Their crimes;tr. from the French.

THEIR
CRINES

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED,
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO, MELBOURNE.

1917.
PRICE SIXPENCE.

Walter Clinton Jackson Library

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Special Collections & Rare Books

World War I Pamphlet Collection

THEIR
CRIMES

Translated from the French

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED,

LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO,
MELBOURNE.

1917.

It is proposed to devote any
profits from the sate of this
'work to The League of
Remembrance, or for relief
ivork in Lorraine.

CONTENTS

Preface

PAGE
V

Introduction

vii

Robbery ...

.. 11

Incendiarism

.. 18

Murder

..-. 22

Outrages on Women and Children

... 32

Killing the Wounded

.. 34

Sheltering behind Women ...

.. 39

Martyrdom of Civilian Prisoners...

.. 43

German Excuses : Lies and Calumny

.. 51

The German Appeal

.. 58

Appeal by Belgian Workmen

.. 60

Conclusion

.. 63

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PREFACE.

The purpose of this book is to remind English-speaking
people all over the Empire and our Allies in America of
the wanton destruction and unspeakable terror which have
overwhelmed the regions of France and Belgium occupied
by the Boche, and also to quicken a true perception
of the reparation and punishment due when peace is
made with the enemy. In many minds time has dimmed
the horrors of August and September 1914. When
war weariness is apt to sap resolution and the possibility
of a patched up peace is furtively canvassed, the great
world of the English-speaking race should call to
remembrance the inhuman and barely credible acts of
brutality and bestiality committed in cold blood by the
German race.

No apology is made for this book. It is a translation
of a dccumsnt which has creatsd a profound impression
in France. It is an authoritative record of German
crimes committed on the people of Belgium and
Northern France, attested by the Mayors of twenty-
six French towns. Some time ago permission was
obtained from the French Committee of Publication
(the Prefect of Meurthe-and- Moselle, and the Mayors
of Nancy and Luneville) to produce an English version
on condition that the translation be an " exact and

VI

literal translation." This has been completed and the
Editor, the Rev. J. Esslemont Adams, an Assistant
Principal Chaplain with the British Expeditionary
Force in France, is indebted to the friends who have
assisted in producing the work.

INTRODUCTION

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 #; and "Germany's Viola-
tion of the Laws of Warfare," published by the French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs ; Second, Two volumes con-
taining twenty -two reports of the Belgian Commission!,
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 them-
selves away, are real "pieces a conviction."

"The members oi this Commission were MM. G. Payelle
(Premier President de la Cour des Comptes), A. Mollard (Ministre
Plenipotentiaire), G. Maringer (Conseiller d'Etat), E. Paillot
(Conseiller a la Cour de Cassation) — Rapports et Proces-verbaux,
vols i., ii., iii., iv., Imprimerie Nationale.

tThe Commission, consisting of men of the highest position in
Belgium, is presided over by M. Van Iseghem (President de la
Cour de Cassation). Its reports and the " Reply to the German
White Book " have been published by Berger-Levrault, from which
firm we have also " Carnets de Route" (J. de Dampierre) and
"Paroles Allemandes." "Crimes allemands d'apres des te-moi
gnages allemands," by J. Bedier, is published by Colin.

Vlll

These reports m 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 para-
graph ; 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 our-
selves 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

IX

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 punish-
ment.

L. MIRMAN, Prefect of Meurthe-et- Moselle.

G. SIMON, Mayor of Nancy.

G. KELLER, Mayor of Luneville.

ROBBERY

We shall not waste time over the looting of cellars, of
larders, of poultry yards, of linen-chests, or of whatever
can be consumed promptly, or immediately made use of
by the troops — all these are the merest trifles. Let us also
dismiss pillage, organised on a large scale by the authorities,
of all sorts of raw material and industrial machinery : the
bill on this score will come to several thousand million
francs. Let us likewise put aside official robberies, com-
mitted by governors of towns, or provinces, from municipal
treasuries (even the treasury of the Red Cross at Brussels
was robbed), usually under the form of fines, or of taxes
imposed under transparent pretences. There again there
will be millicns to recover.

We shall deal here with personal robberies only, as
distinct from the pilfering carried on by hungry soldiers,
distinct too from the regular contributions levied on a
conquered country by an unscrupulous administration.
These robberies are innumerable, committed sometimes by
private soldiers, but often by officers, doctors, and high
officials. Here are some examples.

(1) Soldier thieves: They are rougher in their
dealings, and kill those who offer resistance. It is a case
of " Your money or your life." Madame Maupoix, aged
75, living at Triaucourt, was kicked to death while soldiers
ransacked her cupboards. Monsieur Dalissier, aged 73,

1 1

12 THEIR CRIMES

belonging to Congis, was summoned to give up his purse :
he declared that he had no money ; they tied him up
with a rope and fired fifteen shots into his body. Let us
pass quickly over the " soldier thief " — merely small fry !

(2) Officer thieves : At Baron, an officer compelled
the notary to open his safe, and stole money and jewellery
from it. Another, after going through several houses, was
seen wearing on his wrists and fingers six bracelets and
nine rings belonging to women. Soldiers who brought
their officer a stolen jewel received a reward of four shillings.
The robberies at Baccarat and Creil were " directed" by
officers. At Creil, a captain tried to induce Guillot and
Demonts to point out the houses of the richest inhabitants,
and their refusal cost them harsh treatment. At Fosse, a
French military doctor in charge of an ambulance, con-
veying two hundred patients, and himself wounded, was
arrested and taken before a captain. The captain told the
doctor that he would have him shot, and meanwhile
opened the doctor's tunic with his own hand, took out his
pocket-book and appropriated the 400 francs he found
in it.

Officers and privates sometimes share the stolen money.
From a diary belonging to a titled Lieutenant of the
Guards, let us quote this note : —

" Fosse. Village entirely burnt. The 7th Company
made 2000 francs in booty."

From another officer's note-book : —

" More than 3000 francs booty for the battalion."

ROBBERY 13

Another diary, after the sacking of a place, gives a
detailed account of the distribution thus : —

" 460 francs for the first lieutenant, 390 francs for the
second lieutenant, etc. ..."

(3) Doctor thieves : At Choisy-au-Bac, two army
doctors, wearing their brassards, personally sacked the
house of a family named Binder. At Chateau-Thierry
some doctors were made prisoners : their mess-tins were
opened and found to be full of stolen articles. After
Morhange, a French doctor of the 20th Corps remained
in the German lines to be near his wounded. He was
accosted by one of his German Confreres.'* who with his
own hands stole his watch and pocket-book.

At Raon-sur-Plaine, after the retreat of our troops,
Dr. Schneider remained behind with thirty wounded.
Next day up came a German ambulance with Professor
Vulpius, a well-known German scientist of Heidelberg
University, who must have presided over many inter-
national medical congresses. As soon as he was installed,
" Herr Professor" intimated to his French fellow-doctors
that he was " going to begin with a small customary
formality." The formality was a simple one : his colleagues
were to hand over to him " all the money they had on
them." " I strongly protested " (declared the French
doctor, on oath), "but we were compelled to hand over

*We have not found this fact recorded in the Commission's
Reports. It was told to us, on his return from captivity, by Dr.
Marlier, of the 20th Corps, taken prisoner at Morhange, and Dr.
Marlier is the soul of honour.

i4 THEIR CRIMES

our purses and all their contents. Having relieved us
in this way, he turned to our poor wounded, who were
all searched and stripped of their money. There was
nothing to be done : we were in the hands, not of a
doctor, but of a regular brute. . . ."

(4) Royal thieves : After living about a week in a
chateau near Liege, H.R.H. Prince Eitel Fritz, the Duke
of Brunswick, and another nobleman of less importance,
had all the dresses that could be found in the wardrobes
belonging to the lady of the house and her daughters
packed up before their own eyes, and sent to Germany.

