and sorrow, proposed to make reprisals on Hindenburg,
should it take ten years. Of course, they will not; it is not their way.
Coucy is a mountain of blasted stones. Shoun Kelly, American, owned one
of the outer towers of the great castle and the story of its ownership
is the American antithesis of German ravage. Americans were always
faithful tourists to Coucy; but among them, one loved more than all the
glorious old ruin and its story which began with Enguerrand, the Sire
of Coucy, in the year 1210. This was the late Edmund Kelly, of New York
and Paris, international lawyer and for many years counsel of the
American Embassy in Paris. He meditated on the motto of old Enguerrand:
"I am not king, nor prince, nor duke, nor even count: I am the Sire of
Coucy!" In fact, the Sire made a record for standing off local kings.
"He was a good American ahead of his time," said Lawyer Kelly; and he
took to reading up the ancient chronicles, how Enguerrand's descendants
stood off royalty for some 200 years, until finally bought out by the
wealthy Louis of Orleans, and all the later glories of the place.
Mazarin dismantled Coucy, but left it standing in its beauty; and Lawyer
Kelly discovered it to be a State museum, impossible to be purchased, in
these latter days, even by a millionaire. Not being one, he preferred it
so, loving Coucy more than ever, the cultured American did the next best
thing.
A LITTLE TOWN REDUCED.
The little town, once so rich, had dwindled since Mazarin. On the castle
side stood two massive towers of the inner defense, belonging to the
town. Mr. Kelly asked Mayor and department legislature to make a price
on the nearest. As soon as he had bought his tower, he used loving care
restoring it. He pierced windows through walls 16 feet thick. He built
rooms in three stories, furnishing them in massive antique style. The
tower roof was his shady terrace, covered with a little grove of
century-old trees! From it he dominated Coucy. All its soul of beauty
lay beneath his view.
All was systematically blown up, the town, the towers, the castle, by
retreating Germans in their rage. Just masses of crumbled stones. The
German papers boast that it took 28 tons of high explosives, and any one
can see, this hour, the plain of Coucy covered with a white layer of
powdered limestone, for miles around.
What for? To clear a battlefield, they say. It is not true. Nothing is
cleared. The masses of crumbled stone remained, when they fled their
"battlefield."
The donjon was very high. It stood on a kind of bluff or elevation,
overlooking the country, and before the days of aeroplanes it might have
been used for observation. The donjon walls were 16 yards thick, not
feet, but yards! No other tower in Europe had those dimensions. They
tell a story about Mazarin. He deemed so strong a place, so near to
Paris, might be dangerous to the Crown; so he dismantled Coucy
militarily, without destroying its architectural beauty. The donjon
worried him in those days when artillery could make no impression on its
massive thickness. So Mazarin put 16 barrels of powder inside the tower,
and set them off. The tower just converted itself into gun barrel! The
powder blew out all the stories and the roof--shot them up like a gun
pointed at the sky! But the tower stood, exactly as before.
OF MASSIVE ARCHITECTURE.
The masonry was admittedly the heaviest achieved by the Middle Ages.
From the donjon extended three great vaulted halls. Massive buildings
continued. There was a Gothic chapel, a Tribunal Hall, the Hall of the
Nine Peers (whose statues remained), the Hall of the Nine Countesses
(whose medallion-portraits were carved on the monumental chimney). There
was a Romanesque chapel (relic from Charlemagne, like the original
donjon), the separate Fortified Chateau of the Chatelain (the Sire's
First Officer), and so on, and so on.
The retreating Germans have not only blown up Coucy, but that other
priceless relic, the Tower of the Grand Constable and the entire
historic Chateau of Ham, and equally the Castle of Peronne, a jewel of
beauty--all in one corner of the Vallois! On the smoking wreck of
Peronne, they left a humorous placard:
"Nicht aergen! Tur wundern! Don't be angry, just wonder!" Noyon and
Peronne are sacked and ruined. At Chauny 1800 houses out of 2500 were
deliberately burned, and at a distance they bombarded the remainder,
full of old folks and children whom they had parked there. All the
public buildings, churches, hospitals and poorhouse were blown up. Three
hundred towns and villages were burning at one time in this small
section of the Cradle of France. Hindenburg was at Roisel when they
rounded up the populations, went through their pockets for their money
(giving "receipts"), took their clothes off their backs (so that all the
American relief agencies in Paris were overwhelmed with telegrams of
appeal) and burgled all the safes in banks and business houses before
setting fire to the town and blowing up the main street!
ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLE OF WAR.
The German official communique said that it was "all done uniquely
according to the technical principles of modern war." At Berlin they
caused an American correspondent to cable these words to his papers:
"The enemy will find great difficulty to take shelter on a battlefield
where everything has been completely razed. We regret the destruction of
a beautiful region of France, but it was necessary to transform it into
a clear field of battle before we quit it."
They blew up the precious Romanesque Church of Tracy-le-Val (which dates
before the Gothic). The church was situated in the midst of the great
forest of Laigue; they blew up the church--and left the forest standing!
No battlefield was cleared, but they hacked the bark to kill great noble
trees by thousands. They made no effort to clear the forest; but weeping
old French peasants told how half a German regiment was occupied three
days in barking trees to prevent the sap from mounting. The crushed
pearl of architecture lies in a dying forest.
At Le Novion, torch in hand, they burned 223 houses; but all the gutted
walls are standing.
