After having burnt our villages,[18] and shot the inhabitants by dozens
in some places, and by hundreds in others, they frequently deported all
or a part of the survivors to Germany. It is impossible at this moment
to establish the number of those deported, but they were sent off by
tens of thousands. These unfortunate people, men, women and children,
who had witnessed and survived fires and massacres, who had seen their
houses blazing and so many of those dear to them fall under the bullets
of the assassin, and who were forced in some places to dig graves for
their victims, and in others to hold a light for the executioners while
they were finishing off the wounded,--these poor wretches are despatched
to Germany.[19] What a journey, and what a place of residence!
Let us quote one story among a thousand. "Our escort was commanded by
two German officers. They were unapproachable. Anyone who tried to speak
to them was threatened with a revolver. In order that we might get a
drink, we were made to collect empty meat tins which served as our
drinking cups until we reached Cassel. We were abused and threatened
wherever we went. Sometimes they made signs to us that they were going
to shoot us, or hang us, or cut our heads off. They threw filth at our
heads and spat in our faces. We were not going to stoop before them; the
disgrace was not ours. It is they, not we, who are degraded. An officer
who was present when our march-past took place aimed blows with a
riding-whip at everyone within his reach. Until we arrived at the
railway, it was the same at every place where we met soldiers. We
reached Marche after a nine hours' journey. We were conducted to a room
marked as having accommodation for 100 soldiers, but they put 400 of us
in there. The people of the place sent us slices of bread and butter,
but it was the Germans who ate them. The latter gave us crusts of bread
to eat. We were abominably cramped; a few managed to stretch themselves
out, but the air was so poisonous that they could not remain in that
position. At Melreux station we changed guards. They drove us with the
butt-ends of their rifles to a spot where a train of cattle trucks was
standing in the yard, and we had to get in. The previous occupants had
been cattle, and the trucks had been cleaned in a very perfunctory
fashion. There was neither straw nor seats. Off we went. Every time we
stopped at a station the soldiers on guard there insulted us. It was
even worse when once we arrived in Germany. They opened the doors on the
platform side, and if we were on a line between two platforms, they
opened the doors on both sides so as to rejoice German hearts by the
sight of us. They treated us like wild beasts in a menagerie, and the
officers and soldiers set the example while the women and children were
not behindhand with abuse, and made threatening gestures. Our guards
were applauded as if they were doing something heroic. At one station we
saw a woman looking out of her window and shouting 'Hurrah!' The journey
took 35 hours, and during the whole of that time we were only given food
and drink once, and that thanks only to the Red Cross.[20] We arrived at
Wilhelmshöhe (Cassel) at 3 a.m. on the 28th August, and were made to
walk quickly through the streets. Our arrival had been notified, and in
spite of the early hour, a hostile crowd, abusive and threatening, lined
the route. The old and the lame could not keep up the pace at which we
marched. Their companions helped and dragged them along, constantly
beaten with butt-ends. At length, we arrived at the gaol, where they
shut us in the cells in lots of three or four at a time. M. Brichet
(Inspector of Forests) wanted to take his son (aged 14) with him, but
the gaoler said, 'Not the father and son together.' The prison
authorities showed their surprise at the sort of criminals who had been
entrusted to them, as the bulk of them were shopkeepers and artisans.
"Included in the number were the burgomaster of Dinant, a sheriff,
professors, barristers, and judges. An imbecile, a dozen children of
about 13, and some old men (one of whom was 81) made up the party. At
the end of a week, we were assembled in a yard and told that we were not
under sentence, but were detained in the interests of public safety."
In that prison the poor wretches were treated with much greater severity
than ordinary prisoners, for they were shut up in cells and had no air.
"By climbing on a chest one might open the window and see a little bit
of the landscape. The ordinary prisoners were allowed to do this but we
were forbidden." There was not a single chair. There was the skeleton of
an iron bed which was quite useless as there was no mattress. There were
four blankets, and two bundles of straw which very soon crumbled into
dust. "One day a week we had an hour in the courtyard, and there we
walked round and round in single file, being forbidden to walk two by
two. There was a guard with fixed bayonets always with us. The food was
absolutely inadequate[21] and we suffered continually from hunger. There
was a certain Croibien who had been slightly wounded at Dinant by a
bullet in his arm. His wound, neglected during the journey, had become
septic and in spite of all his sufferings, nothing was done for him. It
was not until after several days that it was decided to take him to the
infirmary where his arm was amputated; he died the next day. Although
his father and brothers were interned with him, they were not allowed to
see him again, alive or dead."