These thieves are often facetious : they give as com-
pensation a so-called receipt or bond (in German, of
course), which in French means, " Good for a hundred
lashes," or " Good for two rabbits," or " To be shot," or
" Payable in Paris " . . . . They are also disgusting.
In houses robbed by them they leave, by way of visiting
cards, excrement in beds, on tables, and in cupboards.
They are sometimes unnaturally vicious. In a village
of Limbourg they burnt in a stable a stallion valued at
50,000 francs, and " forced the farmer, his wife and
children to witness the crime on their knees with their arms
raised." Amongst the crowd of unfortunate people brought
from Louvain to Brussels were thirteen priests. The
soldiers at a German guard-house stopped the column, and
ordered the priests to come out. To shoot them ? No.
They forced them into a pigsty, from which they had
driven out the only pig. Forthwith they compelled most

ROBBERY 15

of them to strip off all their clothes, and robbed them of
everything of value they possessed.

These thieves are practical too. At Dinant, safes
were opened with oxy-hydrogen blow-pipes, brought
expressly for that purpose. They have a partiality for
safes, and in this connection the story of Luneville deserves
recording. A house near the station, belonging to
M. Leclerc, was set on fire ; the walls alone remained
standing, and in one of them (on the' second floor) a safe
was left intact. A non-commissioned officer, named Weill,
with a party blew up the wall with dynamite, and the safe
was extricated from the rubbish, carried to the station, put
on a truck, and sent to Boche-land. This man Weill,
before the war, often came to Luneville on business with
hops, was always well received there, made himself agree-
able and knew everybody. When the Germans settled in
the unfortunate town he played a very important part, in
spite of his low rank, in acting as agent, confidential clerk
and guide to the Commanding Officer.

The robbers are also business-like in their transport
arrangements as to carriages, military waggons, lorries, and
motor cars. At Compiegne, where the home of the Or-
setti family was sacked, silver plate, jewellery and articles
of value were collected in the courtyard of the chateau,
then classified, registered, packed and "put into two
carts, upon which they took care to place the Red Cross
flag." We read in the note-book of a wounded German
soldier, under medical treatment at Brussels, "A car has
arrived at the hospital, bringing war booty, a piano, two
sewing machines and all sorts of other things."

1 6 THEIR CR 1MES

In 1870, our clocks were in most demand ; now, pianos
form the attraction, and an immense number have been sent
to Germany. They are the article particularly favoured
by the Boche ladies. In a chateau retaken by our troops,
an officer left behind a letter from his wife, in which is
written, " A thousand thanks for the beautiful things you
sent me. The furs are magnificent, the rosewood furniture
is exquisite ; but don't forget that Elsa is always waiting
for her piano."

These women, however, are not all as patient in waiting
as Elsa. They frequently come and choose for themselves,
and preside over the packing. They have been seen
arriving in motor cars from Strasbourg or Metz, at many
towns in Lorraine, at Luneville, Baccarat, and elsewhere.

All note- books, more or less, contain such items as
these: " Wholesale pillage and abundant loot," "Every-
thing destroyed or sacked," " Looting going strong,"
"Played the piano; looting going strong." This very
German formula frequently occurs, "Methodically plun-
dered." And again, "We have been allowed to plunder ;
we didn't require to be told twice : whole bales of
loot."

" RetheL The Vandals could not have done
better." (The officer who makes this indiscreet admission
and seems to protest against the thefts committed, writes
on the following page: "I have found a silk rainproof
coat and a camera for Felix.")

" Convex '. The village, and the workmen's cottages
looted and sacked. Atrocious. There is something, after
all, in what they say of German barbarians."

ROBBERY i7

Ottignies. The village was pillaged. The blond
beast has made plain what he is. The Huns and the
free-lances of the Middle Ages could not have done
better."

" Cirey. During the night incredible things were
done : shops sacked, money stolen, rapes : enough to make
one's hair stand on end."

INCENDIARISM

In order to punish imaginary crimes, attributed to in-
dividuals or townships, or without even taking the trouble
to discover any kind of pretext, the Germans often,
especially after looting, set everything on fire so as to
make all traces disappear. Sometimes, as at
Courta^on, they compelled the inhabitants to provide
the material for burning their own houses ; or, as at
Recquignies, forced prisoners " to set the houses of the
doctor and mayor on fire with lighted straw." But
generally they do the work themselves. They have a
special service for this, and all the requisite incendiary
material is carefully prepared ; torches, grenades, fuses,
oil pumps, firebrands, satchels of pastilles containing very
inflammable compressed powder, etc. German science
has applied itself to the perfecting of the technique of
incendiarism. The village is set alight by a drilled method.
Those concerned act quite coolly, as a matter of duty, as
though in accordance with a drill scheme laid down and
perfected beforehand.

Of course, fire once let loose, these people have to see
that it does its work completely : accordingly, at Louvain,
they destroyed the fire-engines and fire-escapes ; at Namur,
they stopped the firemen at the very moment they were
preparing to do their duty.

In this way they sometimes wilfully burned down whole
blocks of dwellings (Luneville) : sometimes an entire
district ( 1 05 houses at Senlis, 1 1 2 at Baccarat) : sometimes

18

INC END I A R1SM 1 9

almost a whole town itself (more than 300 houses at
Gerbeviller, 800 at Sermaize, 1 ,200 at Dinant, 1 ,800 at
Louvain#). On other occasions they did not leave a house
standing (Nomeny, Clermont-en-Argonne, Sommeilles).

The complete list of buildings, cottages, farms, villas,
factories, or chateaux, burned wilfully in this way by hand,
will be a formidable one, amounting to tens of thousands.*)"

Refinement of cruelty frequently occurs. At Aerschot
" women had to witness the sight of the conflagration
holding their hands up. Their torture lasted six hours."
At Crevic, the Germans began their sinister work by
burning a chateau which they knew belonged to General
Lyautey. The troops, commanded by an officer, shouted
out for Madame and Mademoiselle Lyautey "that
they might cut their heads off."

The houses destroyed by fire were not always unin-
habited. At Maixe, M. Demange, wounded in both
knees, dragged himself along and fell prostrate in his
kitchen ; his house was set on fire and Madame Demange
was forcibly prevented from going to the rescue of her
husband, who perished in the flames. At Nomeny,
Madame Cousin, after being shot, was thrown into the
burning building and roasted. At the same place, M.
Adam was thrown alive into the flames. Let us note in

* They destroyed by fire the Library at Louvain, with its
200,000 volumes and its incomparable treasures. By means of
shells and fire they have injured in one place, totally destroyed in
another, wonders of art that were an integral part of our human
heritage ; our Cathedrals at Rheims, Arras, Ypres, &c.

t Belgium alone accounts for about 20,000.

20 THEIR CRIMES

connection with him, to their credit, an act of comparative
humanity. Finding that the unhappy man was not
being burnt fast enough, they ended his misery in the
flames by shooting him. At Monceau-sur-Sambre, where
they set fire to 300 houses, they confined the two brothers
S. in a shed, and the unfortunate men were burnt
alive.*

The soldiers' diaries are filled with descriptions of in-
cendiarism, some of which we now quote. " Returned
by Mazerulles, which was burnt as we passed through,
because the engineers found a telephone there connected
up with the French."')" "The whole village was in ablaze.
Everything destroyed in the street, except one small house ;
in front of the door was a poor woman with her six chil-
dren, her arms raised and begging for mercy. And every
day it is the same thing."

Parux. "The first village burnt (in Lorraine, on the
10th August) ; after that the fun began. Villages in
flames, one after the other." Another note-book simply
states, "Sommepy — horrible carnage. The village entirely
burnt ; the French thrown into the burning houses ;
civilians with the rest." Another recalls theatrical
memories. " The village is ablaze ; it reminds one of the
conflagration of Walhalla in the ' Twilight of the Gods.' "

Here is a poet speaking : " The soldiers set up the
red cock {i.e., fire) upon the houses, just as they like."

