III
MORE DIARIES
In former European wars foul practices were committed by individual members of armies. But the total army in each country was a small hired band of men, representing only the fractional part of one per cent of the population. It was in no way representative of the mind of the people. Of the present German Army, Professor Dr. Max Planck, of the University of Berlin, a distinguished physicist, has recently written:
"The German Army is nothing but the German people in arms, and the scholars and artists are, like all other classes, inseparably bound up with it."
We must regard the acts of the German Army as the acts of the people. We cannot dodge the problem of their misbehavior by saying they have not committed atrocities. We have the signed statements of a thousand German diaries that they have practiced frightfulness village by village through Belgium and Northern France. We cannot say it was a handful of drunken, undisciplined soldiers who did these things. It was "the German people in arms." It was an army that "knows no such thing as undisciplined cruelty." It was a nation of people that burned and murdered, acting under orders. Now, we have arrived at the heart of the problem. Why did they commit these horrors?
Irritated by an unexpectedly firm resistance from the Belgian and French Armies, fed on lies spread by German officers concerning the cruelty of French and Belgians, they obeyed the commands to burn houses and shoot civilians.
These commands released a primitive quality of brutality.
On August 25th, 1914, Reservist Heinrich Bissinger, of the town of Ingolstadt, of the Second Company, of the First Bavarian Pioneers, writes of the village of Orchies:
"A woman was shot because she did not stop at the word Halt, but kept running away. Thereupon we burn the whole place."
("Sämtliche Civilpersonen werden verhaftet. Eine Frau wurde vershossen, weil sie auf Halt Rufen nicht hielt, sondern ausreissen wollte. Hierauf Verbrennen der ganzen Ortschaft.")
One wonders if Heinrich Bissinger would wish the treatment he and his comrades accorded to Orchies, to be applied to his own home town of Ingolstadt. If some German peasant woman in Ingolstadt failed to understand a word in a foreign tongue, and were killed, and then if Ingolstadt were burned, would Heinrich Bissinger feel that "military necessity" exonerated the soldiers that performed the deed?
Private Philipp, from Kamenz, Saxony, of the First Company, of the first Battalion of the 178th Regiment, writes: "Kriegs Tagebuch-Soldat Philipp, 1 Kompanie (Sachsen)," at the head of his diary. On August 23 he writes of a village that had been burned:
"A spectacle terrible and yet beautiful. Directly at the entrance lay about 50 dead inhabitants who had been shot, because they had traitorously fired on our troops. In the course of the night many more were shot, so that we could count over 200. Women and children, lamp in hand, had to watch the horrible spectacle. Then in the middle of the corpses we ate our rice; since morning we had eaten nothing. By search through the houses we found much wine and liquor, but nothing to eat."
("Im Laufe der Nacht wurden noch viele erschossen, sodass wir über 200 zählen konnten. Frauen und Kinder, die Lampe in der Hand, mussten dem entsetzlichen Schauspiele zusehen. Wir assen dann inmitten der Leichen unsern Reis, seit Morgen hatten wir nichts gegessen.")
German soldiers obey these orders because their military training and their general education have made them docile. They have never learned to exercise independent individual moral judgment on acts ordered by the state. The state to them is an organism functioning in regions that lie outside the intellectual and moral life of the individual. In every German there are separate water-tight compartments: the one for the life he leads as a husband and father, the other for the acts he must commit as a citizen of the Empire and as a soldier of the Army. In his home life he makes choices. In his public life he has no choice. He must obey without compunctions. So he lays aside his conscience. In the moral realm the German is a child, which means that he is by turns cruel, sentimental, forgetful of the evil he has done the moment before, happy in the present moment, eating enormously, pleased with little things, crying over a letter from home, weary of the war, with sore feet and a rebellious stomach, a heavy pack, and no cigars. I am basing every statement I make on the statements written by German soldiers. We do not have to guess at German psychology. They have ripped open their subconsciousness.
The lieutenant of the 5th Battalion of reserves of the Prussian Guard writes on August 24 at Cirey:
"In the night unbelievable things have taken place. Warehouses plundered, money stolen, violations simply hair-raising."
("In der Nacht sind unglaubliche Sachen passiert. Läden ausgeplündert, Geld gestohlen, Vergewaltigungen, Einfach haarsträubend.")
This diary of the lieutenant's has a black cover, a little pocket for papers, a holder for the pencil. It is written partly in black pencil and partly in purple. Thirty-two pages are written, 118 are blank. It covers a space of time from August 1 to September 4, 1914.
Mrs. Wharton has brought to my attention the chronicle of Salimbene, a Franciscan of the thirteenth century, wherein similar light-hearted crimes are recorded.
"On one day he (Ezzelino) caused 11,000 men of Padua to be burnt in the field of Saint George; and when fire had been set to the house in which they were being burnt, he jousted as if in sport around them with his knights.
"The villagers dwelt apart, nor were there any that resisted their enemies or opened the mouth or made the least noise. And that night they (the soldiers) burned 53 houses in the village."
