Conclusion.
I should say that in the above summary I have confined myself to the result of the inquiries I made at General Head-quarters and in the area of our occupation, and have not attempted to summarise the evidence I had previously taken from the British officers and soldiers at the base, as the latter may be left to speak for itself in the depositions already published by the Committee. The object of the summary is to show how far independent inquiries on the spot go to confirm it. The testimony of our soldiers as to the reign of terror which they found prevailing on their arrival in all the places from which they drove the enemy out was amply confirmed by these subsequent and local investigations.
It will, of course, be understood that these inquiries of mine were limited in scope and can by no means claim to be exhaustive. For one thing, I was the only representative of the Home Office sent to France for this purpose; for another, I did not become attached to General Head-quarters until the beginning of February, and before that time little or nothing had been done in the way of systematic inquiry by the Staff, whose officers had other and more pressing duties to perform. By that time the testimony to many grave incidents, especially in the field, had perished with those who witnessed them and they remained but a sombre memory. The hearsay evidence of these things which was sometimes all that was left made an impression on my mind as deep as it was painful, but it would have been contrary to the rules of evidence, to which I have striven to conform, for me to take notice of it.
Two things clearly emerge from this observation. One is that had there been from the beginning of the campaign a regular system of inquiry at General Head-quarters into these things, pari passu with their occurrence, the volume of evidence, great though it is, would have been infinitely greater; the other, that, as there is only too much reason to suppose that with the growing vindictiveness of the enemy things will be worse before they are better, the case for the establishment of such a system throughout the continuance of the War is one that calls for serious consideration.
Although I have some claims to write as a jurist I have here made no attempt to pray in aid the Hague Regulations in order to frame the counts of an indictment. The Germans have broken all laws, human and divine, and not even the ancient freemasonry of arms, whose honourable traditions are almost as old as war itself, has restrained them in their brutal and licentious fury. It is useless to attempt to discriminate between the people and their rulers; an abundance of diaries of soldiers in the ranks shows that all are infected with a common spirit. That spirit is pride, not the pride of high and pure endeavour, but that pride for which the Greeks found a name in the word ὕβρις, the insolence which knows no pity and feels no love. Long ago Renan warned Strauss of this canker which was eating into the German character. Pedants indoctrinated it, Generals instilled it, the Emperor preached it. The whole people were taught that war was a normal state of civilisation, that the lust of conquest and the arrogance of race were the most precious of the virtues. On this Dead Sea fruit the German people have been fed for a generation until they are rotten to the core.
Chapter III
DOCUMENTARY
I
DEPOSITIONS AND STATEMENTS (FIFTY-SIX IN NUMBER) ILLUSTRATING BREACHES OF THE LAWS OF WAR BY THE GERMAN TROOPS, MAINLY OUTRAGES ON BRITISH SOLDIERS
Note.—These documents are here made public for the first time. They have not been published either in the Bryce Report or in the Nineteenth Century and After. I have selected the cases of Bailleul and Doulieu as typical of all the rest. Many other communes, e.g., Meteren, Steenwerck, La Gorgue, Vieux-Berquin, suffered a similar fate. As regards Bailleul itself I have given only one out of some twenty documents in my possession relating to the rapes committed there; the others are in no way inferior in authenticity, nor are they any less horrible. My object is not to multiply proofs, but to exemplify them. It will be observed that the evidence of British soldiers here given is that of eye-witnesses, except, of course, in cases of rape. As regards the latter, the hearsay evidence is fully corroborated by the French depositions of the victims.—J. H. M.