* This fact is quoted in the admirable book by Captain A. de
Gerlache, entitled " Belgium and the Belgians during the War,"
published by the firm of Berger-Levrault.

t See note at foot of page 3 1 .

INCENDIA RISM 2 1

This poet is moved, and speaks of " pure vandalism "
on the part of his companions in arms. And again, a
musician writes, " Throwing of incendiary grenades into
the houses ; a military concert in the evening — * Nun
danket alle Gott' ! (Now thank we all our God)."
Finally, a Bavarian : " The village (Saint- Maurice,
Meurthe-et- Moselle) was surrounded, and the soldiers
posted one yard apart so that no one could escape.
Then the Uhlans set lire to the place, one house after
the other. No man, woman, or child could possibly
escape. Only the cattle were removed in safety, because
cattle have some value. Anyone trying to escape was
shot. Everything in the village was destroyed." We
shall see presently that they even went so far as to
burn ambulances.

MURDER

Not having sufficient space for a complete catalogue,
we shall here simply mention the judicial murders of
Miss Cavell, Eugene Jacquet, Battisti, and others, in
order to honour the memory of those noble victims. For
the same reason, as they are now well known to
everyone, we content ourselves with merely recalling
the criminal torpedoing of the Litsitania* Ancona,
Portugal, Amiral '- Ganteaume .... all merchant
steamers, without any military character whatever, em-
ployed in carrying passengers of every nationality, and
the last-named crowded with refugees.

We may pass over the crimes committed from a
distance, so to speak, on unfortified towns, with field-
pieces, long-range guns, aeroplanes, and Zeppelins, merely
noting that the Germans were the first to fire shells into
the centre of towns indiscriminately. If they made an
exception, it was to aim at the cathedral square, when
people were leaving after Mass, as at Nancy, or into the
market-place at the time when women are busiest, as
they did at Luneville.

We only mention here such outrages as were com-
mitted at close quarters with hand-weapons, bayonets
or rifles. The list is a long one. Will the exact
number of victims ever be known ? In Belgium alone
it has been proved that up to now more than 5,000

* They have decorated the pirates who sank the Lusitania.
They glory in the crime, and have even struck a commemorative
medal in its honour.

22

MURDER 23

civilians have been assassinated : grown men, old people,
women and children. They slaughtered their victims
sometimes one by one, sometimes in groups, often in
masses. They were not content only with killing. At
one place they organised round the massacre such tragic
scenes, and at another displayed such refinements of
cruelty, that reason falters in face of their acts, and asks
what terrible madness has brought this race to such low
depths ? Is it possible ? Yes, it is. Judge by the
following examples : —

At Foret, the village schoolmaster was shot for refusing
to trample under foot the national flag, torn down from
the front of the school. * At Schaffen, A. Willem was
tied to a tree and burnt alive, and two other unfortunate
men were buried alive. Madame Luykx and her little
girl, 12 years old, were shot together in a cellar. J.
Reynders and his young nephew, 10 years of age, were
both shot in the street. At Sompuis, an old man named
Jacquemin, aged 70, was bound to his bed by an officer
and left there without food for three days, dying soon
after his release.

A Westphalian prisoner states, ' The commanding
officer ordered us to shoot two women, and we did so.
One of them was holding a child by the hand, and in
falling she dragged the child over with her. The officer
gave orders to shoot the child, because it could not be
left alone in the world." At Rouves, a Government
clerk refused to tell a Bavarian officer the numbers of

# In this case, and many of the following ones, the reader is
requested to note, and remember, the motive for the murders.

24 THEIR CRIMES

the French regiments in the neighbourhood. The officer
killed him with two shots from his revolver. At
Crezancy, another officer shot with his own hand young
Lesaint, 18 years old, "to prevent his being a soldier
later on." At Embermenil, Madame Masson was shot
for having, in absolute good faith, given some wrong
information. As she was obviously in a state of
pregnancy they made her sit down on a bench to meet
her fate. At Ethe, two priests were shot " for having
buried some weapons." At Marqueglise, a superior
officer ordered the arrest of four young fugitives.
Learning that two of them came from Belgium, he
exclaimed, " The Belgians are filthy people," and without
more ado took his revolver and shot them one after the
other. Three were killed outright, the fourth expired
the following day.

From the crowd of fugitives which left Louvain in
flames, the priests were singled out, and searched. On
one of them, a Jesuit father, by name Dupierreux, they
found a note-book containing the following note in French,
" When I used to read about the Huns under Attila
devastating towns, I smiled. I smile no longer now that
I have seen with my own eyes the hordes of to-day
setting fire to the churches and library of Louvain." In
front of the assembled troops the priests were placed in
a semi-circle round the Jesuit Father. The incriminating
phrase was read out, and then translated into German.
The lieutenant said that it constituted an incitement to
murder, and that the Jesuit must be shot on the spot.
The sentence was carried out forthwith, and the other

MURDER 25

priests, his companions, were made to bury him where
he fell.

At Pin, some Uhlans found two young boys on the
road. They tied them by the arms to their horses and
galloped off. The bodies of the poor lads were found a
few miles away — their knees were "literally crushed";
one had his throat cut and both had several bullets in
their heads. At Sermaize, a labourer, named Brocard,
and his son, were arrested. His wife and daughter-in-
law, mad with terror, threw themselves into a neighbouring
stream. The old man broke away, and ran to try and

save them. The Germans dragged him away Four

days later Brocard and the son, on being liberated,
returned home, and after a search, found the bodies.
The two women, while still in the water, had been shot
several times through the head. A parish priest named
Dergent was taken to Aerschot, stripped, and tied to a
cross in front of the church ; his fingers and toes were
crushed and broken with the butt-end of a rifle. The
inhabitants were made to pass in front of him and were
each compelled to urinate on him in turn ; then he was
shot and his body thrown into the canal. #

* This cruel treatment of the Abbe Dergent, priest of Gelrode,
near Louvain, is reported by a neutral witness, Father G., a student
at Louvain. The German soldiers accused the Belgian priests of
every conceivable crime ; the Assistant- Priest of Sainte-Gertrude
(Louvain), who was remonstrating with a soldier, received this
reply : " We are Catholics too, but you are pigs and black devils."
In Belgium about one hundred of the clergy were massacred.
Note further that in this unfortunate country doctors were par-
ticularly ill-treated ; thirty-seven being shot in the small parishes,
while more than one hundred and fifty disappeared altogether from
large towns.

26 THEIR CRIMES

At Herimenil, during the pillage, the inhabitants were
shut up in a church, and kept there for four days without
food. When Madame Winger, 23 years of age, and her
three young servants, one girl and two boys, were too slow
in leaving her farm to go to the church, the captain
ordered his men to fire on them. Four more dead bodies !
The Germans arrived at Monchy-Humieres. A group
of inhabitants watched them marching past. No pro-
vocation whatever was offered, but an officer thought that
he heard someone utter the word " Prussians." He at
once called out three dragoons, and ordered them to fire
upon the group — one killed and two wounded — one of
the latter being a little girl of four.

At Sommeilles, when the fire — which destroyed the
whole place — broke out, Madame X. took refuge in a
cellar belonging to M. and Madame Adnot, who were
there, with their four children, the eldest a girl of 1 I years.
A few days after, on returning to the village, our soldiers
found the seven bodies in the cellar lying in a pool of
blood, several of them being horribly mutilated. Madame
X. had her right arm severed from her body ; the little
girl's foot had been cut off, and the little boy of five had
his throat cut.

At Louveigne a certain number of men were shut up
in a blacksmith's shop ; in the afternoon the murderers
opened the door as if it were a pigeon -shooting competi-
tion, drove the prisoners out, and shot them down — a
ghastly group of 1 7 corpses.

At Senlis the heroic Mayor, M. Odent, and six
members of his staff were shot.