The orders given by the German commanding general to his officers, far from recommending prudence and humanity, impose the obligation of holding the total civil population collectively responsible for the smallest individual infractions, and of acting against every tentative infringement with pitiless severity. These officers are as specialized a class as New York gunmen or Paris apaches. Their career lies in anti-social conduct. "This wild upper-class of the young German imperialistic idea" are implacable destroyers. Their promotion is dependent on the extent of their cruelties.
I have seen an original copy of the order for the day (Korps-Tagesbefehl) issued on August 12, 1914, by General von Fabeck, commanding the 13th Army Corps. He says:
"Lieutenant Haag of the 19th Regiment of Uhlans, acting as chief of patrol, has proceeded energetically against the rioting inhabitants, and as agreed has employed arms. I express to him my recognition for his energy and his decision."
("Ich spreche ihm für seinen Schneid und seine Umsicht meine Anerkennung aus.")
What that gives to Lieutenant Haag is the power of life and death over non-combatants, with praise for him if he deals out death.
Let us hear General von Fabeck speak again. Here are his instructions for his troops on August 15, 1914 (I have held the original in my hands):
"As soon as the territory is entered, the inhabitants are to be held responsible for maintaining the lines of communication. For that purpose the commander of the advance guard will arrange a strong patrol of campaign gendarmes (Feldgendarmerie-Patrouille) to be used for the interior of the locality held by our troops. Against every inhabitant who tries to do us a damage, or who does us a damage, it is necessary to act with pitiless severity."
"Mit rücksichtsloser Strenge."
This order is on long sheets of the nature of our foolscap. It is written in violet ink.
The copy reads:
gez. v. Fabeck
Für die Richtigkeit der Abschrift
Baessler
Oberlt. und Brig-Adjutant.
Baessler is the aide-de-camp.
Two violations of the rights of non-combatants are in that order. The requisitioning of inhabitants on military work where they are exposed to the fire of their own nation; pitiless severity applied to every non-combatant on the least suspicion of a hostile act.
Actually the state which the simple soldiers obey so utterly is an inner clique of landed proprietors, captains of industry, and officers of the army—men of ruthless purpose and vast ambitions. The sixty-five millions of docile peasants, clerks, artizans and petty officials are tools for this inner clique.
"The theories of the German philosophers and public men are of one piece with the collective acts of the German soldiers. The pages of the Pan-German writers are prophetic. They are not so much the precursors as the results, the echoes of a something impersonal that is vaster than their own voice. Here we have acted out the cult of force, creator of Right, practiced since its dim origins by Prussia, defended philosophically by Lasson, scientifically by Haeckel and Ostwald, politically by Treitschke, and in a military way by General von Bernhardi."
The modern Germany is the victim of an obsession. Under its sentimental domestic life, its placid beergarden recreation, its methodical activities, its reveries, its emotional laxity fed on music, it was generating destructive forces. Year by year it was thinking the thoughts, inculcated by its famous teachers, until those ideas, pushed deep down into the subconscious, became an overmastering desire, a dream of world-grandeur. For once an idea penetrates through to the subconsciousness, it becomes touched with emotional life, later to leap back into the light of day in uncontrolled action.
I can produce one of the original bills posted on the walls of Liège by General von Bulow. Here is the way it reads:
Ordre.
A la population Liègeoise.
La population d'Andenne, après avoir témoigné des intentions pacifiques à l'égard de nos troupes, les a attaquées de la façon la plus traîtresse. Avec mon autorisation, le Général qui commandait ces troupes a mis la ville en cendres et a fait fusilier 110 personnes. Je porte ce fait à la connaissance de la ville de Liège, pour que ses habitants sachent à quel sort ils peuvent s'attendre s'ils prennent une attitude semblable.
Liège, le 22 Août, 1914.
Général von Bulow.
("The inhabitants of the town of Andenne, after having testified to their peaceful intentions in regard to our troops, attacked them in a fashion the most treacherous. By my authorization, the General who commanded the troops has burned the town to ashes and has shot 110 people. I bring this to the knowledge of the town of Liège, in order that the inhabitants may know what fate they invite if they take a like attitude.")
It is only in victorious conquest that the German is unendurable. When he was trounced at the Battle of the Marne, he ceased his wholesale burnings and massacres throughout that district, and continued his campaign of frightfulness only in those sections of Belgium around Antwerp where he was still conquering new territory. His dream of world conquest will die in a day, when the day comes that sends him home. In defeat, he is simple, kindly, surprised at humane treatment. He ceases to be a superman at the touch of failure. All his blown-up grandeur collapses, and he shrinks to his true stature.
This return to wholesomeness is dependent on two things: a thorough defeat in this war, so that the German people will see that a machine fails when it seeks to crush the human spirit, and an internal revolution in the conception of individual duty to the state, so that they will regain the virtues of common humanity. The water-tight compartments, which they have built up between the inner voice of conscience in the individual life and the outer compulsion of the state, must be broken through.