What technical principles of war command the wholesale destruction of
young fruit trees? In 20 orchards, by count, in sweet Leury (hidden at
the bottom of a valley) every peach, plum, apricot and pear tree has
been assassinated--hacked and standing, when the trunks are thick, and
sprawling, severed by one blow of a sharp hatchet, young trees from the
thickness of your wrists to your thumb. The French, with loving care,
trained peach and pear trees against sunny walls, as if they were
grapevines. The slender trunks are cut--and the garden walls left
standing.
DESECRATION OF TREES.
The soldiers spared neither the orchards nor the single trees that took
a generation to grow, and would have borne fruit for generations to
come. Reapers and binders and other farming machines were collected and
broken to pieces. One might see a measure of advantage that the
deliverers would gain from these things if not destroyed, but it is an
awful war doctrine that refuses to discriminate between the immediate
and the eventual, the direct and the indirect, the important and the
negligible advantage that would impoverish posterity to get a dime in
cash. No military advantage is sufficient motive for such wanton
ravishment. It is military fanaticism.
Ambassador Sharp, after a 100-mile trip through the evacuated territory,
declared that never before in the history of the world had there been
such a thorough destruction by either a vanquished or victorious army.
One thing alone was left, after the red-brick villages had been turned
into heaps and the murdered fruit trees into black fagots, on the hill
outside of St. Quentin. This was the log hut and shooting box of the
Kaiser's son, Eitel Friederick. Its white-barked beech was unburnt, its
glass windows unbroken, its inside adornments unlooted, the tables and
chairs of its terrace beer garden remained. All around the works of man
and God were destroyed. The contrast made this destroyer's lodge a sort
of boast of his destruction.
The shocking ruin to human life in the evacuated region is of even
greater moment. The half-starved civilians of Bapaume were forced to
make trenches there and later for the defense of Cambrai also. All men
and boys strong enough to work were taken along with the retreating
forces. Near Peronne some hundreds of old men, women and children were
found locked in a barn. One woman pathetically asked of an English
officer, "Are you many?" And he was able to answer, "We are two millions
now," and see her anxiety turned to relief and joy. Children who had
been slowly starving for a year wandered about the ruins of their homes,
but soon found reasons for smiling at the soldiers who had rescued them.
NEITHER MEAT NOR MILK.
These children had had no meat for months and no milk for a year and had
almost forgotten the taste of butter. They probably never received a
quarter of the rations Americans sent. Girls were compelled to attend
the market gardens, and then the Germans took all the produce. The
region was desolated and left inhabited by women and children moribund
with misery and starvation.
At Noyon, where the Germans had concentrated 10,000 Belgian refugees,
they promised to leave the American Relief Committee with sufficient
supplies to feed them. But the last patrols completely sacked the
American relief storehouses of all eatables and then dynamited the
building. And it was from this place that fifty young women, from 18 to
25 years of age, were taken by the officers. Their distracted mothers
were told that they were to be used as "officers' servants."
At Ham, when a mother of six children, seeing her husband and two eldest
daughters being carried away, remonstrated, she was told that as an
alternative she might find their bodies in a canal in the rear of the
house.
Nothing could be more significant of the Government's attitude than the
incident told by James W. Gerard. The people of a town were imprisoned
or fined for their conduct toward a delayed train of Canadian prisoners.
When he heard it he thought that at last the Government was going to put
a stop to the maltreatment of prisoners. But he learned on investigation
that the townsfolk had been punished for giving a little food and drink
to the starving and fainting prisoners.
And yet the most singularly brutal phase of this destruction of nature
and wealth and art and life is the German defense of it. War is always
hell and most of the awful things in this war have had their
counterparts in other conflicts, though the Teutonic element has brought
some peculiar refinements of cussedness and has given a thoroughness and
"pep" and "kick" to the war business.
BETTER PREPARED NEXT TIME.
German writers, instead of making excuses for turning the nation into a
war machine for forty years, complain that Germany was not prepared as
she should have been and would be better prepared next time. Her
professors do not regret that the soldiers at the front are so
unrestrained in cruelty, but urge that they are too soft and kind to
make effective war. The German correspondents all write enthusiastically
of the devastation of the country they are leaving and of the desert
created by German genius. Editors speak of the mercy which tempered the
necessary hardness towards this once beautiful stretch of country and
its inhabitants. The destruction of property which can serve no military
purpose is defended on the ground that it is legitimate from a strategic
point of view.
This all amounts to saying everything must give way to the
considerations of war. It is taking the argument in the fable of the
wolf and the lamb as serious philosophy and accepting the position of
the wolf. They fail entirely to see the humor of the fable, and hence
the fallacy of the wolf's argument.
The greatest hope of civilization, which trembled for a time before the
spectre of German barbarity, is that frightfulness cannot endure the
long and full test. The great initial advantages are more than offset by
new opponents. The gain of the invasion of Belgium was canceled by
England coming into the war. The advantage against England of the U-boat
campaign was more than canceled by the entrance of the United States in
the war.
Irvin Cobb says that the trouble with the Germans is that they are not
"good sports and lack a sense of humor. It is impossible to conceive of
a group of German officers playing football or baseball or cricket and
abiding by the rules of the game. If Barbara Frietchie had said to a
Prussian Stonewall Jackson, 'Shoot, if you must, my gray old head,' he'd
have done it as a matter of course."