I
Plate 1.
I open haphazard the Diary of a soldier of the Prussian Guard, Gefreiter Paul Spielmann (I Kompagnie, Ersatz-Bataillon, I Garde-Infanterie-Brigade). Here is his account of a night alarm in a village near Blamont on the 1st September. At the bugle call, the Guard wakes, and the massacre begins (Plates 1 and 2.)
«The inhabitants fled through the village. It was horrible. Blood was plastered on all the houses, and as for the faces of the dead, they were hideous. They were all buried at once, to the number of sixty. Among them many old men and women, and one woman about to be delivered. It was a ghastly sight. There were three children who had huddled close to one another and had died together. The altar and the ceiling of the church had fallen in. They had been telephoning to the enemy. And this morning, 2 September, all the survivors were driven out and I saw four little boys carrying on two poles a cradle in which was a child of 5 to 6 months old. All this was horrible to see. A blow for a blow. Thunder for thunder. Everything was pillaged. And I also saw a mother with her two little ones: and one had a large wound in the head, and had lost an eye.»[2]
Plate 2.
«They had been telephoning to the Enemy» says this soldier, the punishment was deserved. Let us remember the terms of Art. 50 of the Hague Convention of 1907 signed in the name of the German Emperor by a gentleman, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. «No collective punishment, pecuniary or other, can be inflicted upon a community for individual acts for which they cannot be held responsible as a body.» What tribunal, during this night of horrors took the trouble to make sure of the guilt of the community at large?