VII

H. M. the German Emperor, in ratifying the Hague Convention of 1907 agreed (Article 23) “that it is forbidden ... (c) to kill or wound an enemy, who having laid down his arms and having no means of self-defence, gives himself up as a prisoner; (d) to declare that no quarter will be given”.

Has the German Army respected these conventions? In the French and Belgian reports, evidence is plentiful resembling the following which comes from a Frenchman captain in the 288^th Infantry: “On the evening of the 22^nd I learnt that in the wood a hundred and fifty metres from the cross-roads formed by the intersection of the great trench at Calonne and the road from Vaux-lès-Palameix to St Rémy there were some dead bodies of French soldiers who had been shot by the Germans.

I went there, and saw some thirty soldiers in a small space, for the most part lying down, some however on their knees and all having the same kind of wound, a gun-shot in the ear. Only one, very severely wounded was able to speak. He told me the Germans had, before leaving, ordered them to lie down, then had killed them by a shot through the head; that he had been spared on telling them he was the father of three small children. Their brainpans had been blown some distance away, the guns broken at the stock were scattered here and there, and the blood had so bespattered the bushes that as I came out of the wood the front of my cape was all smeared with blood; it was a real charnel-house.”

I have quoted this man’s testimony, not to rely on it as evidence but merely to make clear the nature of my indictment; as for justifying it I shall take care not to depart from the rule I have laid down to resort to German sources of information only.

Here is an order of the day given on the 26^th August by General Stenger commanding the 58^th German Brigade to his troops:

Von heute ab werden keine Gefangene mehr gemacht. Sämtliche Gefangene werden niedergemacht. Verwundete ob mit Waffen oder Wehrlos niedergemacht. Gefangene auch in grösseren 6 geschlossenen Formationen werden niedergemacht. Es bleibe kein Feind lebend hinter uns.

Oberleutnant und Kompagnie-Chef Stoy; Oberst und Regiments-Kommandeur Neubauer; General-Major und Brigade-Kommandeur Stenger.

Translation. After to-day no more prisoners will be taken. All prisoners are to be killed. Wounded, with or without arms, are to be killed. Even prisoners already grouped in convoys are to be killed. Let not a single living enemy remain behind us.

Some thirty soldiers of Stenger’s Brigade (112 and 142^nd Reg^t of the Baden Infantry), were examined in our prisoners camps. I have read their evidence, which they gave upon oath and signed. All confirm the statement that this order of the day was given them on the 26th August, in one unit by Major Mosebach, in another by Lt Curtius, etc.; the majority did not know whether the order was carried out; but three of them say they saw it done in the forest of Thiaville, where ten or twelve wounded French soldiers who had already been spared by a battalion were despatched; two others saw the order carried out on the Thiaville road, where some wounded found in a ditch by a company were finished off.

No doubt, I cannot produce the autograph of General Stenger, and it is not for me to communicate the names of the German prisoners who gave this evidence. But I have no difficulty in producing here German autographs in proof of crimes precisely similar.

For example (Plate 13), here is an extract from P^te Albert Delfosse’s diary (III Inf. Reserve, XIV Reserve Corps):

“In the forest of St Rémy, 4^th or 5^th September, saw a fine cow and calf destroyed and once more corpses of Frenchmen, frightfully mutilated.”[27]

Plate 13.

Are we to understand from this that these dead bodies had been mutilated in fair fight torn to pieces for example by shells? It may be; but this would be a kindly interpretation which the documents (Plates 14 and 15) disprove:

Here is a fac simile on a reduced scale from a newspaper picked up in the German trenches, the Jauersches Tageblatt of the 18^th October 1914. Jauer is a town in Silesia, about 50 kilometres west of Breslau; two battalions of the 154th regiment of the Saxon Infantry are stationed there. One Sunday (Sonntag, den 18 Oktober) no doubt at the hour when the inhabitants with their women and children were going to church, this local newspaper was distributed in the peaceful little town and in the hamlets and villages of the district, bearing these headlines.

EIN TAG DER EHRE FÜR UNSER REGIMENT.
24 SEPTEMBER 1914.
(A day of honour for our Regiment.
24^th September 1914.)

It is the title of an article of two hundred lines, sent from the front by a soldier of the regiment. Non-commissioned-officer Klemt. 1. Komp. Infanterie Reg^t 154.

Klemt tells how on the 24^th of September his regiment which had left Hannonville in the morning and supported on the march by Austrian batteries was suddenly received by a double fire from artillery and infantry. The losses were enormous. And yet the enemy was invisible. At last, however, it was seen that the firing came from above, from trees where French soldiers were posted. From now on I shall no longer summarise, but quote. (Plate 16).

We brought them down like squirrels, and gave them a warm reception, with blows of the butt and the bayonet: they no longer need doctors; we are no longer fighting loyal enemies, but treacherous brigands.[28]

Plate 14.

“By leaps and bounds we got across the clearing. They were here, there, and everywhere hidden in the thicket. Now it is down with the enemy! And we will give them no quarter. Every one shoots standing, a few, a very few fire kneeling. No one tries to take shelter. We reach a little depression in the ground: here the red trousers dead or wounded lie on a heap ground. We knock ‘down’ or bayonet the wounded, for we know that those scoundrels fire at our backs when we have gone by. There was a Frenchman there stretched out, full length, face down, pretending to be dead. A kick from a strong fusilier soon taught him that we were there. Turning round, he asked for quarter, but we answered: “Is that the way your tools work, you,—” and he was nailed to the ground. Close to me I heard odd cracking sounds. They were blows from a gun on the bald head of a Frenchman which a private of the 154^th was dealing out vigorously; he was wisely using a French gun so as not to break his own. Tenderhearted souls are so kind to the French wounded that they finish them with a bullet, but others give them as many thrusts and blows as they can.