MURDER 27

At Gerbeviller they forced their way into the house of
M. and Madame Lingenheld ; seized the son, aged 36,
exempt from service, and wearing the badge of the Red
Cross, tied his hands, dragged him into the street and shot
him. They then returned to look for the father, an old
man of 70. Meanwhile the mother, mad with terror,
made her escape. On coming out she saw her son lying
on the ground. As he still showed signs of life, they threw
paraffin over him and roasted him. The father was shot
later on with fourteen other old men. More than 1 50
victims were identified in this parish.

At Nomeny, M. Vasse provided shelter for a number
of neighbours in his cellar. Fifty soldiers got in and set
fire to the house. To escape the flames the refugees
rushed out and were shot one by one as they emerged.
Mentre was killed first ; his son Leon, with his little eight-
year-old sister in his arms, fell next : as he was not
quite dead they put the barrel of a rifle to his ear and
blew his brains out. Then came the turn of a family
named Kieffer. The mother was wounded ; the father,
his boy and girl, aged respectively 10 and 3, were shot
down. They fell on them with fury. Striffler, Guillaume, and
Vasse were afterwards massacred. Young Mile. Simonin,
1 7 years old, and her small sister, afraid to leave their
refuge in the cellar, were eventually driven out by the
flames, and immediately shot at. The younger child
had an elbow almost blown off by a bullet ; as the
elder girl lay wounded on the ground, she was de-
liberately kicked by a soldier. At Nomeny 40 victims
were identified.

28 THEIR CRIMES

And now we come to some of the wholesale
slaughters. At Louvain, more than 100 victims ; at
Aerschot, over 150; at Soumagne, 1 65 ; at Ethe, 1 97 ;
at Andenne, over 300 ; at Tamines, 400 ; at Dinant,
upwards of 600, of whom 7 1 were women, 34 old men of
over seventy, 6 children from five to nine years old, and
1 1 under five. At Aerschot, a first batch of 78 men
were taken out of the town, and ordered to advance in
groups of three, holding each other by the hand, when
they were made to pass in front of some German Military
Police, who shot them all at short range with revolvers.
Others had their hands bound so tightly that many
screamed with pain : they spent the night lying on
the ground, and were shot the next day. Many, before
execution, were compelled to dig their own graves. At
Dinant, the victims were placed in two rows, the first
kneeling, the second standing. Then came the order —
" Fire ! " At Tamines, several hundred men were massed
in the Place Saint- Martin, on the bank of the Sambre.
The assassins stood ten yards away and fired a volley. All
fell, but some were not wounded. The officer in com-
mand ordered them to " stand up." A second volley was
fired. As soon as the firing finished, there was a frightful
scene which lasted until the evening — the killing of the
wounded. Many soldiers, some wearing the badge of the
Red Cross, approached their victims by the light of small
lanterns, and passed through their ranks, clubbing them
with the butt end of their rifles, and stabbing with bayonets.
A perfect shambles !

In these horrors we do not discern the musical note, or

MURDER 29

the acknowledgment of the " Old German God." Yet,
here is a specimen : —

At Andenne, Colonel Schumann, in command of the
Potsdam Rifles, organised a grand concert in the evening at
the Place des Tilleuls. The entertainment ended with a
prayer !

It now remains for us to publish a few extracts from
note-books found upon officers and privates. Some are
short items like the following : — " Pepinster, 12th August.
Burgomaster, Priest and Schoolmaster shot, and houses
burnt to the ground. We resume our march." Another,
" Villers-en-Fagne, village in flames. The population had
notified the French of the . approach of the grenadiers ;
thereupon the hussars set fire to the village, the Parish
Priest and others being shot."

Others enter into details of the executions. " Leffe.
We shoot everyone who fires on our men. We put three,
one behind the other, and a Marburg rifleman kills them
outright with a single shot. It is war to the knife."

Another expresses something other than enthusiasm for
such work. " Considering that the King (of the Belgians)
has given orders to defend the country by all possible
means, we have been ordered to shoot every male inhabi-
tant. At Dinant more than 1 00 were collected in a crowd
and shot. A dreadful Sunday." Another, an aesthete,
writes as follows : " During the night many more civilians
were shot, so many that we were able to count over 200.
Women and children, with lamps in their hands, were
compelled to witness the horrible sight. We afterwards

30 THEIR CRIMES

ate our rice among the dead bodies. Sadly beautiful."
He adds (in shorthand) " Captain Hermann was drunk."

Again another: "Dinant. We have been firing on
everyone who showed himself, or on those thrown out of
the houses, men or women. The bodies lie in the streets,
in heaps a yard deep."

A Saxon officer writes : " My company is at Bouvignes.
Our men behave like vandals : everything is upset ; the
sight of the slaughtered inhabitants defies all description ;
not a house is left standing. We have dragged out of
every corner all survivors, one after another, men, women,
and children, found in a burning cloister, and have shot
them 'en masse.' '

The following depositions on the massacres at Nomeny
are made by prisoners, one a Bavarian officer in the Reserve,
the other a private in the same regiment. The lieutenant
says : " I gathered the impression that it was impossible for
the officers at Nomeny to prevent such acts. As far as 1
can judge, the crimes committed there, which horrified all
the soldiers who were at Nomeny later on, must be put
down to the acts of unnatural brutes." The soldier says,
" At five o'clock regimental orders were received to kill
every male inhabitant of Nomeny, and to rase everything
to the ground ; we forced our way into the houses."
Here is a more detailed account of a massacre near
Blamont. " AH the villagers fled : it was terrible ; their
beards thick with blood, and what faces ! They were
dreadful to look at. The dead were all buried, numbering
sixty. Among them were many old men and women, and
one unfortunate woman half confined — the whole being

MURDER 31

frightful to look at. Three children were clasped in each
other's arms, and had died thus. The Altar and the
vaulting of the church were destroyed because there was
a telephone # communicating with the enemy. This morn-
ing, 2nd September, all the survivors were expelled. I
saw four small boys carrying away on two sticks a cradle
containing a baby of five or six months. All this is dreadful
to see. Blow for blow : thunder against thunder ! Every
thing is given up to pillage. I also saw a mother with her
two children ; one had a big wound on the head, and one
eye knocked out."

* To whom did it belong, and where was it ? Telephones exist in
every district of Meurthe-et-Moselle. Besides, our army installed
field telephones which were not all destroyed at the time of their
retreat. It is a most foolish pretext, yet where can one find a more
stupid one than this ? A German official communique, in order to
prove that the general rising of the people had been organized for a
longtime, declares, "that depots of arms were installed, where each
rifle bore the name of the man for whom it was intended." It is abso-
lutely clear that this applies to arms taken from civilians by order of
the local authorities in Belgium and France, and deposited at the
Town Hall, every weapon bearing the name of its owner. Would
they have taken that for an arsenal ? No, stupid as they may be,
they are not so foolish as that. They feign stupidity simply because
they know very well that the conscience of the civilized world is
beginning to be moved.

OUTRAGES ON WOMEN AND
CHILDREN

We might write a long and heartbreaking chapter on
this pitiful subject, but let the following suffice. The
Report of the French Commission of Enquiry concludes
with these words, " Outrages upon women and young
girls have been common to an unheard-of extent."
No doubt the bulk of these crimes will never come to
light, for it needs a concatenation of special circumstances
for such acts to be committed in public. Unfortu-
nately and only too often these circumstances have
existed, e.g., at Beton-Bazoches and Sancy-les-Provins,
a young girl, and at St. Denis-les-Rebaix, a mother-in-law
and a little boy of eight years old, and at Coulommiers
a husband and two children, were witnesses to outrages
committed on the mother of the family. Sometimes the
attacks were individual and sometimes committed by bodies
of men, e.g., at Melen-Labouxhe, Margaret W. was
violated by twenty German soldiers, and then shot by the
side of her father and mother. They did not even respect
nuns.

