This is a book of horrors, but a book of plain truths! Where have we
discovered our facts? They are taken from three sources: _First_, Four
reports issued by the French Commission of Enquiry[1]; and "Germany's
Violation of the Laws of Warfare," published by the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs; _Second_, Two volumes containing twenty-two reports of
the Belgian Commission[2], and the Reply to the German White Book of the
15th May, 1915; _Third_, Notebooks found upon a large number of German
soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers, who have been wounded
or taken prisoners, and translated under the direction of the French
Government. These valuable records, in which the bandits and their
leaders have imprudently given themselves away, are real "_pièces à
conviction_."
These reports in their entirety form an overwhelming indictment. We
wish that everyone could study them in full. But the books are large,
running to thousands of pages, and will not find their way to the
general public.
Yet everyone ought to know how the Germans carry on war. We have
therefore made selections from these documents in order to compile this
small pamphlet. A dismal task, this wading through mud and blood! And a
hard task, to run through all these reports, pencil in hand, with the
idea of underlining _the essential facts_! You find yourself noting down
each page, marking each paragraph; and, lo and behold, at the end of the
book, you have selected _everything_--- that is to say, nothing. One
might as well start to gather the hundred finest among the leaves of a
forest, or to pick up the hundred most glittering grains among the sand
on a beach. All we can do is to take the first examples which come to
hand. This, then, is not a collection of the most stirring and striking
German crimes, but simply a book of samples. Until complete statistics
are forthcoming, two classes of outrage stand out, and must remain ever
present to the mind: murdered civilians can be counted in thousands;
houses wilfully burned, in tens of thousands.
For want of time and space we have concerned ourselves here only with
crimes committed in Belgium and France, and we have had no thought of
separating the two neighbouring sister nations.
Our part in this work is a modest one. Taking at random a certain number
of _facts_, we have grouped them under different headings to make
perusal easier for the reader. To indicate the references would have
been impossible. Each line would have required a foot-note; the notes
would have been as long as the text, and both the length of, and the
cost of producing this pamphlet would have been doubled.
It is enough to state that there is not a single fact published here
that cannot be verified by our readers in one or other of the documents
already referred to. Nothing but facts are set down, absolute bare
facts, and it is for the reader to form his own conclusions. When he has
studied these "samples," and begins by means of them to learn the truth,
then, and only then, will he have the right to choose, according to his
conscience, between remembrance and oblivion, between pardon and
punishment.