B.—The "Belgian Atrocities."
The Pretended Cruelty of Belgian Civilians toward the German Army.
In order to organize the massacres by means of which it expected to terrorize our country, the Great General Staff had to have at its disposal troops on which it could count without reserve, which would not shrink before the bloodiest task, and to which no repressive measures would seem excessive. The Staff had to be certain it would be obeyed without hesitation when it ordered, as at Dinant, the death of seven hundred men, women, and children. To obtain soldiers who would undertake such barbarous operations, and operations so contrary to the military spirit, the obsession of the "franc-tireur" would perhaps be insufficient; for there are soldiers even among such troops who are brave and who do not tremble at bogy-stories; there might be honest men among them to whom theft would be repugnant by whatever name one adorned it, and who would not be tempted by the bait of pillage; all were not so imbued with Kultur as that officer who proposed not to kill the "francs-tireurs" outright, but to wound them mortally, afterwards to leave them to die slowly, in agony, untended (p. [342]).
But these soldiers, even the more gentle, would regard it as a sacred duty to avenge crimes committed against innocent persons. Let them be led to believe that the Belgians have tortured peaceable tradesmen, or have mutilated wounded soldiers incapable of defending themselves, or that they employ dum-dum bullets, producing frightful wounds from which recovery is almost impossible ... and immediately these soldiers will have only one thought: to make the first Belgian encountered expiate the crime of which his fellow-countrymen have been guilty. Before their thirst for vengeance all distinctions disappear: children, old people, men and women, all equally deserve to be punished. From that moment it will be needless to order reprisals, for the army will be only too ready to show itself pitiless, and to call for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, in order to make all the Belgians indifferently pay for the offences committed upon inoffensive Germans.
Some Accusations.
It is precisely this psychology which the rulers of Germany have exploited. Immediately after the opening of the campaign their newspapers began to publish articles describing the horrors committed by the Belgians; articles which make one's flesh creep. Belgian women pour petrol over the wounded and set fire to it; they throw out of the windows the wounded confided to their care in the hospitals; they pour boiling oil over the troops, and thereby put two thousand out of action; they handle the rifle and revolver as well as the men; they cut the throats of soldiers and stone them; they cut off their ears and gouge out their eyes; they offer them cigarettes containing powder, whose explosion blinds them. Even the little girls ten years of age indulge in these horrors. The men are no better; to begin with, they are all "francs-tireurs," even when they assume the appearance of respectable schoolmasters; besides which they crawl under motor-cars to kill the chauffeurs; they kill peaceable drinkers with a stab in the belly; they foully shoot an officer who is reading them a proclamation; they saw off the legs of soldiers; they finish off the wounded on the field of battle; they cut off their fingers to steal their rings; they fill letters with narcotics in order to poison those who open them; they set traps for soldiers in order to torture them at leisure; even the humanitarian symbol of the Red Cross does not stay their homicidal hands; they fire on doctors, on ambulance men, on motor-cars removing the wounded.
That the soldiers leaving for Belgium were made to believe that their adversaries were horrible barbarians, and that the troops were inspired with an ardent desire to avenge the innocent victims of the Belgians, is amply proved by all the tales dating from the beginning of the war. See, for instance, in the story of La journée de Charleroi (p. 195) the impatience with which the author awaits the moment of entering Belgium to take part in the reprisals, and his delight when he at last sees houses burned to ashes and a curé hung from a tree.
Let us note in passing that the Austrians also, desirous of declaring war upon us, resorted to the invention of "Belgian atrocities." In its reply to the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war, our Government protested against this defamation (1st Grey Book, Nos. 77, 78).
All these stories appeared, in the first place, in the newspapers. We must not be surprised if in time of war, when men's minds are over-excited, the journalists willingly publish articles containing statements of the kind we have cited, without troubling to verify their authenticity. But it is unpardonable that they should have been reprinted in cold blood, when their falsity had become so obvious that it must have struck even the most prejudiced. We know of two pamphlets devoted entirely to atrocities committed by the Belgians: Die Belgischen Greueltaten and Belgische Kriegsgreuel. The work already cited, Die Wahrheit über den Krieg, also deals at length with these atrocities. Finally, there is no lack of information concerning them in the pamphlets Lüttich and Die Eroberung Belgiëns.
One remark occurs to us immediately. The narratives are based on details given by witnesses "worthy of credence." Now all verification is impossible, for we are never given a hint as to the date; moreover, the locality is very rarely mentioned; in Die Wahrheit there are only three place-names: Gemmenich, Tavigny, and Demenis.