* See the report of the French Commission (vol. i., page 35).
See also, in the " Reply to the White Book," p. 500, the moving
letter of Cardinal Mercier to von Bissing : " My conscience forbids
my divulging to any tribunal the information, alas, only too well
substantiated, which I possess. Outrages on nuns have been
committed ..."

32

OUTRAGES ON WOMEN, ETC. 33

They did not even spare grandmothers (Louppy-le-
Chateau, Vitry-en-Perthois . . .).

Nor did they respect children. ... At Cirey, a witness
(a University professor), whose statements one of us took
down a few days after the tragedy, cried to a Bavarian
officer, " Have you no children in Germany 7 " All the
officer said in reply was, " My mother never bore swine
like you."

Now and then they let themselves loose on a whole
family ; at Louppy, the mother and her two young girls
aged thirteen and eight, respectively, were simultaneous
victims of their savagery.

The outrages sometimes lasted till death. At Nimy,
the martyrdom of little Irma G. lasted six hours till death
delivered her from her sufferings. When her father tried
to rescue her he was shot, and her mother was seriously
wounded. Indeed, it was certain destruction to any frenzied
parent who tried to defend his child. A clergyman of
Dixmude says, " The burgomaster of Handzaeme was
shot for trying to protect his daughter." And how many
other cases have occurred ! We have not the heart to
continue the list.

KILLING THE WOUNDED

There are great numbers of wounded who, on
their solemn oath, have related how, when lying on the
field of battle, they saw their wounded comrades " finished
off " by rifle or revolver shots, or by blows from butt-ends,
or by bayonet stabs, or kicked to death by German soldiers,
non-commissioned officers, and even by officers. *

We cannot pause to analyse these innumerable deposi-
tions. There is other evidence. How often, when a
counter-attack has put us in possession of ground lost the
day before, have we found poor fellows " finished off" —
with their throats cuts, as in the case of the two sergeants of
the 31st Chasseurs at the Pass of Sainte- Marie, or "with
their own bayonets driven into their mouths," like the poor
little fellow of the 1 7th. The enemy often runs amok
like this : — " On August 23rd, the Cure of Remereville
tended Lieutenant Toussaint (who passed out first at the
Forestry School in July). When he fell in battle, this
young officer was bayoneted by all the Germans who
passed near him, and his body was a mass of wounds
from head to feet." At Oudrigny " a German officer met
a French vehicle showing the Red Cross flag, and loaded
with ten wounded. He deployed his company, and fired
two volleys at it." At Bonviller, an officer murdered nine
French wounded, stretched helpless in a barn, by shooting
them through the ear. On 23rd August at Montigny-le-
Tilleul, M. Vital was caught in the act of tending a French
soldier, L. Sohier by name, wounded in the head and

Report of the French Commission, vol. in.

• 34

KILLING THE WOUNDED 35

side. Such a crime deserved punishment, and the wretches
first shot the orderly and then the patient.

At Ethe they set a shed on fire and roasted more than
twenty wounded who were lying there.

We all know the celebrated order of General Stenger
in the region of Thiaville (Meurthe-et- Moselle) : — " No
prisoners are to be taken. All prisoners, whether wounded
or not, must be slaughtered."

It was not only in Lorraine that such orders were given.
Listen to the depositions of a German soldier: "The same day
we saw eighteen other Frenchmen. Lieutenant N. told us
to shoot them as he did not know what else to do with them."

Read this letter found at L'Ecouvillon in a German
trench which we recaptured : " Every day we take many
prisoners, but they are shot at once as we no longer know
where to put them."

Think of the diary in which a German soldier near
Peronne recorded his impressions of the day : " They lay
in heaps of ten or twelve, some dead and some still living.
Those who could still walk were marched off. Those
who were wounded in the head or lungs, and could not lift
themselves up, were finished off with a bullet. That is the
order which we got."

A German soldier, while being nursed in a hospital at
Nancy, confided to Dr. Roemer that the wound in his
stomach "had been inflicted on him by a German N.C.O.
because he refused to finish off a wounded Frenchman."

Wounded were not only massacred on the field of
battle, but field hospitals were also the scene of atrocities.
At Gomery, in a casualty clearing station, under Dr.

36 THEIR CRIMES

Sedillot, there were numerous wounded remaining in the
German lines. A German officer with twenty- five men
visited the place and inspected it and retired, saying that
all was in order. But a N.C.O. and a party of soldiers
remained in the street outside. They were excited and
kept shouting, " It is war to the death," and making signs
of cutting throats. They rushed in and with their revolvers
shot down Dr. Sedillot (who happily survived, with
others, to give evidence), and set fire to the place.
Maddened by the flames, the wounded (many of whom
had had amputations performed on them that very
morning) leapt from the windows on the first floor and
fell into the garden, where the executioners picked them
up, gathering them in a bunch, and shot them. In this
way Lieutenant Jeannin and Dr. Charette were murdered,
and from one hundred to one hundred and twenty officers
and soldiers — whose wounds should have made them
sacred — perished from shot or fire after terrible sufferings.

When all is said, however, it is better to kill wounded
soldiers by fire or sword than by starvation, as the
following incident shows : One hundred wounded
Frenchmen, together with Dr. Bender, were brought
to the Stenay barracks, and one hundred and eighty
more came in shortly afterwards ; the latter, having been
left out unattended on the battle-field for five days,
were in a terrible condition. Dr. Bender in vain begged
the Germans for help in getting the wounded men out of
the ambulances into the hospital. The Boches refused,
and simply went on sucking their pipes. Though
wounded himself, the doctor, with the aid of two male

KILLING THE WOUNDED 37

nurses (Frenchmen both), had to do the whole thing
himself. For several days the Boches gave them no
food at all. " Our poor fellows screamed with hunger,"*
says the doctor, on oath, and adds, " I had sixty badly
wounded with me, and begged the German army doctor
to operate, but he said he had no time. I then asked
his leave to operate myself, but his reply was, " You
are in the German lines, and must conform to our rules."
The doctor ends his pathetic evidence with the words,
" Nearly all these unhappy men died of neglect."

We have seen doctors, like Professor Vulpius, actually
steal money ; but of all the types of Boche doctors, the
most hideous is the hero of the following tale, taken from
the deposition of Dr. Bender. " A French soldier, at
Stenay, was under my treatment. He had a wound in
his foot — not very severe, which did not need an
operation at all. What was my astonishment to find
that a German army surgeon had amputated his thigh ?
I could not help expressing my indignation, and the
surgeon's only reply was, "He will be a man the less
against us in the next war."f They will deny these
crimes to-morrow, but in 1914 they gloried in them.

* He adds that certain orderlies — Lorrainers, belonging to the
German Army — supplied them with food on the sly.

t French chivalry could hardly believe that a doctor would am-
putate a wounded enemy's limb without absolute necessity and in
mere revenge, but such cases are, alas, not rare. See the awful
tales of torture in the "Journal d'un Grand Blesse en Allemagne,"
by Charles Hennebois (pp. 137, 146), and the statement of a
German doctor (p. 87), " Your doctors in France perform amputa-
tions as they please on our wounded. The order has therefore been
given to amputate without hesitation, as reprisals, every damaged
limb."

3 8 THEIR CRIMES

On the 1 8th of October a Silesian newspaper published
an article sent from the front by a N.C.O., in which he
says, " Men who are particularly tender-hearted give the
French wounded the ' coup de grace ' with a bullet, but the
others cut and thrust as much as possible. Our enemies
fought bravely .... whether they are slightly or badly
wounded our brave Fusiliers spare the Fatherland as far
as possible the expensive trouble of looking after numerous
enemies. In the evening, with prayers of thanksgiving on
our lips, we go to sleep." Are these mere boastings of
crimes ? No. The article was submitted to the Captain
of the Company who certified it as correct and counter-
signed it. The N.C.O., the Captain, the Silesian public,
the whole German nation were delighted to see this
abominable story of murder and shame appear in the
paper under the heading, " A Day of Honour for our
Regiment."^

* Let us quote, to show the mental " make-up " of certain Germans,
the conditions in which Captain Coustre of the 108th and Captain
Lesourd of the 50th met their deaths. They were wandering over
the battlefield where the enemy had been repulsed. They heard a
cry for help. There was a soldier in one place and an officer in
another who asked for a drink. They stopped and leant over
them to give them a drink from their flasks when the wounded
men blew their brains out.