M. Tschoffen, public prosecutor at Dinant, the high official who writes
these lines, finishes his deposition with these words: "They had no
reason whatever for our arrest, and I do not see any reason that they
could have for setting us at liberty. One fine day they told us that we
were going to leave."
Here is another illustration: Before the 28th February, 1915, more than
10,000 persons, old men, women, and children, who had been deported from
France to Germany, had been repatriated by way of Switzerland. All those
who received them on their return were "alarmed at their ragged
condition and weakness," which was so great that the French Commission
of Enquiry received special instructions to question these victims. They
took the evidence of over 300 witnesses in 28 different localities. To
do justice to their case one ought to quote the whole report--children
brutally torn away from their mothers, poor wretches crowded for days
together in carriages so tightly packed that they had to stand up, cases
of madness occurring among these half-stifled crowds, howling with
hunger. But we must confine our quotations to a few items of "Kultur."
"While the men of Combres set out for Germany, the women and children
were shut up in the village church. They were kept there for a month,
and passed their nights seated in the pews. Dysentery and croup raged
among them. The women were allowed to carry excrement only just outside
the church into the churchyard."--"At least four of the prisoners were
massacred because they could not keep up with, the column, being
completely exhausted."--"Fortin, aged 65, and infirm, could not go any
further. They tied a rope to him, and two horsemen held the ends so that
he had to keep the pace of the horses. As he kept falling down at every
moment, they made him get up by poking him with their lances. The poor
wretch, covered with blood, prayed them to kill him."
"189 inhabitants of Sinceny, who were sent to Erfurt, arrived there
after a journey of 84 hours, during which each of them got nothing but a
single morsel of bread weighing less than four ounces. Another convoy
spent four days on the railway journey and were only fed once, and were
beaten with sticks and fists and with knife handles." The same
brutalities were experienced in the German cities through which they
passed, and very few of the civilian prisoners escaped being buffeted by
the infuriated crowds or being spat upon.
So much for the journey. Now for what happened to them after their
arrival! "The declarations made to us show clearly that the bulk of the
prisoners almost collapsed from hunger. After food had been distributed,
when anything was left, you saw some of them rush to the neighbourhood
of the kitchens; hustled and beaten by the sentries, these unfortunates
risked blows and abuse to try and pick up some additional morsels of
the sickening food. You saw men, dying of hunger, picking up herring
heads, and the grounds of the morning's decoction."
At Parchim, where 2,000 French civilians from 12 to 77 years of age were
interned, two starving prisoners who asked for the scraps left over were
beaten with the butt-ends of rifles to such an extent that they died of
their wounds. The young son of one of them who tried to protect his
father was tied to a stake for a week on end.
On oath, Dr. Page deposes: "Those who had no money almost died of
hunger. When a little soup was left, a crowd of unfortunates rushed to
get it, and the non-commissioned officers got rid of them at last by
letting the dogs loose on them." But what is the need of all these
details and of all this evidence? Look at the 10,000 who came back after
being repatriated and see what the bandits have done to them. Reader,
summon up your courage and peruse to the bitter end the conclusions of
the Official Commission of Enquiry. "It is impossible to conceal the
melancholy and indignation we felt on seeing the state of the
'hostages'[22] whom the Germans had returned to us after they had
kidnapped them in defiance of the rights of nations. During our enquiry
we never ceased hearing the perpetual coughs that rent them. We saw
numbers of young people whose cheerfulness had disappeared apparently
for ever, and whose pale and emaciated faces betrayed physical damage
probably beyond repair. In spite of ourselves we could not help thinking
that scientific Germany had applied her methodical ways to try and
spread tuberculosis in our country. Nor were we less profoundly moved to
thought by the sight of women mourning their desolated hearths and
missing or captive children, or by the moral impression left on the
faces and bearing of many prisoners by the hateful regime which was
intended to destroy, in those who were subjected to it, the feeling of
human dignity and self-respect."[23]