Plate 15.

“Our adversaries had fought bravely, we had to contend with picked men; they let us get within thirty, even ten metres of them—too near. Sacks and arms thrown away in quantities showed that they had try to run, but at the sight of the “grey phantoms” fear paralyzed them, and on the narrow path they had to take, German bullets brought them the word of command, Halt. At the entry into the screen of branches, there they lay groaning and crying for quarter. But whether wounded slightly or severely, the brave fusiliers spare their country the cost of caring for many enemies.”

The narrative goes on, full of literary ornaments. The writer reports that H. R. H. Prince Oscar of Prussia who had been told of these brave deeds (perhaps too of others) of the 154^th regiment, and of the regiment of grenadiers who were brigaded with the 154^th declared that they were both worthy of the name of Königsbrigade, and ends up with this sentence “When evening came, after a prayer of thanksgiving we fell asleep in the expectation of the morrow”. Then the author having added as a postscript a few more touches in verse takes his composition to his lieutenant, who affixes his seal thereupon.

Certified to be exact
De Niem, Leutnant und Kompagnie-Führer.

Then he addresses his article to the town of Jauer, where he is sure that an editor will accept it, compositors will print it, and an entire population will delight in it.

Plate 16.

Now, I ask my reader, no matter of what nationality: can he imagine such an article being printed in his own language, in the town in which he lives, and read by his wife and children? In what country, except Germany is such a thing conceivable? Not in France, at least.

Here is still one further convincing proof of how usual it is for the German army to mutilate the wounded. It is taken (Plates 17 and 18) from the diary of P^te Paul Glöde, of the 9^th Battalion of the Pioneers (IX Corps):

“12^th August 1914. In Belgium.—It is easy to imagine the state of fury of our soldiers, when you see the villages that have been destroyed. There is not one house left undamaged. All eatables are requisitioned by the soldiers no longer commanded. We have seen heaps of dead men and women who had been executed after trial. But the righteous anger of our soldiers goes hand in hand with sheer vandalism. In some villages which had already been deserted they “set up the red cock” on all the houses (burnt them). The inhabitants sadden me. If they use disloyal weapons, after all they are but defending their country. The atrocities that these civilians have been and are guilty of are avenged in a savage manner. Mutilation of the wounded is the order of the day.”[29]

This was written on the 12^th of August, only eight days after innocent Belgium had been invaded, and the wounded who were tortured were only defending, against Germany that land, their native land which Germany had sworn to respect and if necessary to defend. But in many a country, the Pharisees who having read these lines will calmly go to their churches or Chapels, their bank-parlours or their chancelleries murmuring: “In what way do these things concern me? Ja, Ja, it is war”.

Plate 17.

Plate 18.

Yes, it is war, but a war such as was never waged by the soldiers of Marceau, nor ever will be waged by the soldiers of Joffre, such as never has been nor ever will be waged by France, “mother of the arts, of arms and of law”. Yes, it is war, but such as even Attila would not have waged, had he agreed to certain engagements, for, to agree to them would have been to awake to the conception which alone distinguishes the civilized man from the barbarian—the nation from the horde—the respect of the given word.—Yes, it is war, but a war whose insolent principles could be constructed only by pedantic megalomaniacs, the Julius von Hartmanns, the Bernhardis, the Treitschkes; principles that presume to authorize the people elect to blot out from the laws and customs of war all the humanity that centuries of Christianity and chivalry have with difficulty introduced; principles of systematic ferocity, the odious side of which is already obvious enough; but still more the senseless and ridiculous side. Is it not indeed ridiculous that they should be already obliged to deny it at least in words,—they the burners of Louvain, Malines and Reims, they the assassins of women, children, and wounded men! and that they should have imposed upon their slavish ninety-three Kulturträger the denials which we know so well: “It is not true, say they, that we wage war contrary to the laws of nations, and our soldiers do not commit acts of indiscipline or cruelty [30]”, and again: “We will carry on this war to the bitter end as a civilised people, for this we will answer in our name and on our honour”. Why this pitiful and humble denial? Perhaps because their theory of war presupposes as a postulate their invincibility, and as at the first shudder of their defeat on the Marne it collapsed, they now repudiate it at the first threat of retaliations.

I shall draw no conclusion: the allied armies who are marching on towards victory will do that.

[ADDITIONAL NOTE]

General Stenger’s order of the day, mentioned on page 29 was communicated orally by various officers in various units of the brigade. Consequently the form in which we have received it may possibly be incomplete or altered. In face of any doubt, the French government has ordered an enquiry to be made in the prisoners’ Camps. Not one of the prisoners to whom our magistrates presented the order of the day in the above mentioned form found a word to alter. They one and all declared that this was the order of the day which had been orally given in the ranks, repeated from man to man; many added the names of the officers who had communicated the order to them; some related in what a vile way it had been carried out under their eyes. All the evidence of these German soldiers was collected in a legal manner, under the sanction of an oath, and it is after reading their depositions that I wrote the order of the day.

The text of all this evidence was transmitted to all the French embassies and legations in foreign countries on the 24^th of Oct. 1914. Every neutral wishing to clear his conscience is at liberty to obtain it from the representatives of the French Republic who will certainly respond willingly.

Imp. de Vaugirard, H.-L. Motti, dir., 12-13, Impasse Ronsin, Paris.