=It is specially forbidden “To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid
down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at
discretion. To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national
flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy.”--Hague
Convention, Article XXIII.=
Wanton Brutality.
I have made it plain from the official documents I have quoted that the
German troops violated every item of this article. But in addition to
cases of brutality already cited in the official document, the Belgian
Mission, while in London, gave me the following:--
On August 19th Aerschot, in North Brabant, with about five thousand
inhabitants, was, as already reported, destroyed. It appears that during
the three days the German soldiery massacred and pillaged the town,
which had not resisted, although there was no military force there
whatever.
In the neighbouring village of Diest many of the inhabitants were put to
the sword. The wife of Francis Luyckx, aged forty-five, and her
daughter, twelve years of age, had, in their terror, taken refuge in a
sewer. They were discovered, dragged out, and shot.
The little daughter of Jean Oyyen, a pretty child of nine, was shot, and
a man named Andre Willem, aged twenty-three, the village sexton, was
bound to a tree and burned alive.
In the village of Schaffen, near Diest, two men, named Lodts and Marken,
both aged forty, were captured and entombed. When exhumed, it was
found that they had been buried alive, head downwards. These
occurrences--which are only a few of a very long list--had been fully
inquired into, and confirmed by the committee of investigation, which
was composed of the highest magistrates of Belgium and the chief
professors of the Universities.
Statements were made that aged villagers in many places on the
Franco-German frontier were hanged to trees; others, after being killed,
had their eyes gouged out. In one place fifteen bodies were found
mutilated in a heap, and along the whole frontier from Luxemburg to
Basle outrages were committed on women, girls, and children.
Mlle. Marie Malet, the daughter of a judicial official in Brussels, who
had been sent to London with a party of Belgian girls for safety, stated
that she had seen a little girl, a friend of hers, aged ten, savagely
sabred by a German officer, merely because she made a remark that the
Germans were bullies. The child died an hour afterwards. Mlle. Malet
stated that she had been sent from near Brussels with her sister, owing
to the insults to which Belgian girls were subjected by German soldiers.
Her mother had been wounded and her home looted of food and valuables.
[Illustration: BELGIAN PEASANTS WATCHING THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR HOMES
BY THE RUTHLESS INVADER.
_Photo, Daily Mirror._]
The record of German atrocities in Belgium, indeed, rivals that of Alva
in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The worst Balkan methods
were being pursued by the army of the pious Kaiser. At Pontillac,
between Liége and Namur, the Burgomaster officially reported that the
men of the 17th Hussars from Mecklenburg entered the place, met with no
resistance, and demanded food, which the inhabitants at once gave them.
After eating and drinking to their full, to the surprise of everyone
they rode wildly through the streets emptying their carbines at the
windows of the houses. Two Belgian soldiers who were secreted in the
village returned their fire. A hot fusillade ensued, and then the
Germans deliberately shot down all the villagers they could find. They
also seized a M. Lahaye, a member of the Communal Council, and dragged
him through the streets with a rope round his neck.
Drunken German Soldiers.
Further details regarding the wild savagery at Aerschot reached the
Belgian Government after the issuing of the official report printed in
the foregoing pages. It seems that the population of the Belgian
provinces overrun by the Germans suffered, not only from the outrages of
the troops acting under the orders of their officers, but also from
atrocities due to drunken soldiers.
In one town some of them fired their rifles openly into the air and
afterwards declared that the inhabitants had fired on them. On this
pretext the people were dragged from their houses, which were then set
on fire, and in many cases women and girls were outraged and the men
shot. At Aerschot the troops--upon whom the Kaiser and the Austrian
Emperor were beseeching God’s blessing--stabled their horses in the
church, one of the most beautiful in Belgium, while the troops were set
to work to destroy the pictures and fittings in the noble edifice. The
Germans accused the son of the Burgomaster of killing the son of a
German colonel. This was denied by the Burgomaster’s son, who only fired
to defend his mother and sister from gross insults by the soldiery.
“=For every evil and unwarrantable act committed in the Western
theatre, ample vengeance will be exacted at the other
end.=”--_Times._
The Germans, however, surrounded the town. The inhabitants were then
dragged from their homes and the women separated from the men. The
latter were divided into batches and forced to run towards the river,
the troops laughing at them and firing at them as they ran. One man who
escaped by feigning death afterwards returned and counted forty-one
bodies of his friends. Many of them had been stabbed by bayonets after
being wounded. About one hundred and fifty of the male inhabitants of
this place were compelled to watch the German troops shoot the
Burgomaster, his son, and the Burgomaster’s brother.
Women Mutilated.
Mr. Adolph Coussmaekrs, a well-known resident of Antwerp, wrote giving
nine cases of atrocities committed by the Germans in the districts of
Orsmael and Barchon.
I do not reproduce here the nine cases instanced by this gentleman. The
wanton mutilation on women and children is revolting and seems
incredible.
In addition, there were criminal assaults on women which I cannot dwell
upon in these pages; they have been narrated by unimpeachable persons.
Mothers had their daughters dragged away from them by shameless officers
to a fate that must have driven them to despair. Women and young
children were injured by bayonet-thrusts and revolver-shots, and were
still suffering from their wounds.
“=In no war of modern times has an enemy so distinguished himself by
war on civilians as in this. The brutality of the methods employed
by the Prussian apostles of ‘culture’ is only equalled by its
futility.=”--_Daily Telegraph._