SHELTERING BEHIND WOMEN

Let us call to mind the innumerable instances when
the Boches put up their hands, or waved a white flag,
and cried, " Kamerad," pretending to surrender : thus
drawing our unsuspecting men towards them and then
suddenly moving aside, to leave the field open to a
party of riflemen or a machine-gun hidden away behind
them. These are the tricks of cowards, which were
constantly employed at the beginning of the war, and
our men (at the cost of many victims) learned at
last to guard against them. But they have done even
more cowardly things than this. There was the German
officer who, to protect himself from danger while taking
observations, put three children round him. At Nery,
twenty-five persons, women and children, were compelled
to walk at the side of a Boche column to protect it from
being enfiladed. Near M alines, six German soldiers who
were taking with them five young girls, on meeting a
Belgian patrol, placed the girls all round them to
prevent the enemy from firing. At Jodoigne they put
a Cure in front of them and made him walk with his
arms folded, and they did the same at Hougaerde to
another Cure who was killed. A similar fate befell
several civilians at Mons. At Senlis, our men were
firing to cover our retreat, and the Germans took some
inhabitants out of the houses and made them walk in the
middle of the streets while they themselves kept along

39

4o THEIR CRIMES

by the walls. Many of these unfortunate people were
killed. " In numerous places," says the Belgian Com-
mission of Enquiry, " the Germans made civilians — men
and women — walk in front of them." In this way a
German column passed through Marchienne, pushing
ahead of them a body of several hundred civilians.
They took the road for Montigny-le-Tilleul, where the
first important battle with the French forces took place.
At Sempst, during the fighting on the 25th August, men
and women were placed in the front rank of the firing
line. At Erpe, on the 12th September, a German
column, attacked by a Belgian motor-machine-gun, took
out of the houses twenty to twenty-five men and young
people (including a child of thirteen), and made them
walk in front in the middle of the road. The machine-
gunners, seeing civilians in front of them, ceased firing.
At Alost, a German company attacked the bridge. In
front marched some thirty civilians with a machine-gun
hidden behind them. At Nimy, with the butt-ends of
their rifles, they drove in front of them 500 men, women
and children towards the English, who in consequence
dared not fire ; and in this way the 84th and 85th
Schleswig Regiments were able to continue their heroic
march as far as Maubeuge.

When their adversary cannot actually see the human
shield that they are using, they send a warning. On the 7th
September, 1914, the Death's Head Hussars shut up all
the inhabitants of the village with them in the Chateau
of Saint Ouen-sur-Morin, and then, to avoid being shelled,
informed the English of their " dispositions." They fired

SHELTERING BEHIND WOMEN 41

on anyone who tried to escape. At Mouzon, we saw a
number of civilians being pushed in front of the enemy
with the butt-ends of rifles, and we stopped firing. The
wretched people moved suddenly to one side of the road,
uncovering the Germans, and then we fired. The Boches,
furious, fired their first volley not at us, but point blank at
these non-combatants, who were decimated.

The cowards chiefly used civilians as shields, but some-
times they also made use of prisoners. At Key em, they
pushed one hundred Belgian soldiers in front of them,
some with their hands tied, and others with their arms in
the air. At Dixmude, they advanced under the shelter
of forty disarmed marines who had been taken prisoners.
When they got in front of our lines our marines shouted,
" For God's sake fire, these are Germans," and these
heroes fell gloriously under the French bullets, Such
deeds are countless.

The Boches will deny them later on, but in 1914 they
did not deny them, but rather gloried in them as a " good
idea." We can see this from the letter of the Bavarian
Lieutenant Eberlein, published on the 7th October, 1914,
by a leading Munich paper, " We had arrested three
other civilians when a * good idea ' struck me. We made
them sit on chairs in the middle of the street ; — suppli-
cations from them, and blows with butt-ends of rifles from
us. At last they were seated outside in the street with
their hands convulsively clasped together. I felt sorry
for them, but the plan worked at once. As I learnt later,
the regiment which entered Saint- Die, further to the north
of us, had precisely similar experiences to our own. The

42 THEIR CRIMES

civilians, whom they had put in the same way in the
middle of the street, were killed by French bullets. I
saw their dead bodies."*

* We have not, so far, come across any attempted justification, by
German authors, of these cowardly acts ; but such we shall have
without fail. It is probable that the 93 " intellectuals " whose
manifesto we recall to memory a few pages farther on are preparing
a fresh "appeal to the civilized wcrld " with a view to explaining
that the German troops — the representatives and trustees of Kultur
— are authorised by God Himself to use every means for the
protection of their precious lives.

MARTYRDOM OF CIVILIAN
PRISONERS

After having burnt our villages,* and shot the inhabi-
tants 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, f What
a journey, and what a place of residence !

* Prisoners, as well as wounded, have very often been massacred
on the field of battle. As to the treatment that prisoners — French,
Belgian, Russian and English — have undergone in German camps,
it is a pitiful tale that we do not intend to begin here. Some day it
must be written. With the actual evidence before us, the lot of the
German prisoners in England, Russia and France must be com-
pared with that of ours in Germany. The most indifferent reader
will feel his heart stirred within him, and will hesitate to say whether
we were " generous," or whether we were " fools."

t We speak of those who have left — but what of those who have
remained in Belgium and France, under the German heel ? The
time has not yet come for writing this piece of history, but we cannot
refrain from referring to the sufferings of these children of the
North, boys and girls, torn from their families, carried off like bands
of slaves to other invaded regions to be employed on forced labour.
France has apprised the neutral countries of these facts : Will they
remain silent ?

43

44 THEIR CRIMES

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 1 00 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 abomin-
ably 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

MARTYRDOM OF PRISONERS 45

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 be-
tween 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.# We arrived at Wilhelmshohe
(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, con-
stantly 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.

* Further on it will be seen that much worse happened on
numerous other journeys.

46 THEIR CRIMES

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 8 1 ) 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 * 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,

* " We got one pound of black sour bread per diem. In the
morning we had a tepid decoction intended for coffee ; at mid-day
a pint and a half of thick soup, and at night rather less than a pint
of thin soup. On three occasions only did we get potatoes, but
never once meat. Cabbage soup was the usual thing and after a
certain time it turned our stomachs. Certain prisoners were em-
ployed in chopping up the cabbages to make sauerkraut, and they
had to keep the broken leaves, as these were used up for our soup."

MARTYRDOM OF PRISONERS 47

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 instruc-
tions 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

48 THEIR CRIMES

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."

44 1 89 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

MARTYRDOM OF PRISONERS 49

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 1 0,000 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 '* 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 our-
selves we could not help thinking that scientific Germany

* Through an old habit, the Commission makes use of this word ;
they are not " hostages," of course.

50 THEIR CRIMES

had applied her methodical ways to try and spread tuber-
culosis in our country. Nor were wTe 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."*

* It must also be noted that when the Commissioners making the
enquiry saw the repatriated people, they had had some time in which
to recover, first in Switzerland, and then in France. The arrival of
these pitiable drafts gave rise (even among those of the Swiss people
who were in principle the least hostile to Germany) to such a feeling
of horror for their executioners that the Kaiser took warning and
thought it wiser to suspend the repatriations for several months.
For the welcome and the kind care which our poor martyrs received
at the hands of the Swiss, our grateful thanks and salutations
are due !