Demenis does not exist, and we have in vain sought to discover what locality is meant. And what did really happen in the other two communes mentioned? At Tavigny the Germans never had occasion to commit any reprisals; not a man was killed, not a house burned; the troops merely proceeded systematically to loot the place. Nor did anything more happen in any neighbouring commune which the narrator might have confused with Tavigny. Nor was there any confusion of names with Tintigny; in the latter village the Germans behaved in the most atrocious fashion, but the mode of operation was quite different. As for Gemmenich, we have no information as to what passed there, But we can assert that not a single house was burned there. Now it is very certain that if the Belgians had committed the atrocities of which the Germans tell, the latter would have set fire to the village; it is therefore highly probable that nothing happened there. In short, of the only three place-names given all three are incorrect.
We cannot be expected to refute all these allegations. Many are utterly ridiculous: for example, the story of the narcotics at the Liége Post Office; that of the fingers cut off the dead and wounded and then carefully preserved in a bag (one may well ask why); that of the boiling oil is no better: try to imagine the incredible store of oil that must have been possessed by the women who killed and wounded therewith 2,000 Germans; moreover, either the German army does not march down the middle of the street, or else the women had special apparatus to throw jets of boiling liquid to a distance without danger to themselves.
Let us confine ourselves to examining the legend of the gouged-out eyes. It is that which crops up most frequently under the pens of the German publicists, so well calculated is it to arouse horror and indignation in the readers. Well! its falsity appears from an inquiry made by the Germans themselves. Not only have their newspapers—notably the Kölnische Volkszeitung and Vorwärts—on several occasions done justice upon this lie, but an official commission, instituted by the German Government, has also admitted that there is not a single case in which a wounded German soldier has been intentionally blinded (see Belgian Grey Books, Nos. 107, 108).
The Germans themselves admit that the accusation is unfounded. Has their Press for that reason ceased to make use of it? We little know the Germans if we imagine that it has. The entire Press continues imperturbably to spread these abominable calumnies. The Kölnische Zeitung of the 15th February (four o'clock edition), referring to an article by Étienne Girau, pastor of the Walloon community of Amsterdam, once more declares that the Belgians have ill-treated the German wounded. It is enough to make one ask whether the Belgians have not morally blinded all the "intellectuals" of Germany.
Another example. In February 1915—that is, when no honest German could any longer believe in the legend of the gouged-out eyes—Vorwärts protested against a little work by a Pastor Conrad, of which 150,000 examples were printed and sold at 8 pfennigs per copy to school-children, in which the Belgians were still accused of having blinded their prisoners (N.R.C., 12th February, morning edition).
The Berlin Government also acts as though it was ignorant of the conclusions of its own commissions of inquiry. Wishing to refuse General Leman, a prisoner in Germany, the privilege of receiving a visit from his daughter, it based its refusal on the atrocities of which German soldiers have been the victims in Belgium, and on the inhuman fashion in which the Belgians have treated the wounded and prisoners in their hands. The second accusation is as ill-founded as the first. The German soldiers taken prisoner by the Belgians were interned in Bruges; they made no complaints, far from it (pp. [56]-[8]); as for the wounded in our hospitals, here are precise facts.
Let us quote, first of all, from the correspondence published in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, giving a few details from letters written by the German wounded under treatment in Antwerp.
How the Belgians treat their German Prisoners.
A private correspondent writes to us from Antwerp:—
The fact of knowing that the prisoners of war of the belligerent States are treated as well as possible should also touch the hearts of the Dutch.... I give you here some extracts from the letters of wounded Germans under treatment in the hospitals of Antwerp.
I am in a very good Belgian hospital and they treat me very well.
Karl Hintzman, Military Hospital, Antwerp.
I am very well looked after and have very good food.
Georg Storck.
They treat us very well in Belgium. What the German papers said in the summer about the Belgians is utterly untrue. The Germans could not look after us better. Moreover, the nation is highly developed.
Franz Crauwerski.
A number of comrades are here. We are extraordinarily well looked after. Everybody is very kind to us.
Richard Kustermann.
Several comrades of my company are here. I am very well looked after. One could not look after us better in Germany.
Peters.
We could not hope for better care.
Walter Schumann.
The medical treatment is very good. We are sounded every day, and our wounds are dressed daily. The doctors are very capable here. We have food in abundance; all is excellent.
Hossbach,
Sölliger (Braunschweig).It must not be forgotten that the majority of these prisoners fell into the hands of the Belgians at Aerschot, where the Germans had imprisoned several hundreds of civilians in the church, at the time of the investment of the town. I can speak from experience. The German prisoners are treated with fully as much kindness in other parts of the country. At the house of the commandant of the service de garde in Bruges I saw an assortment of German books and card games which had been sent by Mme. E. Vandervelde, who had visited the prisoners a few days earlier in the company of her husband, Minister of State and the Socialist leader of Belgium. The latter wished to make sure that the prisoners lacked for nothing.
