VI
I must admit that out of the forty diaries I have examined, there are six or seven that tell of no exactions, either from hypocritical reticence or because certain regiments wage war less vilely. And I even know of three diaries, whose authors, as they narrate sordid details, are astonished, moved to indignation, saddened. I shall withhold their names, because they deserve our consideration, and to spare them the risk of being one day blamed or punished. The first, Pte X ..., who belongs to the 65th Inf. of the Landwehr, says of some of his fellow comrades (Plate 10):
“They do not behave like soldiers, but like common thieves, highwaymen and robbers, and are a disgrace to our regiment and our army.”[23]
The second, Lt Y ..., of the 77th Inf. Reserve, says:
“No discipline ... The Pioneers are not worth much; as for the artillerymen they are a gang of robbers.”[24]
Plate 10.
And the third, Private Z ..., 12th Inf. Reserve (1 Corps Reserves) writes (Plate 11):
“Unfortunately, I am obliged to mention something which ought never to have happened; but there are even in our army ruffians who are no longer men, swine to whom nothing is sacred. One of them entered a sacristy that was locked, in which was the blessed sacrament. Out of respect a protestant avoided sleeping there; he polluted the place with his excrements. How can there be such beings! Last night, a man of the Landwehr, a man of thirty-five, and a married man, tried to rape the daughter of a man in whose house he had been quartered, she was a child; and as the father tried to interpose he kept the point of his bayonet on the man’s breast.”[25]
Plate 11.
With the exception of these soldiers, who are worthy of the name, the thirty other writers are the same, and the same soul, if the word be allowed, seems to animate them all, uncontrolled and low. They are all alike, yet with some shades of difference. There are some who make distinctions, like subtle lawyers, sometimes blaming, sometimes disapproving: “Dort war ein Exempel am Platze”. And there are some who sneer: “Krieg ist Krieg”; or in French, by preference to add to their scorn “Ja, ja, c’est la guerre”; and there are some who having done their ugly work, open their Hymn Book, and sing psalms: for instance the Saxon officer Rieslang, who relates how one day he left a feast to go to “Gottesdienst”, but was obliged to leave hurriedly, having eaten and drunk too much; or again Private Moritz Grosse of the 177th Inf. who after describing the sack of St Vieth (22nd August) and that of Dinant (23rd August) writes this sentence (Plate 12):
Throwing of bombs in the houses. In the evening, military chorale: Nun danket alle Gott (Now, thank ye all God).[26]
They are all alike. Now, if we consider that I could substitute for the preceding examples others similar and no less cynical, taken for instance from the diary of the reservist Lautenschlager, of the 1st Battalion of the 66th Inf. Regt, or from the diary of Pte Eduard Hohl of the VIII Corps, or from the diary of non-commissioned officer Rheinhold Koehn, of the 2nd Battalion of Pomeranian Pioneers, or from the diary of the non-commissioned officer Otto Brandt of the 2nd section of the ambulance corps (reserves) or from the diary of the Reservist Martin Muller, of the 100th Saxon Reserves, or from the diary of Lt Karl Zimmer, of the 55th Inf. or from the diary of Pte Erich Pressler of the 100th Grenadiers, 1st Saxon Corps, etc.; and if we notice, that among the extracts already given, there are very few isolated cases of brutality (as can be and are found, alas in the most noble minded of armies) and that I have scarcely noted here any crime that was not done by order, any crime that does not implicate and dishonour not only the individual soldier, but the whole regiment, the officer, the very nation; and if we consider that these thirty diaries, whether they be Bavarian or Saxon, Baden or Rhenish, Pomeranian or from Brandenburg, taken haphazard must represent hundreds and thousands of similar ones, all of a fearful monotony, we shall be obliged to allow, I think, that, M. René Viviani in no way overstated the case when from the French tribune he spoke of “this system of collective murder and pillage which Germany calls war”.
Plate 12.