GERMAN EXCUSES: LIES AND
CALUMNY

The Boches have taken up three positions in succession.
In the first place, in their speeches, in their writings and
by commemorative pictures and medals, they have gloried
in their misdeeds, thus declaring that Kultur is above
morality (as stated by their writer, Thomas Mann), and
that the right of German might is above everything.
Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in
the world outside them there was something known as a
" moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to
be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charges.
Finally, when they were driven from this second trench,
when simple negation became impossible, they had
perforce to explain their crimes.

Their commonest explanation is this, "Civilians fired on
us."# The French Commission of Enquiry came to the
following conclusion on this point : " This allegation is
false, and those who put it forward have been powerless
to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been
their custom to fire shots in the neighbourhood of dwellings,
in order to be able to affirm that they have been attacked
by innocent inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they
had resolved."

Need it be noted here that even if in any locality an imprudent
civilian had fired a shot, it would still remain — in accordance with
the Hague Convention, International Law, and plain morality — a
veritable crime to massacre in a heap, haphazard, and without
enquiry, so many innocent souls ?

51

52 THEIR CRIMES

Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established
the fact that German officials are very frequently guilty of
premeditated lies. It is probable, all the same, that many
German soldiers, on entering Belgium or France, were
obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The
cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting
for pillage — " Man hat geschossen (they have fired) " —
is enough for a locality to be delivered up at once to the
wildest fury. " When an inhabitant has fired on a
regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, " the place belongs
to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier
to fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and
massacre !

Some mistakes have possibly been made which could
have been avoided by the least enquiry. Read this
admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon officer : " The
lovely village of Gue-d'Hossus has been given over to the
flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a
cyclist fell off his machine and that his fall caused his rifle
to go off of itself. As a consequence there was firing in
his direction. Then, the male inhabitants were simply
hurled straight away into the flames. Such horrors will
not be repeated, we must hope . . . There ought to
be some compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to
put a check on this indiscriminate shooting of people."

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbour-
hood of, villages have been those of French or Belgian
soldiers covering their retreat. Sometimes this has been
discovered, but too late, and they have continued their
crimes — in order to justify them.

GERMAN EXCUSES 53

Here is the statement of a neutral : "In one village
they found corpses of German soldiers with the fingers cut
off, and instantly the officer in command had the houses
set on fire and the inhabitants shot . . .In the same
district a German officer was billeted with a famous
Flemish poet ; the officer behaved courteously, was treated
with consideration, and allowed himself to talk freely : his
complaint was the misdeeds of his soldiers. Near Haelen,
he told his host, he had to have a soldier shot on finding
in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings : the man,
on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the
bodies of the German dead."#

In exceptional cases an enquiry is held ; and in every such
instance the truth is discovered and massacre prevented.

At the end of August, Liebknecht,f a member of the
Reichstag, set out in his car for Louvain. He came to
a village where there was considerable excitement going
on. The Germans had just found three of their men
lying dead on the road, and accused the peasants of being
responsible for the deed. Liebknecht examined them,
and was not long in obtaining proof that the Germans
had been killed by Belgian riflemen. At Huy there were
shots in the night ; two soldiers wounded ; the populace
accused ; the mayor arrested and condemned to death ;
but he knew that there were no Allied troops in the
neighbourhood, and also that his own people had not

* L. H. Grondijs, " Les Allemands en Belgique," p. cxix. (Paris,
Berger-Levrault, Publishers).

t Liebknecht was too honest and embarrassing a witness for
Germany. He has been thrown into prison. We salute him.

54 THEIR CRIMES

fired a shot. " Shoot me, if you like," he said calmly,
" but not before extracting the bullets from the wounded."
The officer, less of a brute than some, gave his consent to
this. The bullets in the wounds were German bullets.
But the Germans do not even require a pretext to
take action. Their first crime, to our knowledge, was on
August 4th. Some officers dashed up to Herve in a car,
challenged two civilians while crossing the bridge and,
without giving them time to answer, shot them down
with revolvers.

In their private diaries they accuse one another, each
throwing on his neighbour the responsibility for crimes
committed. A cavalryman writes : " It is unfortunately
true that the worst elements of our Army feel themselves
authorised to commit any sort of infamy. This charge
applies particularly to the A.S.C." A bombing officer :
uRet/iely September 2nd. Discipline becoming lax.
Brandy. Looting. The blame lies with the infantry?
An infantry officer : " Discipline in our company
excellent — a contrast with the rest. The Pioneers are
not worth much. As for the Artillery, they are a band
of brigands." A final extract seems to be the only one
that gives the truth : " Brin . . . troops of all arms
are engaged in looting."

It has been possible sometimes to prove premeditation.
On the 1 7th August, a German officer was billeted with

a Belgian magistrate. Their talk turned on Dinant.

"Dinant," said the officer, "is a condemned town!"
M. X . . . , of Dinant, happening to be in another
town, made the acquaintance of a German officer, who

GERMAN EXCUSES y,

said to him on August 20th, " You come from Dinant ?
Don't go back. It's a bad place, and will be destroyed."
Troops on their march towards Andenne announced in
villages through which they passed that they were going
to burn the town and massacre the inhabitants. At
Louvain, a German officer, treated generously by a middle-
class family, and appreciating their courtesy, rushed to
their house on the 25th at 11 o'clock in the morning,*
and earnestly pressed his hosts to leave without delay,
refusing to give them any explanation. The family ?
puzzled and perturbed by his appeal, went off and so
escaped.

In the eyes of the moralist the worst of all their crimes
will perhaps be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour
Belgium, after first assassinating her. They have dared to
say, write, and proclaim publicly, and affirm to Neutrals,
that Belgian women and girls had mutilated German
wounded soldiers, blinding them with scissors or with
boiling water. The reports of the Belgian Commission of
Enquiry have been replied to in a counter reportf pub-
lished as a German White Book. This enquiry and these
documents will live in history. In centuries to come they will
hang as a heavy weight on the Kaiser's memory and the

* The martyrdom of Dinant began on August 24th ; that of
Louvain on the 25th August, at 5 p.m.

t It may be recalled that commissions of enquiry, at which both
sides should be represented, were offered by Belgian Socialists to
German Socialists, by Belgian Freemasons to German Freemasons,
by Belgian Bishops to German Bishops. Three proposals. Three
refusals !

56 THEIR CRIMES

conscience of Germany. Listen to the pathetic conclusion
of the Belgian reply : " Before God and before man, the
Belgian Government has no hesitation in giving this as
its opinion of the conduct of the German Government
towards the Belgian nation : * He is twice guilty who
violates the rights of others and then attempts, with
singular audacity, to justify himself by imputing to his
victim faults that were never committed.' "*

It still remains to be explained how, by what means, by
what deadly influences, this German nation, consisting of
men who, as individuals, are not all brigands, has reached
and been led to this state of savagery ? In the prepara-

* France has suffered from similar calumny. We alluded above
(note, p. 37) to the declaration of a German army doctor that
" orders were given to amputate, as a reprisal, all wounded limbs."
So <we are said to have done that ? A monstrous lie, which will
be spurned indignantly by all who know the honourable traditions
of our ambulances and of our French doctors. The method of
systematic lying has been shown to the life in connection with the
use of asphyxiating gas. The Boches made immense preparations
for the use of this gas. When their organization was complete,
they took care, before acting, to publish each day for a week in
their communiques, little notes announcing that the enemy were
" making wide use of this new method of warfare," — a statement
contrary to fact, and known by them to be so, but one that was
calculated to mislead public opinion. When they considered that
public opinion was sufficiently ' prepared," they launched their
deadly gases and their flaming liquids ; and we needed a long time,
needed also to overcome our moral hesitation, to make sure of our
defence and our reply. Cynical lying with the Germans is not
only admitted, but gloried in. When it was completely proved
that, in order to start the war of 1870, Bismarck had committed
forgery, Professor Hans Delbriick exclaimed, " Blessed is the hand
that forged the Ems despatch."