We can say that Belgium does not seek to avenge her unheard-of sufferings by maltreating the German victims of the war. Suffering evokes pity in a sane mind. I can only express the hope that these proofs may fall into the hands of German readers.
(N.R.C., 8th October, 1914, morning edition.)
I am in a very good Belgian hospital and they treat me very well.
Karl Hintzman, Military Hospital, Antwerp.
I am very well looked after and have very good food.
Georg Storck.
They treat us very well in Belgium. What the German papers said in the summer about the Belgians is utterly untrue. The Germans could not look after us better. Moreover, the nation is highly developed.
Franz Crauwerski.
A number of comrades are here. We are extraordinarily well looked after. Everybody is very kind to us.
Richard Kustermann.
Several comrades of my company are here. I am very well looked after. One could not look after us better in Germany.
Peters.
We could not hope for better care.
Walter Schumann.
The medical treatment is very good. We are sounded every day, and our wounds are dressed daily. The doctors are very capable here. We have food in abundance; all is excellent.
Hossbach,
Sölliger (Braunschweig).
But we have something better than these documents of a private nature. The German authorities exhibited, at Spa, a statement that the German wounded there were perfectly well cared for. At the moment when the Germans dispensed with the collaboration of the clinical staff of the Red Cross in Brussels, they did homage to its devotion and competence.
Spa, 18th August, 1914.
To the Burgomaster of Spa.
The Commander-General of the 10th Army Corps thanks the Burgomaster of Spa for the good reception accorded to his troops by the city of Spa on the 11th and 12th August, 1914. Thanks to his care and efforts, he recognizes that the wounded in the hospitals of Spa are particularly well cared for.
Hoffmann,
Lieutenant-General.Frederic-August,
Grand Duke of Oldenburg.(Les Nouvelles, published under control of the German military authority, 22nd September, 1914.)
German Government,
Headquarters, Medical Service.Brussels, 31st August, 1914.
To MM. the President and Members of the Red Cross of Belgium, Rue de l'Association, 24.
Gentlemen,
The German Government assures you of the expression of its grateful sentiments for the devoted care which you have given to all the wounded collected in the capital.
Ambulances have been organized in great numbers, and the necessity of a concentration henceforth indispensable compels us immediately to take the following measures....
In bringing these measures to your knowledge and in begging you to assist us to realize them promptly, we again express to you the thanks which we address to all the members of your association and especially to the ladies of the Red Cross, whose complete devotion we have appreciated.
I beg you to accept, Gentlemen, the assurance of my high consideration.
Prof. Dr. Stuertz,
Oberstabarzt.
It is useful to observe that these declarations have been made spontaneously, since it is obvious that we were powerless to exert any pressure on the Germans. They have, therefore, nothing in common with those which the Germans have forced the Belgian wounded or prisoners to sign.
The Pretended Massacres of German Civilians.
There remain the famous massacres of Germans in Brussels, Antwerp, Liége, etc. According to witnesses "worthy of credence," inoffensive Germans, even women and children, were killed and martyred in various Belgian cities. At Liége alone more than 150 persons, of whom three-fourths were women and children, were said to have lost their lives.
As to Liége, we have inquired of inhabitants of the city, several of whom are closely connected with the administration of justice; no one had any knowledge of any such occurrences. They have therefore been invented, lock, stock, and barrel, by the "witnesses worthy of credence," and we defy the Germans to mention the name of a single one of these 150 "victims."
At Antwerp we can oppose, to the testimony of those who were "present" on the occasion of murders and serious assaults upon German women, the official report, which admits that shops were broken into by the populace, but which at the same time attests that no German was wounded. Let us add that the German Weber was not assassinated, but is quietly living in Antwerp.
Let us proceed to the doings in Brussels; and let us quote, from Greueltaten, the most serious occurrences there mentioned. We have a story, based on hearsay, which tells, of course, of gouged-out eyes, as well as three reports of ocular witnesses. The first is that of a witness "worthy of credence" who saw a child thrown from a window and a woman dragged by the hair until she was insensible; he also witnessed the murder of a German druggist, one Frankenberg, who was betrayed by his own wife, a Belgian. The second witness is the correspondent of the Wolff Agency. He saw only what the people of Brussels themselves witnessed: that is, that the populace pillaged the German shops and cafés on the 4th and 5th August. But he had not been able to discover any acts of violence against the person; those he mentions, in a couple of words, without insisting on them, had been related to him; but he does not even add that the witnesses were "worthy of credence."
Finally we have a priest, who complains that he was arrested as a spy and beaten by the gendarmes. Perhaps he was a spy; in any case, not a few German spies disguised as priests have been discovered in Belgium.
If we confine ourselves to the really serious occurrences, to the cases in which Germans have been killed by the populace, we find that as against some 155 anonymous cases, which cannot be verified, there are only two in which names are mentioned. These names are Weber and Frankenberg. Now these two cases are apocryphal. Herr Weber has quietly reopened his hotel in Antwerp; Herr Frankenberg continues to breathe the air at Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels. Compare with these two cases the three names of places mentioned in Die Wahrheit (p. 101).
Preventive and Repressive Measures taken by the Belgian Authorities.
The truth is that in the various cities of Belgium there was, quite at the beginning of hostilities, an intense popular effervescence, by which evildoers profited to pillage the German shops. These disturbances were so unexpected and assumed, with such rapidity, such large proportions, that the police were at first powerless to restrain them.
Moreover, it must be remembered that the police had just been reduced, a large proportion of the police agents and gendarmes having left for the front.
But measures were promptly taken, and by the 7th August there was no longer anywhere the least disorder of this kind. As for the "spy mania," it raged in Belgium as in all countries affected by the war.[24] But the newspapers, and the official measures taken, got the better of this fresh cause of disturbance.
The newspapers of the neutral countries, for example the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, also reported material damage, but they do not relate more serious occurrences in any part of Belgium.
We can consequently assert, in the most categorical fashion, basing our statement on the official data furnished by the courts, that no serious offence against the person has been proved either in Brussels or elsewhere. Does this mean that we excuse the fishers in troubled waters who sacked the German shops? Obviously not; but it must be owned that there are bad elements in all agglomerations, and that the populace of Berlin behaved no better than that of Brussels: witness the remarks of the British Ambassador in Berlin, and the excuses put forward by the German authorities when his windows were broken as the result of an article in the Berliner Tageblatt. Here we immediately perceive a contrast of mentalities: the German newspapers incite their readers against foreigners, while ours, on the contrary, do their utmost to calm popular manifestations.
A detail which we regard as symptomatic, and particularly revolting, in the German publications, is the fact that in these cases, as in the matter of the "francs-tireurs," our enemies seek to involve the legal administration of our country. Now, not only did our authorities immediately intervene to repress the disturbances and to provide a military guard for the Deutsche Bank and the Deutscher Verein in Brussels, but they did more than their strict duty in protecting German families, and enabling them to return to their own country. Nothing is more characteristic in this respect than that which happened in Brussels on the nights of the 8th, 9th and 10th of August, at the time of the Germans' departure from the city. The latter assembled at night in a building belonging to the city; in the trams which took them thither every one hastened to render them every imaginable service; at the place of assembly the Civic Guards prepared hot drinks for them; then, during the short journey to the Gare du Nord, the same Civic Guards helped them to carry their children and their luggage. Mr. Brand Whitlock, United States Minister in Brussels, who was looking after the interests of Germany, was present in that quality at the departure of the German families, and he expressed his gratitude to the Belgians in a letter made public at the time.
The United States Minister does Honour to the Heroism and the Kindness of the Belgians.
The German Minister, before leaving Brussels, requested the United States Minister, Mr. Brand Whitlock, kindly to take over the interests of Germany in Belgium.
The United States Minister consented to protect the archives of the German Legation.
It was in this capacity that Mr. Brand Whitlock was the witness, two days ago, of the goodness of the people of Brussels, who, with Mme. Carton de Wiart, the wife of the Minister of Justice, and our brave Chasseurs of the mounted Civic Guard at their head, provided hot drinks and refreshments for the four thousand Germans leaving Belgium who were assembled at the Royal Circus.
The spectacle profoundly affected the eminent diplomatist. Thanking the Belgian Government, His Excellency, Mr. Brand Whitlock, writes to the Minister of Justice:—
"The Belgians display a heroism in dying on the field of battle which is equalled by their humanity to non-combatants."
(Le Soir, 11th August, 1914.)
In Germany the United States Ambassador, Mr. Gerard, had also occasion to intervene; but there it was to protect the British Ambassador from the fury of the populace.
These examples will suffice, we think, to show that the Belgians were as thoughtful in their behaviour towards their non-combatant adversaries as the Germans were violent and brutal. And what was the result of our courtesy? Our enemies picked a groundless quarrel with us in order to inflame the minds of their soldiers against us.