GERMAN EXCUSES 57

tions for this collective madness of a people, what part
has been played by its leaders of thought and its politicians,
by race and by education ? This is a disturbing pheno-
menon which students of mental disease* will study later,
but on the examination of which we cannot here embark.
It is not for us to seek the pathological cause for this moral
decay — this decadence. We have only to note its effects.

* Who, except the specialist in mental diseases, can deal with this
proclamation of the Kaiser to his Army of the East ? : "Remember
that you are the chosen people ! The Spirit of the Lord has
descended upon me as Emperor of the Germans ! I am the
instrument of the Most High. I am His sword. Woe and death
unto those who resist my will ! Woe and death unto those who
believe not in my mission ! "

THE GERMAN APPEAL
APPEAL TO THE CIVILISED WORLD

Now that we have reached the close of this book of
horrors, let us impanel the 93 Germans of light and learning,
and confront them with the words of their own manifesto :

" As representatives of German Science and Art, we
the undersigned, declare that : —

" It is not true that Germany provoked this War ....

"It is not true that we have criminally violated the
neutrality of Belgium ....

" It is not true that our soldiers have made any attack
on the life or property of a single Belgian citizen without
being forced to it by sheer necessity ....

"It is not true that our troops brutally destroyed
Louvain ....

"It is not true that we have conducted warfare in
defiance of International Law. Our soldiers commit
neither undisciplined acts nor cruelties ....

... In this struggle we shall continue to the end
to act as a civilised nation, to whom the heritage of a
Goethe, a Beethoven or a Kant is as sacred as our own
hearth and home. We answer for that in our own name
and on our honour."*

Speaking of honour, it is as well to recall here the reply made
by a German officer to the schoolmaster at Chanteheux. The
schoolmaster quite simply pledged his word of honour that no
inhabitant had fired : " You French pig," the brute shouted, " don't
talk of honour — you have none."

58

THE GERMAN APPEAL 59

And since irony is more powerful than abuse, let us set
down here, without a word of comment, a few German
utterances : —

The Kaiser : " We are the salt of the earth. God
created us to civilise the world."

The Cardinal- Archbishop of Cologne : " It is with
God that our soldiers set out for this war that has been
inflicted upon us, and in which we are fighting for the
sacred treasures of Christianity, and for its own particular
gift, Kultur."

Dryander, a Protestant Minister, and preacher to the
Royal Court at Berlin : " On our side we are fighting
with a self-control, a conscience, and a gentleness unex-
ampled perhaps in the history of the world."

Professor Lasson : "Our characteristics are humanity,
gentleness, conscience — the Christian virtues. In a world
of evil, we stand for love, and God is with us."
L. And, finally, this older and memorable saying of their
great philosopher Hegel : 4 ' The destiny of the German race
is to supply the sustaining pillars of Christian teaching."

APPEAL BY BELGIAN WORKMEN

800,000 copies of this pamphlet had already been sent
out when the world rang with the tragic appeal of the
Belgian workmen to their brother workers in other lands.
This appeal ought to be fixed on the door of every factory
and workshop. Every worker, every citizen, should study
it. We regret that we cannot reprint it here in full,
but the following extracts will at least give an idea of this
new crime committed by Germany : —

" Workers, — In the name of the international bonds
that unite all workmen, the working classes of Belgium
— threatened, without exception, with slavery, deportation,
and forced labour for the enemy's gain — send to the
working classes in other lands a supreme appeal.

" Germany, as you know, attacked and terrorised Belgium
in 1914 for having defended her right to neutrality and
her faith and honour.

" Germany has been martyrizing Belgium. She has from
that moment onwards turned the land into a prison : the
frontiers are armed against Belgians like a battle front . .
All our constitutional liberties have been abolished.
There is no longer safety anywhere ; the life of our
citizens is at the mercy of the policeman, — arbitrary, limit-
less, pitiless . . . Belgian industrial idleness has been the
creation of the Germans, maintained by them for their own

60

APPEAL BY BELGIANS 61

profit.* To these 500,000 unemployed they have for
the last month been saying : * Either you will sign a con-
tract to work for Germany, or you will be reduced to
slavery.' In either case, it means exile, deportation, forced
labour in the interests of the enemy, and against the
interests of our country : formidable punishments, the
cruellest ever invented by tyranny for the punishment of
crimes — and what are the crimes alleged ? On

the western front, Belgian workmen — your brothers and
ours — are being forced to dig trenches, to build aviation
camps, to fortify the German lines, and when the victims,
in spite of everything, are firm in their refusal to take part
in work forbidden by International Law, they are starved
and beaten into illness, wounded, and sometimes even
killed.

"In Germany, they are turned on to work in mines, and
at lime-kilns, quite regardless of their age, profession, or
trade. Youths of seventeen, old men of seventy, are
deported in haphazard masses. Is not this a revival of
ancient Slavery with all its horrors f . . . Do you
know, brothers, what the Germans throw to their victims
by way of pay ? 30 pfennigs (3d.) a day !

" Workers : Never forget that the soldiers who are

* By levying on Belgium a war contribution which already
exceeds £40,000,000 — by transporting to Germany food, merchan-
dise and various products to the value of more than £200,000,000 —
by seizing and despatching to their own country the greater portion
of our raw material, machines and accessories — by issuing threaten-
ing edicts to prevent localities from using the unemployed on their
own important works of public utility.

62 THEIR CRIMES

acting as the torturers or our Belgian workmen
are themselves German workers !

44 In the depths of our distress, we count on you. It is
for you to act ! For ourselves, even if brute force suc-
ceeds for the moment in reducing our bodies to servitude,
we shall never give our consent.

" A final word : Whatever tortures we may undergo,
we do not wish for Peace except with the independence
of our country and the triumph of justice.

44 THE WORKMEN OF BELGIUM."

CONCLUSION

What is our object ?

Is it to incite our soldiers to commit, if chance arises,
atrocities like theirs ? We repudiate with horror a thought
such as that. Defensive reprisals (asphyxiating gas, liquid
fire, etc.) are sometimes indispensable. Reprisals for re-
venge would be unworthy of us. But — without speaking
of personal punishments, demanded by outraged conscience,
and essential in order that the two indivisible principles of
right and of responsibility may still exist in the world — we
must make it absolutely impossible for the Wild Beast to
break out again. And how, when the settling time draws
near, and, in spite of weariness, a new effort is needed to
realise conditions of peace with guarantees for the future —
how could the Allied Nations accept the sacrifices still
demanded of them, if they remained in ignorance ?

It is not enough for these crimes to be known by
Governments and by a few hundred people with leisure and
inclination to read collections of great volumes. They
must be known by everybody, by the entire people, by the
People, who — in our proud and free countries — control,
support, direct their Governments and are the sole masters
of their own destiny.

Our peoples ought to know the crimes committed
in the name of " Kultur," in order, at all costs, to take
the precautions necessary to prevent for ever their return.
That is our first object. The second is this : to all our
martyrs we have a sacred duty — that of remembrance.

63

64 THEIR CRIMES

There, where they fell, we shall doubtless carve their
names in stone or bronze. But what of a time further
away? When, after the long sufferings of this war,
freed humanity takes up again its works of peace, we
shall see the Germans reappear in every land, at every
cross-road— men of commerce, industry, finance, science,
men of the people and of society— in every place where
those of all countries, all races and all colours meet and
rub elbows. And what is our attitude to be ? Our
answer is this : So long as the nation in whose name
and by whose hands these atrocities have been committed
has not herself solemnly cast from her the scoundrels
who dragged her into such decadence, we shall consider
that it would betray our martyrs for us even to rub
shoulders with their executioners, and that until the
day arrives— if it ever does arrive— of a striking moral
repentance, to forget would be to condone.

L. M1RMAN,
Prefect of Meurthe-et- Moselle.

G- SIMON, G. KELLER,

Mayor of Nancy. Mayor of Luneville.

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